My Ukulele

For a long time now, we have been in a holding pattern. I watch my daughter during the day and work when I get it.  My husband goes to college and is finishing...finally....his PHD. We aren't living on the streets or anything. Or apartment is nice. We have clothes that get a little tattered but we can find ways to replace them when they become truly embarrassing. Some times are better than others. You can usually tell by how much we splurge on eating out. Once in a while we have enough to buy something cool, usually so that we can sell it when things aren't so good. And that's okay normally but there are two things that I regret selling. And one is my ukulele.

There is a musician named Melvern Taylor. He plays the ukulele like a champ. He makes it retro cool. He lives in Lowell and wears a porkpie hat with neat facial hair. My ex-boyfriend who used to be in charge of the music department of a huge advertising agency in NYC said that he knew who he was. Mel is that type of musician. The kind a lot of specific people know from all over because ukulele afficianados are a special breed. He was the first musician that I ever liked and sought out when we moved to Boston. And he made me want to play the uke too.

My husband has always been very kind when it comes to humoring my quirky wants. We went to Guitar Center and there was a beautiful Mitchell on sale for a little under two hundred dollars. It was fierce and fit my small hands and the hand nylon strings that didn't look as painful as guitar strings. I took it home and compared it to the Hawaiian novelty ones that we had sent from my mother in law in Honolulu . It was obviously a better instrument (although the pink one looks wicked cool). Not as good as Mel's but it had mother of pearl inlay and felt right in my hands. I would sit at my dad's old desk after I downloaded chords, trying to play songs. Or I would try to study the lessons from my Ukulele instruction manual.  Mel even gave me a names of recommended teachers.

But the money started running out again and there were so many other things that we needed besides my ukulele lessons. Eventually we fell into the inevitable pinch when I had to sell things again. My husband's guitar was sacred to me. We purchased it right before my daughter was born so that she would always be surrounded with people playing music. My husband had a beautiful voice and would sing to her. Later, we got an electric piano cheap. I held on to that second because I had dreams of our daughter learning to play and I loved banging away at it badly. We could always get another ukulele. So it went to a nice man on Craigslist who bought it for his son. I was glad that it went to an appreciative home.

We got a crappier one that my daughter drags around trying to teach herself now. She has potential. I regret never letting her play with my beautiful good one.

Some day I will get another one and I will get to keep it. Some day I will be able to buy one without thinking of it as not something to sell in a pinch but value it for what it is. A time when poverty doesn't rule our decisions and let us keep the things that we regret selling later. Not that the holding pattern has been so bad with occasional family trips and nice meals spun from creative spending.  Some of those memories will be the best days of my life. And we had our good days when I was just selling stuff to get it out of the house. But, let's say, consistently better days on the other side of education and sporadic incomes. With ukuleles.

The Day The Simpsons Die...

There is something so soothing about a relatively new episode of The Simpsons. Hell, even old ones are like chicken soup to an abused body on a bad day. I'm nauseous. I'm in bed.  I'm stressed. My feet are cold. The Simpsons are on. Who cares about the rest of it. I'm laughing.

There are some constants in life that, if you are lucky,  are always there to make you feel better. Warm blankets. Hot showers after a long day doing dirty work. A kiss on the cheek and a quick squeeze to the hand that you didn't expect. The Simpsons. It's been on for twice as long as my child has been on this planet. She literally has grown up watching them. She and her dad have watched them as a regular event of the evening....because there is an endless pool of Simpsons....since she could speak. In lieu of words to express her disappointment, she would emote a Marge disapproval moan. I use the Ralphie laugh to  communicate "I'm silly." "Doh!" is a universal,well, doh. It has been ingrained in us.

I hear that the production is now on a two year contract which normally they would renew. But this last year was touch and go. Could there someday be an end to....gulp...the comfort food of television in the near future? God, I hope no. I hope it runs until the actors drop dead at the microphone from old age. It's like marriage. As stale or wonderful as it could be sometimes (and in the 20 odd years since its been on, there has to be some lemons), you get used to the comfort of thinking its going to be there forever. And then someone goes and quits or dies.

