Halloween Post #4

I'm beat. Work is going great.

Last night's Halloween show at Chicago Underground Comedy was AWESOME. And, Vocalo, the new offshoot of Chicago Public Radio, wants me to contribute content. Here's what I've done so far. It's a six minute audio clip about last night's show. It includes stage performances, interviews, that darned catchy jingle I wrote for ChUC, and it's a lot of fun. ChUC is taking over the radio, one joke at a time!

Click here to listen.

Point, Click, Erase Human Beings

Remember when you had to use old-fashioned scissors to cut an old boyfriend out of a photo? Now there's the "Tourist Remover."

I wish they had one that actually removed tourists from the vacation environment, though. I was at Schloss Neuschwanstein once, and there were all these annoying German people in my way. If I could have pointed , clicked, and deleted them, that would have made my trek through a Bavarian megalomaniac's castle so much more fun.

Halloween Post #3

However many bajillions of dollars my loving parents may have sunk into my pristinely Catholic, classics (and classical)-laden education, this video still reminds me more of The Simpsons more than classic American literature. Eh. Whatever. Poe still rocks.

Quoth the raven:

Halloween Post #2

Check out Dan doing an entire stand-up set...as a zombie. (Dan, will there be clips up soon?) Truly shiver-inducing.

From his blog entry about his set: "So last Friday's set as Zombie Dan Telfer went crazy well, and it is my understanding that my makeup and tooth-spitting gimmick was so graphic that someone in the audience actually ran out into the rainy streets puking. That is amazing."

Also, at Amazon: The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead.

Brantastic

Brandi recently sat down on a chair at Ikea and almost disappeared altogether. By some bizarre coincidence, the pattern on her skirt and the one on the chair were nearly identical. Shall we call this "skirtoflage?" Or is she sitting on a "camochair?" Either way, I love the puzzled and concerned look on her face. Hilarious.

Brandi's Mike Birbiglia photo is now available in skateboard form. Personally, I think Brandi's photos should be available on all manner of consumer goods. Imagine one of her cute baby photos on the hood of your Mercedes, for example. Or one of her Chicago pictures overlaying the city of Jackson Hole. Why not?

Wake Up And Feed Me!

This is my life every morning, times two. Flora is a little more subtle but Calpurnia will lie right on my chest, and stare into my face, and knead her paws on my chin (or mouth!) until I open my eyes and acknowledge her. But at least she's never whipped out a baseball bat...at least, not so far.

Cute Vs. Squishy

I don't know why, but I'm in an animal appreciating mood. Let's pair up the two cutest things I've found online recently with the two most shudder-inducing.

Squeaking and adorable baby animals:

Orphan porcupine with hiccups eating a banana:



Baby panda making pitifully adorable whining noises:



And considerably less cute but equally fascinating squishy animals:

Little octopus escaping from a little hole in a box:



600 pound octopus escaping from all manner of box and tube:

When Will My People's Persecution End?

"Is gingerism as bad as racism?" English photographer Charlotte Rushton: "I was on the Tube, pregnant, and I was really humiliated by this drunk yob. He was shouting 'do the cuffs and the collars match?' He got right up into my face."

I told a joke about this exact thing happening to me on the train in Chicago during my first Underground set. Some moron got right in my face and said "redhead, redhead, carpets match the drapes?"

That guy was a jerk, and that was a totally rude thing to say, but I'm kidding about personally suffering any real stigma related to being a redhead, because #1 "gingerism" is not as profound and complex a social issue here as it is in the UK ("some claim it could be a throwback to anti-Irish sentiment from...when the Irish...were regarded as ethnically inferior").

And #2 I'm a natural blonde, so it's not something I grew up suffering taunts for. But still. Lay off the firecrotch jokes (language in video NSFW)!

Thanks to K-Rock for the link!

Palate Cleanser of Cute

...and, to offset the "ew" nature of my last post, this burblingly adorable pair of chatty, kissy kitties.

Nature Is Just Messing With Me Now

Check out the creepily human-looking teeth on this squid, a promachoteuthis sulcus. Just looking at it gives me the heebie jeebies. Does this look like something Stan Winston dreamed up, or what?

