Sunday, April 26, 2009

Updates and Thoughts


1. In one month and three days I will be on my way to Hawaii with my boyfriend, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend. How excited am I?! Especially since all I have to pay for is my airfare...and, you know, everything else...but no hotel!

2. I am working on getting in bikini shape for the next month, which will be good. Apparently when I decided to postpone my duathlon, I also gave myself permission to binge eat and nap excessively and it's gotten out of control.

3. As part of bikini-shape plan, I have been riding my new bike. Which I am very excited about. It's a road bike, so a lot lighter and faster than my old bike, which is fun.

4. Bea Arthur: Ok, so it's too bad that she died and all, even though she was 86 and it's not really that surprising, but for some reason keep acting shocked...but I kind of think the outpouring of grief among people I know and in blogs I read is kind of ridiculous. Seriously, look at the imdb...except for a few guests spots she hasn't been in anything since Golden Girls ended. So, it's not like it's going to be a big loss and that her career has ended in its prime and the tv world is now going to be bereft of all of the new and amazing works that Bea Arthur would have produced. So, if for some reason you were some huge Bea Arthur fan, she will still be on Lifetime for an hour a day in a mediocre show from the late 80's about single middle-aged women that for some reason has become a cult phenomenon in the 21st century. Plus, Maude is actually way cooler. She had an abortion! Like, only a few years after they quit having couples on tv sleep in seperate beds!

5. When I was little we watched MASH as a family a lot, and I always liked the character Radar because he was gentle and nerdy and had a teddy bear. Big Bird's teddy bear was also named Radar, and because I watched both shows around the same era I always associated MASH Radar with Big Bird's Radar. Turns out, that wasn't a coincidence. From the Sesame Street Wiki: The stuffed bear was named by Big Bird's performer Caroll Spinney as a tribute to actor Gary Burghoff, who played Walter "Radar" O'Reilly on M*A*S*H.[2] The two met at a taping of Hollywood Squares, and the bear's name is a dual tribute, reflecting Burghoff's Radar character, who brought a teddy bear to Korea, and the fact that in his private life, Burghoff is known as a painter of birds and an activist for bird preservation.
Fun!

6. I also learned from the Sesame Street Wiki that this is what the original Snuffy looked like:
Scary!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

A couple weeks ago the building inspectors came and left a notice saying that all this stuff that was in the halls of my building needed to be cleared out. So Mute Guy got right to work and cleared a bunch of stuff out. I live on the 3rd floor, so rather than haul my bike up the stairs all the time I just left it in the 1st floor hallway. Unlocked. Yes, you can see where this is going.

So around the time that Mute Guy cleared out all of this stuff I noticed that I couldn't see my bike in the hallway when I came in the front door, so I thought maybe he had moved it to the side. However, I didn't check because I also thought that maybe it wasn't him who had moved it, so I avoided checking.

Well, Saturday was a beautiful day so I got ready to go for a ride, went downstairs, and of course...no bike.

Mute Guy lives/squats in the basement, and as there was no other place for him to have put it I was hoping maybe he had taken it down there. So I mustered all the courage I have and went down into the basement.

My bike was not down there. However, there WERE two live rat traps (empty, thank god), a filthyMickey Mouse rug, a huge pile of work boot-type shoes that Mute Guy has apparently been hoarding, and a pretty unpleasant smell. So that was pretty awful.

My next step was to put a sign up, still hoping that maybe Mute Guy or someone else had moved my bike and might know where it is. About 10 minutes after I put my sign up, Mute Guy came knocking at the door.

Now, here is the problem with Mute Guy. He thinks people can understand him because he's not actually mute because he can still make Helen Keller moaning sounds. And I guess because he can hear the words that he is saying in his head, he assumes that it translates to his moaning. He is incorrect.

Anyway he comes up flailing his hands and groaning and getting very frustrated that I am not understanding him. So I got him a piece of paper on which he writes "do not open the door when you leave"

So I was like, oh are you not here about my bike? I'm just wondering where my bike is....

He writes "close door".

