Toad-i-gras Memories

Jam-band mecca Jake's Toadhouse is now a sports bar, rock venue and occasional jam band mecca called Club 29. Last year for Toad-i-gras they dared to book Dutch Loves Bijou as the opening act. This "experiment in vaudeville" featured a 20's-style jazz band, a songstress, dancing girls, comedy skits and Leonard Sharing as a tap-dancing skeleton. I played Rene and Renee in the show and wrote 2 skits. The humor turned out more burlesque than vaudeville and I basically just stopped once I got to 2 pages and had the band come in, but here's one of 'em:

Cast: RENE (chomps a cigar), MICHÈLE (Speaks in a high-pitched, mousy voice a la Gracie Allen)

RENE (Takes cigar out) Michele—with the feminine spelling. I went down to St. James Infirmary just to see my baby there. (Replaces cigar)

MICHÈLE Oh Rene, with the masculine spelling, I wasn’t there.

RENE (Disappointed) I know.

MICHÈLE Well, I went to my gynecologist today.

RENE Your gynecologist? Where’s his office?

MICHÈLE On Canal St. He said I’ve got the Dipper Mouth Blues.

RENE The Dipper Mouth blues? What do they give you for that?

MICHÈLE 12 bars of penicillin.

RENE Woa. Remind me to start wearing a plunger mute. So how’d you get to your gynecologist?

MICHÈLE I took a streetcar named Pap Smear?

RENE Think I tried that on a bagel once. Well I just went to my urologist.

MICHÈLE Oh really? Where’s his office?

RENE O’re Rampart Street.

MICHÈLE O’re Rampart Street? Did he treat your rocket’s red glare?

RENE No, he just made me cough. … With a clarinet obligato. He’s helping me with my shy bladder. Ya know how when I’m standing at the urinal and another guy walks in I can’t go. I freeze up. I have to be alone to urinate. It’s very embarrassing.

MICHÈLE And odd too. You love to be peed on.

RENE It’s New Orleans. You stand under a French Quarter balcony long enough you get used to it. It sure is hot and humid on the bayou.

MICHÈLE Are you sure that’s not just my smoldering sexuality?

RENE (Looks her up and down.) No I’m pretty sure it’s the heat.

MICHÈLE I feel so stifled by our repressed marriage. I’m like a Cat on a hot tin roof.

RENE Your pussy’s burnt? (sniff, sniff) I thought that was jambalaya. (sniff, sniff) Or blackened catfish.

MICHÈLE Why don’t we just get divorced?

RENE ‘Cause the church would excommunicate you.

MICHÈLE And yet murder is a forgivable sin. Hmm. I guess that’s what happens in a rigidly hierarchical church structure that fetishizes tradition over a woman’s empowerment.

RENE Huh?

MICHÈLE "Baise-toi!"

(RENE does a take.)

Band plays Dippermouth Blues. Fin.

A jam band headlined.

BTW I'll be flashing my tits at MySpace 'til I can think of a good Ash Wednesday picture.

"Laissez les bons temps rouler!"