So life will be without The Simpsons someday.  It's better not to think of it and enjoy the moment on Sundays when I knew absurd idea reflecting our society is born to the world, grateful for the endless supply of reruns that will make it seem young far longer than it really is.

Promise To My Husband Not To Emote

I'm a natural blogger. I've been writing long annoying letters and essays since I've discovered the ability to string two sentences together on paper. It is not the need to write that drives this. It is the need to communicate in a controlled form. To say what I need to say when my verbal inability to edit fails me. Which it often does. Especially in a panicked state.

Our marriage has some spectacular tests of strength, especially as of late.  Resulting from unusual circumstance, bad luck and residual damage from learned bad habits of self preservation. I honestly think there are no right or wrong as much as bad choices and....apologies for using the word twice in a paragraph....damages. Nevertheless there is anger and great fear fucking with love. And when I panic, I grab on to my lifelong life preserver...the things that has kept me alive through abuses and pain and terror....words. I need to talk. I need to analyze. I need to understand. I think most people do but I do it to death. So to my husband who is in many aspects an angel to tolerate my quirks these many years (but, to be fair it works both ways, Gorgeous), I apologize for all of the dead horses I have beaten trying to convey my love and fear and I thank you for listening as long as you could tolerate it. Your kindness has not been unnoticed.


The writing kind of folk that I am born into have a blessing. When you see a new child grow into their new world, they always hit a point of exasperation when they haven't learned to talk but they  are desperate to communicate.  I don't think we ever forget the gift of finally being able to tell people what feelings are like. But sometimes we need an editor.

So here's the deal, my love, I will shut the fuck up on the wordiness but allow me to write it down. I will work with the best form of communication to be digested when you can stand it. I cannot promise to stop thinking. I can promise to do it in a manner that can be edited. If only I were as bleached as I look, right?

Smart

A long time ago I almost got into a knock down drag out fight with another comic and a booker about the intellect of stand up comics. I made that statement that you had to be bright to be a stand up. A successful stand up. They said not true. I still stand by this. To be a good comic….not a gimmick, not a hack…a genuine talent acknowledged as successful by the comics that work with you, you need to be a smart person. Sometimes its hard to tell, that’s all.

In Boston there is an unusual percentage of scientists and college educated stand up comics. That is because there is an unusual amount of colleges and universities here. Don’t take a genius to see that. In New York, I used to know a lot of lawyers who went into comedy. Greg Giraldo and Mike Sweeney (head writer of Conan) both came from a legal background. So, yeah, there are obviously highly educated people in comedy.

Then there are people like me. I suck at being educated. Even before the brain damage, I had trouble being formally educated. Verbally oriented subjects were easy for me. Analytical math and sciences like chemistry sounded like the adults in the Peanuts tv specials. For that reason, college and I didn’t mix well. The prerequisites in math and science discouraged the hell out of me because the majority of time in these classes was spent in a confused state. As soon as the math equations started building a second tier, I was fucked. There were too many levels and letters to make sense. Letters aren’t math. They are letters. Until I learned to play the piano, left and right confused me too. I think of them as treble and bass with sounds. My guess is that somewhere along the line, I had some kind of learning disability that I was smart enough to get around undetected. And I am very intelligent, just a bad student with social issues.

Some of the most brilliant minds that I know in comedy did not go to college. Some didn’t even finish high school. In some societies that put a higher value on formal education, this is grounds for less than adequate intellectual value. It is sad because a GPA does not make us bright. Try to get a normal person to find a premise, spin it into something unique and weave it into an act and see what happens. Not only does it take experience, it takes a mind that can spot a concept that is unique to their voice and has not been done by others. Knowing that it will garner the response of a laugh. A class in comedy can teach you what the techniques used are but it won’t teach you to tune in to the idea and cook it into a funny thought. 