Halloween Post #1

Jim Fath, who has performed at my show as part of Hey You Millionaires, is going crazy with videos on Phat Phree. Here's his "Ultimate 11 Halloween Houses," featuring "The house where the guy jumps out and scares the sh*t out of you":



Among the other eleven is this one, featuring my Underground co-producer Dan "Creepyface" Telfer:



Oh, and speaking of Dan, who's doing an entire upcoming set as a zombie, there's this: the Emergency Zombie Defense Station.

Netflix: Subjecting You To Repulsive Imagery For Profit Since 2004!

I'm shrinking this ad down a bit so you don't have to look at it full-scale (click on it if you want to see the whole thing), but I've been wanting to blog and object to it for awhile now.

It's a Netflix ad I see all over the internet -- this time on a Yahoo news page. In the lower right-hand corner are two disgustingly ugly old men, and I don't mean that in an "ew, old people are ugly" way, I mean scientifically disgusting to look at. The old man on the right is bordering on "horror movie" scary.

I want to know who designed and approved these ads, and what kind of creepy, manipulative psychology was behind them. Clearly, the image is so repulsive, your immediate instinct is to look away, and therefore be forced to look at the rest of the ad.

Why don't you put a picture of maggot-covered gangrene in an ad, Netflix? Or a nice little montage of bodies in the street after a car bombing? Our primal self-preservation instinct will immediately make us look away from those images.

Or -- here's a crazy idea -- why don't you just extol the virtues of your product instead? Kthxbye.

(EDIT: Someone at "Hacking Netflix" doesn't like them, either.)

SWF, Freckles, Sloping Forehead, Stooped Gait, Loves Long Walks and Laughter

Neanderthals were my peeps, so says the journal Science, yo:

"Some Neanderthals may have had fair skin and red hair, giving them an appearance resembling modern Europeans, an international team of researchers said on Thursday."

Maybe it was the lack of Coppertone that ultimately did them in?

Breakin' OUT!

When's the last time your dinner ran away from you? A bunch of lobsters in a supermarket in Germany wiggled out of their crates, out the front door, and down the street to freedom.

"Passersby alerted the police at 1:45 a.m., reporting a large number of (lobsters) heading down the street." They've been taken to an animal home and the supermarket has made no move to reclaim them.

I wonder where they would have ultimately ended up, had the police not thwarted their escape. Did they have a plan? Girlfriends they wanted to reunite with? Or just a general urge to get the hell out of that store?

Thanks to Sloan for this link.

Punching Up Chicago Pride

Last night was the opening ceremonies for the World Boxing Championships, an "exhilarating" event that was creative directed by my brother Andrew. My parents came up from Indiana, and Sloan and I and a bunch of other friends went to the Chicago Theater for the festivities.

The World Boxing Championships are Olympic qualifying events, and there were hundreds of boxers there from around the world, some of whom have never left their home countries. Andrew told me that it was a surprise for the athletes that the parade down State Street ended with them entering the theater by marching across the stage waving the flag of their country, and you could see the excitement and pride on their faces as they realized they were entering to the cheers of a standing audience. A boxer from Azerbaijan described Chicago and the ceremony as "Very good, very beautiful."

Everyone was very aware of Chicago's need to impress the International Olympic Committee members in the audience, since hosting the 2016 Olympics is an important goal for the city, so, after Mayor Daley spoke and AIBA president Ching-kuo Wu said "This proves the city of Chicago has total capacity to organize bigger events," the crowd went crazy with cheers, and Daley, behind him on the stage, beamed and smiled.

Then they announced the arrival of a surprise special guest, and you could feel the emotional temperature in the room rising. They introduced him with little bits of information at a time, and you could feel the crowd collectively trying to figure out who they were talking about, and when it was clear they were talking about Muhammad Ali, the excitement crested with scream and cheers, and everyone rose to their feet.

As the The Trib described it, "Every boxer stood in jubilation, and the crowd, including Mayor Richard Daley, who called Ali a 'great Chicagoan and a great human being,' began chanting, 'Ali, Ali, Ali.'"

It was a fun moment. I was proud of my brother and his work, and proud to feel like a real Chicagoan.

Orange You Glad You're a Dreamer?

The psychic dream run continues. Last night I dreamt I was finishing up a visit in Indiana with my parents, and trying to pack my cats into their carrier for the ride home to Chicago. I kept looking into various carriers that were all over the back yard and saying, "These aren't my cats! Whose are these? Mom, where are my cats?"

