I’m having a wee bit of a crisis. Now before I get going, I want to say this upfront, loud and clear. I love me. I know that many of you love me. This is in no way a fishing expedition. While I love it when people tell me how fabulously wonderful I am, this isn’t an attempt to get some love.
It’s more like I need to have a panic attack/emofest out loud, and since Bill and Tricia are sleeping, I can’t exactly go screaming through the house about not being funny enough or being too fat or having nothing to wear or whatever other lame excuses my Not So Sane Self is going to throw at me over the next 12 days.
Besides all that, I’m sort of mad about Bill about all this right now. I was looking forward to this as a really good time, nothing more. I mean, it was going to be a way for me to get out of the house, have a few cocktails, crack some strangers up and go home to bask in the afterglow of all that attention.
Bill’s the one who introduced the idea of any sort of talent scouts being there. Now this is a proposition I hadn’t considered because, well, it’s just kind of dumb. This is a hole in the wall bar in Nowheresville, North Carolina. What kind of talent scout worth their salt is going to be there? I mean, really.
Except once he said it, I started thinking about the fact that Nowheresville is kind of centrally located to two of the largest cities in the state, and maybe the comedy club people from those cities might be around just to crack on the dorks who’d be participating in this open mic night. Kind of like how I picture Simon and Paula and Randy going to karaoke nights.
I decided then to just not go there in my head because:
1. I’m not a dork;
2. Even if I am a dork, it doesn’t matter since I just wanted to have fun in the first place; and
3. I’ll never know if those types are there or not.
Of course, being me, I can’t let this go, and suddenly, what started out as a way to have a good time and get out of the house has now turned into this gut-wrenching, heart-pounding idea that open mic night is going to be closely akin to suffering Chinese water torture.
Well, I finally convince myself that it just. doesn’t. matter. I’m going to give it a shot, and if I suck, well, I suck and life will go on. Then Bill brings it up again, and I tell him that I’m really, really wanting to do this. That I’m excited about it even, and that I think I might be pretty good, maybe even as good as some of the people on “Last Comic Standing” so it ought to be a good time for everyone.
Mr. Dreamkiller promptly informs me that I am really good, but I shouldn’t expect this to go anywhere since it’s really hard to break into the business, you have to be lucky, it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time, thousands of people are as funny as me and never make it and so on and so forth.
Huh. This was all the same stuff my mother said to me back when I was going to college with the dream of getting my English degree and becoming an author. I changed majors after my mother told me all this, and I quit writing altogether for a very, very long time. What was the point since I was never going to make it anyway?
That makes me sound bitter, and I’m not. My mother didn’t force me to quit writing. I chose that. In fairness, she had some pretty valid points about me needing to find something reliable — I had a kid to feed after all, and two year olds just don’t understand the starving artist lifestyle when all they want are some Cheerios.
But I’ve never heard of a single person being published who didn’t put figurative pen to figurative paper. (Hey, look. I’m young enough that we had electric typewriters back then. We even had computers. No, really!) I’ve always sort of wondered what might have happened if I’d just kept writing.
So, back to the thing with Bill, I hear him saying all this, and all I can think is that I just wanted to do this to have a good time. It wasn’t about “making it” or getting rich and famous or any of that crap. It was just about having a good time. (Have I mentioned this was just to have a good time?)
Yet now, no matter how many people laugh or how funny I am, it won’t be quite good enough since it won’t feed my kids or put a roof over their heads or any of the other things I really ought to be worried about.
I mean good times are…well, good and all, but really, I should keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds here. I’m a nobody from nowhere, and the only thing being funny is good for is entertaining our neighbors at sales parties; right?
In fairness to Bill, I don’t think he meant it like that. I know he’s fully supportive of me going to these open mic nights. But I also know that he is indulging yet another one of my kooky little whims in his ongoing crusade of keeping Steph happy.
As if I needed any more excuses to stay home.
Tags: blahs · open mic nightComments
