Monday, May 26, 2008

Draggin' My Nuckles

This Saturday marks my return to burlesque. Syrens of the South--a more recent addition to Atlanta's ever-burgeoning burlesque scene--will present a night of dancers through the ages interspersed by comedians stuck in time. I'm to play a 70s lounge comic.

After Bill Murray's lounge singer, Andy Kaufman's Tony Clifton and the new hipster fav Neil Hamburger, it's a little hard to find a new take on the smarmy creep.

I'll likely slick my hair back and wear a loud shirt buttoned only to the navel--nothing innovative there. But after one of my own overwritten dick jokes--the Agnes Scott bit!--I might segue into a brief reflection on the appeal and the emptiness of the swinger life. It's that still-vulgar but ham-fistedly lyrical style I like to think is my "mature" period.

Or maybe I'll just wear a funny wig and fall down.

There'll also be puppets, a guy doing Jesus as a stand-up and plenty o' pasties.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Suggested Writing Assignments

For Bill Taft's most recent Another Evening With the Garbagemen spoken word night there were two:

  1. Write an “artist’s statement” about your work.
  2. Write a supershort story using the first line “I had no idea it was gonna burn that fast.”
I chose the second and wrote this:

I had no idea it was gonna burn that fast.
It took longer to find a clean CD-R than it took to render the whole Requiem--a favorite by Fauré foraged from the library.
A
n illicit copy was so easy to obtain--ripped and returned a full week before its due date.
The Pie Jesu runs four minutes but burned in less than one—“Compassionate Christ” compressed in a clip.
And now its gentle grieving is mine to mourn at my leisure--from Introit to In Paradisum.
May God forgive my crime.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

My Non-Whiskey Voice

Sunday, May 11, 2008

If A Tree Branch Falls on a Parked Shitty Car In Inman Park...

How many windshield cracks can you have before it becomes an affectation?

I shall replace my increasingly warped view, but have some timing belts that sound more pressing.

At least I'm not as pretentiously poorer-than-thou as that guy over on Elmira whose 95 Corsica now sports a plywood back left door and a La Quinta Inn hand towel gas cap.

I wonder if there are any really shitty used Priuses out there yet.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

A Person Of Note

Been busy lately. In some boring, tedious ways and some wonderful, new ways.

I'd thought about filling up some cyber-space by posting a favorite old sketch of mine but it's a bit long and would require a lot of scrolling down. (Nobody scrolls down anymore.)

It was a spoof of the Maltese Falcon set in a check cash run by Bolt Lead, Notary Public. The idea was a hard-nosed, no-nonsense notary who took his entry-level legal duties way too seriously. A couple years later I actually became a notary for my day job. I try not to take it too seriously.

Once I took my stamp to the Star Bar and offered to notarize any lady's chest for the standard $2 fee. I got one drunken client but she wanted to pay with a money order.

Maybe I'll revive the sketch somewhere or record it as an audio piece. If I have the time. Meanwhile, I've got some assigned reading to do.