There were purple cats, and tie-dyed cats, and glittery cats, and one that was speaking French and smoking a cigarette. Carrier after carrier had some unlikely combination of real cats and fantasy cats. The last one I looked into had two baby orange and white kittens in it. They had milk on their mouths and some burrs stuck to their scruffs.

"Well, at least these look real," I said.

Mom walked over to me. "Oh, yeah, you should pay attention to those. I think they want to be yours."

So -- back to reality now -- about an hour ago I was walking from my brother's house to my house, talking on the phone to my mom, and a big orange and white cat came strolling up the middle of the sidewalk toward me. I immediately started giggling. Here's another one, I thought. (And yes, I also thought "I can't wait to blog about this," because I am a nerd.)

He was one of those awesome city cats who's very self-assured, striding down the sidewalk like a person. He walked right up to me and meowed a greeting, like someone saying "Hey, I was hoping I'd bump into you." I petted his head, and he jumped up for a little more affection, twirled around my legs long enough to leave three little black burrs on my pant leg, and trotted off.

This interrupted the conversation with my mom, who said "What's going on? What are you giggling about?"

"There's this cat...oh, I can't explain." I picked the burrs off my pants and looked back at the cat, who gave me a funny little glance over his shoulder and disappeared into some bushes.

Okay, universe, I'm listening. You've warmed me up. I'm paying attention. I know I'm a vessel, or a conduit, or whatever flaky metaphor you prefer. Now what?

Splat!

From Dale, he of the incredibly good taste. Japanese Human Art:

iLife '08 Can Bite Me

The iLife '08 upgrade is getting my Irish up. And I'm not even all that Irish.

Here's my knee-jerk review of that of the '08 upgrade that I've experienced so far: Garage Band looks slightly different, and maybe has a few new loops in it. I will say right now, if the $500 weren't an obstacle, I'd get the Garage Band loop bonus package tomorrow, with thousands more loops, and I'd disappear in Garage Band like a lonely little turtle into a shimmering pond. None of you would see my face for weeks -- but then I'd emerge, beyond the pale (if I may) and perhaps a little lacking in muscle tone and social skills, but sharing of musical gifts so awesome, none of you would begrudge me a few missed pre-arranged social obligations.

iMovie, however, is like an entirely different program post-upgrade, and I don't actually know how to make a damn movie with it any more. I spent all day out on my bike getting footage for a new project, and hunched over my MacBook writing some new music, and iMovie with the '08 upgrade is severely hindering my creativity.

I seriously hate this right now. I just want to edit, in a way consistent with what the program was before, a quick little urban bioclip, and this upgrade is making every one of my instincts moot. What the hell? I can't speed up clips and boost the contrast? Please don't do all the thinking for me, program, I had this figured out before. CRAP!

I need an Apple tutor. I know this glorious little white machine can help me bring more beauty to the masses, but I need a few pointers between here and there.

An E-mail "Get To Know Your Friends" Game I Just Finished Playing

Sloan sent this to me. I surprised myself by filling it out. Feel free to answer some (or all ) of the questions yourself, in the comments section, should you feel so inspired. Kind of a fun way to unwind after a crazy day.

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Yes, my grandmother Elizabeth. A curious note: everyone in my family has blue eyes except me. Mine are green, and I got them from Grandma E, although she had one green eye and one brown eye. A favorite joke: "I got my eyes from my grandma. She had green...eye."

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? When I last watched Paul Potts' opera audition on "Britain's Got Talent." And with every previous viewing. Seriously. Watch it. It melts even the chilliest of human hearts.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Not these days. It's very erratic.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Is brie meat?

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Nope.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Hells, yes. I'm a blast, and I'm a great friend, and I'm a great networker on other people's behalf.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? I'm a stand-up comedian. I'm sure you can deduce.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes. But no gallbladder.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? No. Too jerky. But skydiving is a scream.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Lucky Charms. With whole milk.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Only if they have laces.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? I weight train 5 days a week, so, yes. Emotionally and psychologically, though, I'm strong as a starving kitten.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Chubby Hubby or Chunky Monkey. Or something carmel-y.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their level of genuine interest in others, and overall curiosity and desire to challenge themselves. Those things are paramount.