To be good in stand up, it helps to be smart. To be great in stand up, you have to be brilliant (or a really great cheat that works very very hard). And that doesn’t mean bookish. It means sharp fine tuned thinking in a manner different from the rest of the herd that only a uniquely intelligent mind can produce. It means Louis CK, Greg Giraldo, Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, Joan Rivers, David Cross, Bill Hicks. Firecrackers in God's box of crayolas.

My Inner Child Has A Broken Head

Dear Inner Child,

Sorry about all of the bad hype you got in the '70's. I blame hippies and EST. People really made you sound like a pussy. And I don't mean the cat. I know.....kind of a crappy way to talk to a kid but, really, you are 47 years old. Maybe you should lighten up some?

Let's have a little talk, shall we? I know you are feeling a little put upon. You need a lot of affection and you just aren't feeling it. Logical Thinking over here says you reap what you sow but Logical Thinking also can be a heartless dick. All the parts need to hear "I love you." I mean, you and Self Worth never really got along as it is and he is pinching you every chance he can get, isn't he? I don't have to be watching him every minute to know what a sneaky cow he can be. He bullies everyone when he doesn't feel well. He's been pushing us all around for years, running around with that ass Ego whispering ideas in his ear all of the time, whittling away at his energy and making him miserable to everyone in his path.

What I'm trying to say is, "Be patient," my friend. When you aren't here, it is positively no fun. Because all grown up no child makes Me a real downer. Some day you will hear those words and see a facebook status that gives you approval but for now, learn from what life is giving you. I know it hurts. But kicking on the floor won't help the loneliness go away. Only time will tell. So go be quiet. And stay out of the cookie jar until after dinner. Self Worth can't handle the calorie intake without a melt down.

XXOO

Watching The Candle That Burns Too Bright. Our Margaret.

I was always a little surprised that I referred to Margaret as my friend. It wasn't an easy thing to be. She emotionally drained most people that came into her light. We all understood that she was special and brilliant and, most importantly, crazy as a bedbug so we forgave her and managed our relationships with intermittent vacations from the drama. None of us were surprised when she was dead although alone asleep in her hospital bed from a heart attack at 39 wasn't the demise that we assumed.

Margaret was a star. She would tell you that herself. In most cases, this would just be part of the delusion. But Margaret actually starred in a television show with large muppets for a short run and probably would have been huge if she wasn't so bloody off the chain. Even at her worst, when she refused to put on a skirt that wasn't cut up to her crotch on the bottom and down to her hip line with her midriff exposed in the dead of winter, she could hop up on stage and be lucid and genius. Then she would come down again and obsess over a man who would desperately try to run in the other direction from her if he saw her first, try to get her doctor feel good to give her another prescription pill and plot the plastic surgery on her face that would detract from her horrifically thin body that she insisted was just fine because she was skinny.

She had gone into the psychiatric ward a couple of times before she died there. Every time they arrived at a new diagnosis, giving her pills that they would claim she was addicted to the very last time. Her doctor drilled me for proof that she was a drug addict and I told him that I was more concerned that she looked like a skeleton and boasted that she had cut down on her laxative intake. She never told all of the people bringing her sweets that about 5 others were coming as well carrying boxes of apple donuts and cheescake. I doubt she ate other food. I doubt that she kept it in her body when she did since they were looking for pills, not eating disorders. She gained about twenty pounds in a month on a physique that I spent hours analyzing in detail as I debated her throughout an entire night that she was indeed starving to death. Her argument was that she fit the same clothes in a picture that was from the past. I argued that her face was sinking in because you couldn't get smaller than skeleton which is the size she was when the photo was taken....she had gone from bone sized to sunken skeletal. She had a heart attack at 39 (or 29 if you ask me her last name) after gaining weight rapidly. You put it together.

Poor Margaret. I told her mom that I don't think that anything shy of having her live in an institution would have kept her alive. She was cunning and manipulative. Her brain told her the most insane reasons to want things and she would attack her wants like a tiny pitbull.  You could not remove the want from her head. She would rather die than change her mind. She would have gone back to her eating disorder driven, obsessive ways as soon as she was out of the hospital. She would have o.d.-ed on perscription pills because she didn't have food to handle the quantity or taken too many laxatives or picked up the wrong man because he looked rich and told her the right things. It wouldn't have ended well. You wonder why God would give someone such a lot in life. But then again, she shone a hundred times harder than most humans ever dreamed of being.