Now, what he is referring to is that the door to the building is shit and either doesn't lock properly OR locks so that you are unable to open it with your key. It's pretty awesome. And you have to really make sure it has been pulled shut when you leave.
But I still wasn't sure what this had to do with my bike, so I told Mute Guy that I do always shut the door but that I still don't understand what he means.

Also in between his writings he is continuing to moan about something and it's super awkward because I keep having to tell him I don't understand. Then he gets frustrated and motions for me to follow him downstairs, which I do and we go to the place where my bike used to live. He motions at the now empty space, and I confirm that yes that is where my bike used to be. Aaaand then he is flailing his arms around moaning and moaning and gesturing towards this other bike that's on the other side of the hall.

So I keep saying, yes we're talking about my bike. Yes this is where it used to be. Yes it's missing. Even though I was pretty sure he already knew all that, but I couldn't understand what else is was trying to ask or tell me.

Finally he writes something like "Miss gone bike"

Awesome. He might as well have moaned that for all it made sense. I told him I didn't understand and he wrote "what day bike stole", which is when I said that I was thinking he had moved it when he moved everything else. He made an exaggerated sad face and shook his head. "So you didn't move it?" I said. He shook his head. "So it's just stolen." He nodded. "Well, I guess I'll just take my stuff then" The bike thief had left behind my helmet, bike basket and unused lock, the latter of which Mute Guy took out of my hand, shook in my face, and moaned his clearest expression of the whole day, being that I should have kept it locked. Then through a complicated series of gestures and moans I gathered that he was telling me that it was possible to see my bike from the street if the front door was open, and that it would have been tempting for a bike thief. Which explains why sometimes he would move it to the other side of the hall that isn't visible from the door. And which made me feel like a jackass for never realizing.

He then took me to the front door to show me where it looks like someone may have dug into the door to push open the latch....maybe to steal my bike or maybe for something else. He then made a hand-phone gesture and moaned a little. My Mute Guy communication skills had improved by this point, so I let him know that I would call the landlord about the broken lock, to which he responded with a prayer-gesture and an almost-intelligible "please".

So, good-bye bike. You will be missed.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009


So I went on a reconnaissance mission last night to a bar that has an open-mic stand up night every other Monday where my friend thinks I should go for my next gig. It turns out that I should have gone before my own show because then I might have felt less tragic after mine. There were 4 comics plus a host. The host wasn't especially funny. One of the comics was really funny and the three others were ok funny. But it was clear that they all thought they were doing worse than they really were, even the really funny guy who had the audience laughing out loud pretty consistently made a couple of comments about how it wasn't going well. Clearly it's hard to tell when you're on stage what the actual reactions of the audience were. I also got some ideas for if/when I do it again in terms of setting up jokes, etc. The host wasn't particularly funny mostly because her thing was just a string of random jokes. The funniest guy had the most connected set of jokes with the best segues and they were also told more in story form. Things to note. I am thinking I will go back next time and in the meantime maybe check out a few actual comedy clubs and continue my spy mission.
Unfortunately I was at dinner with some people the other day and tried out one of my new jokes that I thought was funny and it hardly got anything. Oh well.

In other news I have been hanging out with this guy that so far seems like he will never end up in dating disasters. Sorry fans.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

adventures in stand up

So I had my little stand-up debut on Monday. Some people came out, most were supportive. It didn't really go how I wanted it to and at first I was really disappointed, but people keep telling me I should try it again. I think next time I do it it would be at an actual comedy venue because I think my grand scheme of how great it would be to NOT do it at a comedy venue was actually not all that successful. Apparently the bartender told my friend that he liked it and it was bizarre. My friend told me that he thought it made people uncomfortable (this was a compliment) and I certainly in my general life make people uncomfortable so it follows that it would carry over to my "stand up".
My friend took a video of it, which I will review once I have some distance from the experience and see what I would like to do differently.
All in all I am glad I did it if only to push myself beyond my boundaries and do something kind of different.
And who knows, you may see me again at your local open mic night. If not, I just have another story.

In unrelated news I need to quit drinking so much -- believe it or not my recent excess is actually a good sign because it means I emerging from my cocoon of hibernation. You like those mixed metaphors?

Aaand in final news I think I am going to hold off on the duathlon until September when I feel more ready.

That's about it on the homefront.