15. RED OR PINK? My blog nickname is "Bella Rossa," so, maybe...both?

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR SELF? Inability to accept praise. Inability to stop my mind from whirring, and my infinite capacity for self-criticism.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My brother Steve. He's been gone for 19 years now. I miss him every day. I wish he could see how far I've come.

18. DO YOU HAVE ANY TATTOOS? Yep. One so far. It's in Latin and it's about comedy.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Rolled-up blue jeans, white leggings underneath, white and blue running shoes.

20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? Overpriced roast beef sandwich and Lorina sparkling French berry lemonade at the coffeeshop where I am now.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The Pretenders: "Message of Love."

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Pasty/pink #323.

23. FAVORITE SMELLS? The smell of a swimming pool, sweaty horses/saddle leather, and jet fuel.

24.WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Tony Sam.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? I love her to tiny beautiful little pieces. (I love my nieces to pieces?)

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Eh. Why watch when you could play? Maybe baseball. But then, maybe it's the hot dogs and beer and cute boys I like.

27. HAIR COLOR? Red.

28. EYE COLOR? Green.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Nope, I walk around in in a fuzzy, nearsighted haze. I like it that way.

30. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FOOD? Mangoes and blueberries.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? I'd like to say happy endings, but they're rarely believable.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? "The Girl Most Likely To..." I relate a bit too much. Well, not to the murdering part. But the radical transformation/everyone treats you differently part.

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Blue, with a black hoodie.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER? Summer. But with SPF 70.

35. HUGS OR KISSES? I haven't had a kiss in awhile. Ask me again later.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? Pie. Pie! PIEPIEPIEPIEPIE. I even worked it into a "I used to be fat" joke onstage. It killed.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Kristy Mangel.

Freelance Lodgeburgers, Psychic Understudies, More

The Lincoln Lodge has given me the thumbs up, and I'm lined up for a guest set there in the next few weeks.

I didn't get into Time Out Chicago's "Funniest Person in Chicago" contest, but Dan did! I'm going to try to go to the contest at the Lakeshore so I can scream on his behalf.

Along with a new communications partner, I'm going to do the PR for the Chicago Advertising Federation for the next year. This means working with people like McDonald's CCO, who's a very savvy and cool woman.

Last night at ChUC I freaked everybody out with talk about my returning premonition dreams. I'm being called everything from "touched" to "spooky." One of the highlights of the last go 'round of this sort of psychic adventure happened one night when I was 13, and I was walking through my family's living room while then-President Reagan was giving a speech on tv. I absent-mindedly mumbled three sentences of his speech at the same time he said them. My family, gathered around the tube, spazzed out. "How did you know what he was going to say?" And I said "He said that last night on tv. We watched it together, remember?" And they said "No, this is a live broadcast, you little weirdo...he's never said that before." I know, I know, this is the kind of thing that got women burned at the stake not so many generations ago. Maybe I should stop talking about it.

I'm doing rehearsals for my friend Nancy's play about her experiences as a comedy writing teacher at Second City. I'm an understudy and will probably be onstage only 2 or 3 times. The show is directed by the very awesome John Hildreth, who does work with Second City's BrownCo, and is a lot of fun. Nancy totally tricked me into this by saying, "I know you've never acted, and you're big 'fraidy-cat, but this will be good for you, very low-key. You'll be offstage, script in hand, reading into a mic." Guess what was required of me at the first rehearsal? Acting, dancing, and singing -- including solo singing. Ha ha ha. Very sneaky, Nancy.

Oh, and Technorati alerted me to the fact that a blogger in Plano, Texas linked to an ancient blog post on Bella Rossa, and referred to me as a "failed girl comedian." He seems to have a good sense of humor, so I gave him a friendly poke in return, acknowledging that yes, perhaps at the "few months" mark of my comedy career, I should have reached stratospheric heights of fame already, and maybe I should pack it in. Oh, silly internets, I love you so.

If You Start Me Up, I'll Never Stop

A few days ago I swallowed a battery. Just a little one, mind you. How? That morning I had tucked some ADD med and a cramp pill in the back pocket of my jeans. I won't lie. I was cramping like mean ol' bitch and half-crazy with some ADD symptoms.