Her energy was relentless, her brain so smart, her determination obsessive. Success was the only thing she could cope with in her head. She had to feel hard. She performed like she knew someone was going to steal her vocal chords or cut off her hands the next day. There was no half assed. There was no wasting time. She was a bomb that hit the earth and blinded us and then died out so fast that I didn't have a chance to digest what the hell she was till now. Some of us are gone a long time before we are missed like we should be because it takes so long to see again from the light they blew into our eyes.

I miss you, my terrifying friend. I wonder how you ever could have lived out here in the world as an adult that aged and dulled. Some of us leave young because that is when we are done. The light went out. We moved on. I can still feel you shine next to me though. You live on because we will see the tiny dazzling sparkle of you in the corners of our eyes.

Why I Am A Mean Lady

We all get crushes. I have one right now. Actually, three. They are fun. They give you something to think about when the work, not work, money, reality, whatever cock blocks your happy place. I am mostly oblivious to crushes on me. I grew up in a very small town with three sisters and didn't stand a chance in hell in learning the social skills dance. I get it that if you flash a boob, someone may take delight in the action, but a real crush? Nah. I just don't see them because I'm too busy not making eye contact with men using the magic of not wearing glasses.  Which is why when I am bitching about getting too much attention, it goes way past being the subject of mild one-sided flirtation.

In stand up, my low self esteem probably has protected me. I avoid eye contact and hide off stage. You can't hit on me if you can't catch me. I'm also pretty intimidating as a character, a firm believer in controlling the room and too much information. I remember an old comedy friend saying to me, "If someone has a crush on onstage me, they seriously need some help." I expose a lot of foibles, some real, some for the sake of the joke. And when I go to the car by myself in the empty parking lot at night, I pray that I am not punishable for a sin that some wing nut has determined from in between the lines of my act that I didn't intend to write. Someone they hate because I am not a man and they don't get my freedom of opinion. Or they just see a woman who will be walking alone at night, an easy crime mark. The parking spot is always in a place that I can get to fast and I do the best that I can to get in without fighting the lock.

Comedy has become a business that requires a internet presence. I put out blurbs about shows without the intention of luring audience as much as keeping me visible to other bookers. The more you post, the more you are in their consciousness. Sometimes this backfires and too much information is released into eyes you didn't intend to see it. Block interlopers someone suggests and if you know who they are, this is great. And sometimes it is better that they have a little information to satisfy curiosity than going full bore google and showing up in front of your house where your kid lives.

Someone has a crush on me that crosses the line of a crush. I try to avoid him. When I see him in real life, it is like a scene out of Pepe LePu and his damned cat. He sits down, I look panicked and switch to another seat. He tries to sit next to me again, I repeat action until I land in a place that cannot sit. No touching. I'm too quick and it isn't a dirty old man groping thing. It's a 7 foot wall of needy. We have been doing this at least a year.  He tries to start conversations but he goes into places he shouldn't know about or care.  It sounds benign enough but the difference is it never stops. No matter how mean I am, how rude, he won't stop following me. He never hears no. He never quits i.m.-ing me, following me both on line and physically. At first it was innocent enough but now it is just disturbing. No. I don't like you. Look at at the fear on my face and the venom in my voice. And not having the ability to hear and consider the needs of another human because you want something scares me.

I am generally good at handling crazy. My specialty used to be diffusing drunks that are never wrong. I know that it is fighting an insane person and there is no reason. They never hear "no" when they don't want to hear it. All sorts of flavors of nuts out there...hell, I ain't claiming sanity myself, look at what I do....but only hearing what you want turns into "give me" and that is a special flavor of person.  I don't want to be got. At least by him. So I am mean and then he backs off a little. Until he justifies it in his head again. And then I am mean some more.  And I worry how this could possibly ever end.  Because if I reject him completely, I may find out just how loose that screw really is.