I went out tonight (last night by the time you read this) to the Acme Comedy Club. I haven’t been to a comedy club in….forever? Damn. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to one, it’s been that long. Anyway, Ian’s friend with the emcee (@ItsTheBrandi) on Twitter, and he asked if I wanted to see her and Dana Gould, his doppelganger at the Club (which is right next to where he works). I said sure, why not? It’s outside of my comfort zone, which is one reason I said yes. I’m trying to stretch my limits little by little, and I thought this would be a good way to do it. I like comedy. I like laughing. Who doesn’t? I didn’t know much about Dana Gould, but I’d heard of him, and he was bound to be pretty funny, I figured.
I woke up with a headache, bordering on a migraine, Tuesday morning/afternoon. I popped a couple migraine Excedrin, then lay* on the couch with all the lights off. I tweeted a bit and watched a Let’s Play on YouTube, but that was it. I felt shaky, and all the colors had bled out the sides of my vision. I didn’t move for hours, and late in the evening, I popped a few more Excedrin. I used to say I had migraines, but given the descriptions I’ve read of them, I’ve downgraded my migraines to really fucking bad headaches. I was sixty percent better the next afternoon, and I popped more Excedrin. Didn’t move much for most of the afternoon. My brother came over, and we had dinner, and I had to pop a few more Excedrin before going to bed. This morning, I woke up about ninety percent better, but still slightly shaky. Both Tuesday and Wednesday, I had a hard time doing my morning routine. I was exhausted by the time I was done, even though I cut it short both times. I felt slightly better today, but still tired. I haven’t done my weight set since the attack of the bad headache.
Even at my best, I have a hard time going out. Even when I want to do the thing as I did tonight, I have to drag myself out of the house. My brain started worrying about this event last night, starting with reminding myself to Google Map it so I wouldn’t get lost. Then, I started worrying about parking, even though there’s a parking lot right next to the club. What if I forget where I parked?!? My memory isn’t as good as it used to be. Maybe I should write it down on my phone. I’m not sure I know how to take notes with my phone. The show starts at eight. We’re going to eat dinner before. We’re meeting at six. Is that enough time? What if it’s not enough time? That’s my brain all the time. Even if I’m not consciously saying this shit, it’s in the back of my mind. Constantly. It’s exhausting.
I left early because I wanted to make sure I got there on time and because I was afraid I’d get lost. I found it without a problem, and the parking lot was just a lot and not a garage. I found Ian inside (and, man, I forgot that Minnesotans LOVE their heat blasting high), and we walked to the Smack Shack, which is pretty damn tasty seafood. We had fried green tomatoes for an appetizer, which I love, with a spicy aioli I think it was, and I had a blue crab po’ boy with jalapeno cornbread. All of it was delicious, but pricey. I don’t think I’d go there on the regular, but it was a satisfying treat. I even had half a sandwich left over, which I ate as I wrote the opening to this post.
When we got back to the club, Ian and I had a misunderstanding of sorts. I was instantly reminded of how awkward I am and how hard I find new situations. I feel like everyone’s looking at me being a loser and an idiot. While my brain knows that’s not true, my PTSD tells me to run. It’s the worst feeling–knowing that I’m overreacting to something and being unable to stop myself from doing it, anyway. At least I didn’t completely fly off the handle, which is an improvement from what I would have done, say, a year ago. To be clear, I had a right to be upset, but not as upset as I got. Fortunately, I was able to temper it fairly quickly, but it took a huge effort on my part. It reminded me of all the times I was a wallflower at a party, which was many.** I had to tell myself that was in my past and I was a different person now. By the time we sat down for the show, I had mostly recovered.
Brandi Brown was hilarious, straight up. Many of her jokes dealt with being black in Minnesota, even if she didn’t specifically say, “I am telling these jokes as a black woman.” I related to much of what she said, including the bit about realizing the crowd she was speaking to in a non-metro city in Minnesota had never seen a car full of black people. She was followed by Patrick Susmilch, whom I’d never heard of before. I didn’t care for him as he started, but by the time he was five minutes in, I was fully on his side. He’s a slow-burner, preferring to telling funny stories rather than jokes per se, and it’s a style I like quite a lot. He managed to weave some pathos into his set, including a horrifying story of his mom who had Borderline Personality Disorder forcing him to eat a whole bottle of mayo because he didn’t like it. He turned that into one of the funniest bits of the night, however, in explaining how he dealt with being served a burger with mayo. I would happily see him and Brandi again–they were worth the price of admission.