I had forgotten that earlier I had also slipped a tiny Tirefly battery into my back pocket, because, nifty though Tireflys are (I wrote about them possibly contributing to my gradual blindness here), one of mine must have a malfunctioning "shut off light when tire stops moving" function, which I attempted to remedy with a quick unscrewing of the top, removal of one battery, and temporarily relocating it in the back pocket of my jeans.

Later that day, bouncing along on the CTA, the cramps and the ADD kicked in at the same time, so, eyes fixed firmly to the middle pages of "Mostly Harmless," I reached into my back pocket, grabbed its contents, slapped them into my yaw, and took a big chug of bottled water.

It's weird, because as the assortment of pills and non-edible items shifted around on my tongue, some vaguely alert part of my brain pinged, and thought, "oh, wait, wait, don't! That's not a pill!" But an ancient, and much dumber part of my brain, responsible for eating and swallowing anything with even a smidgen of nutritional value, got all excited and happy and thought "oh...something smooth and pretty on the tongue -- yum yum DUH eat DUH," and down the gullet it went.

It was kind of like that moment of conflict in your brain when you realize you're locking yourself out of your car or your house: you're looking at your hand, you know you're doing something wrong, and there actually is time to stop it from happening, but you do it anyway.

Before you ask the gross obvious question, no, I haven't been mashing my poo to make sure the battery has completed its voyage through my digestive cycle. But I have been feeling a little extra perky lately. Who says all of our energy should come from traditional food sources?

Ha ha. The Tirefly website says "do not attempt to swallow batteries." I didn't attempt, you monolithic corporate jerk! I succeeded.

EDIT: There is such a thing as the "Battery Ingestion Hotline," and...maybe I actually should call it. We'll see.

YouTube Has Never Made Me Cry

Until today. You must watch this. It's Paul Potts' audition for Britain's Got Talent, and it's just the most amazing, beautiful thing I've seen in a long time. A real triumph.

Pressure Can Break Down Even The Nerdiest And Most Composed Of Us

Teen tournament champ drops the f-bomb on Jeopardy. I have to imagine his internal dialogue was something along the lines of "Damnit! I've fantasized about her thousands of times, but when it really counts, I can't remember that her name is 'Natalie Portman?' AUGH!" Also, how did this make it to air? CBS is getting all loosey-goosey with their profanity censors lately. F*ck.

Liveblogging From Work (Again)

...this time from a different coffee shop.

If you think this post is waste of your time, imagine how my various editors feel.

Liveblogging From Work

...work with a sangria, that is. I'm at Uncommon Ground, just north of iO and Wrigley Field. I know, I look shiny. I rode my bike here and got rained on a bit. I like to think of it as "glow."

I'm transcribing an interview with an architect in Utah, and a builder in Houston, then I'm going to have a nice dinner with a friend, damnit. I hyperfocus on work too much and I even structure the fun out of comedy most of the time -- I need to have more fun!

I'd Like To Buy...

It's amazing how the internet knows, based on videos I'm looking at, exactly what I'm interested in buying.

Yes, internet, you're right! Watching a video about the art of Ron Mueck does, in fact, reflect my desire to peruse the wide selection of humans that eBay has for sale.

May I please purchase a giant scale human to keep as my very own special pet? I'll be the envy of all my friends!

Brandi Ediss!!!

I will brag more on her in more detail shortly, but in the meantime, oh my GOD, am I ever proud of Brandi. She's trying to get a children's photography and music business off the ground, and look at what she's got up so far on her new website. How beautiful and astonishing are these sample photos? She's brilliant. So, so talented and special.

That's the same Brandi who writes music like "The Dinosaur," which can be heard here (again and again, I warn you...).

Gotta ride my bike downtown for dinner with another brilliant friend now, Emily Kennerk. A friend and I zipped down to Indianapolis to see her show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

More soon. But for now, BRANDI!!!!

I Don't Go to Sleep to Dream

My dreams are weirding me out lately. I've been having a lot more premonition dreams -- dreams that contain details of things that end up happening within the next few days. I've had them all my life. I've dreamt of the unexpected deaths of famous people, unforeseen natural disasters, entire sentences from Presidential press conferences, unplanned visits from long-lost friends, conversation snippets, big and little things -- you name it. I think of it as a loop. The initiation of the loop is the dream, and the closing of the loop is that detail manifesting in the waking world.

