Author: Suzanne Olsen Page 18 of 45

My First Stand-Up

On August 12, 2010

I went to an open mike last night to do stand-up comedy with my brother and my niece who’s visiting from LA. Whew, that was crazy. I’d never done stand-up before and I was an absolute wreck.

We signed in and I was fourth on the list – I wanted to go first of us three and get it over with. You can’t imagine what it’s like when the lights go down and you’re watching the first guy and he’s pretty good. The audience wants to laugh. Second guy’s good, too. The emcee is introducing them like they’ve been there before. Third guy’s good. Crap! I was sweating bullets because it was my turn. But the emcee called someone else, then the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th person went up and still I didn’t hear my name.

My initial excitement and fear turned into “hey, what’s going on here.” Then it dawned on me that they assume I have no talent since they don’t recognize my name, so they’re putting me at the end.

The bad comics started to go on, and we had to sit painfully through their struggling routines. We were just on the point of leaving when they called my name.

I had done some rehearsing and memorizing, but when I got up on stage and squinted into the bright lights and saw those 50 people out there, it was like someone caught me peeing. My eyes were as big as platters. But I grabbed the mike and started talking, and remembered my first joke – AND GOT A LAUGH! Pretty cool. Then I got ANOTHER LAUGH!

Then I forgot the next three jokes, and I was just standing there looking at people looking at me. Luckily I planned a joke in case that happened. I looked down at my chest and said, “Once when I went to an open mike, I saw a lot of people with notebooks and writing their joke list on their hands, so I wanted to be a little more discreet. I decided to write them on my chest and then I could just glance down. I flopped these things up on the counter and wrote everything down, but I just went to check what I wrote and I was sagging so much the “O’s” were about six inches long.”

The crowd thought this was hilarious. I was doing hand motions and looking down my shirt. One guy yelled out, “I’ll read it for you,” which got some more laughs.

I remembered my last joke, and started on a part about soap in the shower, and I needed to put the mike back on the stand so I could make hand motions. When I did that, for some reason the lights were shining right in my eyes. So I moved the mike stand over, and still the bright lights. “You can’t get away from these lights up here,” I said, and got ANOTHER laugh! Then they turned the lights off and I said, “Perfect” or something, and got another laugh.

But, ah my friends, the laughs were sparse from there on out, because I told a long story that I thought was sensationally amusing, but I think there should have been more jokes and less long drawn out story. You can do that in a 20 minute speech, but we only had five minutes, and the crowd was not interested in the long setup. Still the audience laughed at the end and gave me very warm applause.

My brother got up and told three jokes that I’ve heard a million times but the crowd had not. He’s a professional speaker (www.renewableenergyspeakers.com) who speaks about solar energy, global warming and the environment, so he’s very comfortable in front of an audience. His jokes were very well received, and he ad libbed in between. He got hearty applause and some whistles.

My niece got up and talked about the craziness in LA. She’s pretty so the mostly male audience was eating up every word she said. She graduated from USC in film and acting, and is naturally very funny and knows how to work a crowd, and they were delighted.

We left after the next comic, who was just awful. On the car ride home all of us were so excited. We critiqued each other and talked about the lights and how we were surely in the top 10% of the entertainers. My brother said, “Let’s all do that again next week.” I’m not so sure about it – I’d have to write new material, but what the heck, I’m game.

I have to tell one last funny story. There was a woman who got up and her fly was open. She was heavy and not very attractive, so her act was about not getting any sex because no one would sleep with her. The jokes were okay but not great because she kept saying the same things. She finally said, “I hope I will get lucky tonight.” My niece yelled out, “Your halfway there – your fly’s open.” That brought down the house – and the comedian made the most of it. All in all it was a great first standup experience.

A Douse of Reality

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 10, 2010

In Pets

We were going to the beach to celebrate my dog’s birthday – a tradition – but she’d been drinking a lot of water so I called the vet, who suspected an infection and asked me to bring in a urine sample. I followed my little dog around with a Tupperware container, bent over because she’s less than a foot tall, and entreated her to, “Go potty, go potty.”

She ignored me, too busy checking out the rib bones scattered all over the backyard. It looks like a cannibal picnic area. When my husband has ribs, he gives the bones to the dog – he thinks it makes her like him more. Everyone in this family competes to get the dog to hang out with them, but she alway chooses me.

Finally she squatted and I pushed the container between her legs and managed to get a few drops. We left the sample at the vet on the way to the beach. The vet said she’d run the test and call with the results later in the day.

Seaside is about an hour and a half drive, and we kept giving the dog lots of water because that’s what Google said to do for a bladder infection. We were almost there, laughing, the dog sitting on my lap, my daughter and her boyfriend happy about going to the beach, when I felt something warm.

Then everything went into slow motion – I experienced the feeling with a curious response (hmmm, wonder why the dog got warm all of a sudden….?), then I felt the sensation of warm liquid between my legs, and the horror of realizing that the dog had peed on me. Two gallons of doggie pee gushed out of the beast and ran between my legs before I had the presence of mind to grab a beach towel. Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you awful it felt.