Dana Gould, on the other hand, was wildly uneven. He started out shouting and pacing the stage, and his nervous energy was negatively pinging my brain. He told a terrible rape joke about a chimpanzee almost immediately, and followed it up by almost literally saying, “I told a rape joke, so what?” I don’t like rape jokes at all. Especially if they have no point and are just told for the sake of being able to say, “You’re not the boss of me! You can’t tell me what I can and can’t say.” There was some laughter at the joke, but it sounded more strained than anything else. He lost me with that joke, and it took a long time before I was able to put that behind me. Most of my laughs during the first half of the show were strictly perfunctory, and I was starting to feel my headache once again.
When he stuck to talking about his family or his relationships, he was more hit than miss. Like his joke about telling his mother about winning an Emmy and her saying, “Your father found a whole package of double D batteries down by the dump! They were mostly good.” Sometimes, I had to admire the sheer lengths he went to with one joke because he was so damn committed to the bizarre. When he was off, however, it was almost uncomfortable. I was looking around the room as he talked, and I spotted two women who were not having any of his shit. One would laugh occasionally, but sat through most of the show stone-faced. The other laughed once. The rest of the time, she looked as if she were thinking, “My boyfriend owes me BIG for this.” There were two women to the left of me who were laughing uproariously after every joke, so I’m glad they got their money’s worth at least. I will admit that about two-thirds of the way through his set, I was ready for it to be over.
Afterwards, I went to the bathroom, and two women behind me were talking about how he was pretty good. One of them said, “There were a few times when I didn’t like where he was going,” and the other one quickly chimed in to agree. I will say it was interesting to be in the comedy world for a night because it’s so different than the real world. I used to do some acting, and I remember how insular the theater could be. It has its own language, and theater members can close ranks as quickly as any other offbeat niche. I’ve read enough about comedians to know that they feel the same way, which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised, perhaps, that Gould made a point of making a rape joke. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, and I probably wouldn’t pay to see him again.
Still, I don’t regret going. I’m aware that I made my world very small many years ago, and I’ve been trying to enlarge it, incrementally, in the ensuing years. Going to the club reminded me that I used to go to the theater on a semi-regular basis, and I enjoyed it. There’s something about seeing a show live that is really beyond compare. The energy in the theater gets into your soul, for better and for worse. I could really tell when the crowd was with the performer and when it wasn’t. Both Brandi and Patrick had the crowd on their side throughout their sets. Dana had some of the crowd on his side the whole time, but lost more than one person a few times throughout the show.
A bigger thing I’ve been realizing lately is that I miss performing. Terribly. (Miss it terribly, not performing terribly. I don’t miss that at all.) I was involved with Theater Mu (now Mu Performing Arts) in my mid-twenties. I also did some solo performances then. Let me tell you. There is nothing like being on stage in front of a live audience, having them eating out of the palm of your hand. There is no bigger terror than forgetting your lines and feeling as if you’re never going to find them again. Then, the exhilaration when you finally remember them and blurt them out as best you can. The high after giving the performance of your life and having accolades showered down upon your high.
There is nothing like it. I love writing, but it’s been the consolation prize because I couldn’t make a go out of acting. It’s in my blood. It’s in my veins. The world is a stage, waiting for me to take my rightful place. Going to the Acme Comedy Club tonight has only underscored how damn much I want to be up there. Not on that stage in particular, of course, but the stage in general. I’m going to have to give it some more thought and see if I can get back into it. As Hamilton sings in his eponymous musical (and the video I posted above), I am not throwing away my shot.
*Laid? Lay. This is one of the word duos I have problems with from time to time.
**The wallflower part, not the party part. I never was much of a party girl.