I've had premonition dreams since I was a little girl. They happen more when I'm stressed/excited and taking on new challenges. The last time I had an overwhelming amount of them, I was 13. I tried keeping a written record but it was more than I could keep up with. I kept trying to talk to people about them, trying to understand why they were happening, but people were freaked out, and the experience was overwhelming, so I shut them out.

But lately, as I've begun opening myself up for more interaction with others, and giving myself more freedom from within to do things like perform comedy, they've begun coming back, and I'm trying to incorporate them peacefully into my existence. I've had about ten in the last week. Little, cute, amusing details. Maybe warm-ups for bigger, more meaningful ones to come? I was trying not to think about them -- I have so much on my mind right now -- but then last night, a loop connected from a dream I had Tuesday night, in a very frightening way.

After the great ChUC show Tuesday, I came home, exhausted but exhilarated, and dreamt of a threatening male figure emerging from the darkness. The emotional component of this dream was in the context of the show, and me putting myself out into the world in a way I never have before. I'm excited about everything that I'm doing, but it makes me feel very vulnerable sometimes, too. The man in the dream was bedraggled and bearded, in a red plaid shirt and a dirty ballcap, and I knew to be afraid of him. I was trying to avoid him but whichever way I turned, he was in my path, like a glitch in a video game. Suddenly, we were face to face. He spoke to me in a voice that had crackly static and mic feedback in it. "I'm Dan Allison, and I've been thinking about how I'd like to hurt you." I woke up with a pounding heart, and it took me awhile to get back to sleep.

Then -- back to reality -- last night I was riding my bike in the darkness, home from my office, much later than I would have liked. The light was out on my bike, and I'd forgotten my helmet, and I was a little edgy. On an unlit block, I had a creeping sensation up the back of my neck. There was no one around. I dodged some construction machinery by hopping up on the sidewalk. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a lone man was walking in my direction, out of the darkness. I slammed to a stop when I realized the sidewalk was blocked with construction materials. The man got just close enough for me to make out some details: he was bearded and wearing a red plaid shirt, with a stitched name tag: "Dan." He was wearing a dirty ballcap with a corporate logo patch: "Allison." I rode like hell all the way home.

Yes, I dreamt at least six specific details about a threatening person, and then I saw a person with those six characteristics the next day. I even got two names right, pulled from the ether of my mind and this mysterious universe we find ourselves knocking about in.

What exactly was the point of that, universe? Come on, I'm not hard to scare. Is this a girl thing? A hormonal thing? A crazy sensitive introvert thing? A cosmic thing? If it's some sort of tool or window, I'd like to understand and be able to use it. And I'd like to sleep a bit more peacefully. PM me with some details, Lords of the Cosmos, please.

My Stand-Up Showcase Debut at ChUC

Okay, I need to quit jumping the gun, and posting unedited clips, because giant mega files annoy people who don't have fast internet connections.

Here's the edited clip of my stand-up showcase from Tuesday night. Just as a reference note, this is my eighth time on stage, as a comic or as anything else. I'd like to think I'm doing pretty okay for a rank newbie.

Things Are Good. Just Try To Stop Me!

I'm taking Chicago by storm! My videoblog of Critical Mass is posted on Metroblogging Chicago. (Thanks, Fuzzy!)

I'm making my showcase debut at Chicago Underground Comedy tomorrow night, yes indeed. I'm bringing extra candy (I take care of my audiences, yo), and 30-40 friends and family are slated to be there to cheer loud enough to drown out any boos. I've been walking around like a crazy person, playing a recording of my set on my computer, in my earphones, and reciting my jokes out loud while riding my bike.

BFF, PR genius, and megaproducer K-Rock and the girls invited me to fill in for Hattie Snyder (who, sadly, will be at her friend Nailah Franklin's memorial) at the Spitfire showcase at the Apollo the following night, so my first two showcases are wham bang one after the other.

Speaking of K-Rock, check out Buscemi and Delahoyde's "Angelina," starring K-Rock (at left)! Well, not "starring," in the literal sense. But look how cute!

What else is exciting? Well, I just talked a nice lady at Comcast into hacking my monthly bill in half. HALF. Just goes to show you how much you can get in life by asking nicely. (And if that doesn't work, then raise hell.)