Even worse – I didn’t have a change of clothes, nor did I have another driver’s seat to replace the one soaking up all that pee. I was literally sitting in a pee puddle.

When we got to Seaside a few minutes later, I traipsed in and out of the stores with a huge wet stain between my legs trying to find something to wear that didn’t have “SEASIDE” scrawled across the ass. It took me a good part of the day to find something I was willing to wear, to clean myself and the car using containers of baby wipes while I kept checking with the vet and finally got a dog prescription filled, and got the pill down the dog, all while my daughter and her boyfriend were off having fun.

On the way home, nobody wanted the dog on their lap, especially me. I bought another beach towel as insurance in the event of another accident and resigned myself to her being there. We stopped often to give her every chance to go somewhere besides on me.

I learned a lesson from the whole thing. It would be nice if I could remember it. Regardless, whenever you feel like life is getting you down or things aren’t going your way, just think about me getting peed on in my car and maybe that will lighten your heart. The reality is that if life throws pee on your crotch, you’re not alone, sweetie. You’re not alone.

My Exciting Life

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 9, 2010

In Home Life

So much has been going on, I’m going to have to do this in little bullets to touch on everything.

First, there is a mosquito buzzing around my head. I have swatted him two or three times but he is persistent. He harbors a do-or-die attitude.

Second, my stomach is rumbling so loud it’s like an earthquake has set off a tsunami in there. I went to our neighborhood picnic yesterday and, as usual, I sampled everything – twice – and since there was so much food, I think I MAY have over-indulged. The next day after a buffet I’m always starving because I stretch my stomach from the size of something the size of a stomach – grapefruit? cantaloupe? – to the size of a hot air balloon. My stomach “thinks” it’s hungry even though it received enough food yesterday to get me through the winter. I am going to have to stop eating like this.

MeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee – the mosquito just buzzed my head again.

Third, before the gorge fest, I saw South Pacific, the Broadway Across America revival of the original 1949 play, at the Keller Auditorium in Portland. What a fantastic show. See it if you get the chance. Crazy how something over a half a century old is still so funny and so timely today. It won ten Tony Awards back in the day, and 7 in this revival. It won my own personal award for Best Bang for the Buck, too.

Fourth, I went to church yesterday and there was a little girl there with either her grandfather or older father, or older uncle or circus ringmaster or perfect stranger. There really is no way of knowing WHO he was, but let’s assume, for the purposes of this story, that he was a husband – a very thin, pale man about 7 feet tall with sparse hair, thin lips, and a light tan shirt and pants. He looked like an anemic deliveryman from a horror movie, except kindly. Whoever he was, he doted on the child and let her dance in the aisle. She was between 2 or 3 in a little flowery sundress that flowed out while she twirled.

I kept wondering how far she would go – knowing that when you give a child an inch she’s gonna take a mile. Soon she was up to the space between the pews and the altar. He had followed her up there, squatting on his heels at intervals, I guess so he wouldn’t block anyone’s view of her or the altar. I can’t squat like that. He was all the way down with his rear end resting on his heels. I could get down that far, but I’d topple over backwards and lay there like a squirming beetle until two stout men hoisted me on my feet.

MeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee (frickin mosquito)

Of course this little girl kept moving further away and then coming back, like a duckling swimming out, then in, then further out, then in, then further out still until a big mouth bass jumps up and snatches it underwater. Sorry, my imagination just goes where it will – I give it an inch and you see what happens.

All the while the man squatted. Finally she was in front of the priest as he was delivering the sermon, twirling like a ballerina. I glanced at the people in the congregation, and everyone was watching the child with grumpy looks on their faces. No one was amused. We’ve all seen twirling children before. Twirling children are a dime a dozen in a Catholic church. We wanted somersaults and cartwheels.

Finally, the man arose on legs like springs, scooped up the little girl and took her completely out of the church. I found this interesting, because she wasn’t protesting. Why not just stay there, standing with her or sitting, taking in the service? And then it occurred to me that he didn’t WANT to be there, and was probably being forced by his wife, so he hatched a diabolical scheme to embarrass her to death by squatting in the aisle like a giant albino peasant while the child distracted everyone, including the priest who was too polite to say anything, so that he could have an excuse to leave. The man, not the priest. Try to keep up.

Anyway, he never came back into the church, so I think my theory is right on target, that he was a husband looking for an exit.

Oh my gosh, I just got a rumbly in my tumbly that is a 7.9 on the Richter scale. On top of that, my husband kept giving the dog ribs he barbecued for the neighborhood picnic, and she’s sitting beside me passing gas that’s causing my eyes to water. I’m being dive-bombed, asphyxiated, and tsunamied here. My stories are going to have to wait until things settle down. Aughhh – I can’t BREATHE!

MeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee

The Good Agent

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 7, 2010

In Writing

So I’m doing two posts today to make up for not writing yesterday because of pinot noir and a lemon drop – a lethal combination.

I was talking in the previous post about going to the Willamette Writer’s conference, and I wanted to mention a WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL agent named Adam Korn who may be looking at this blog as we speak. A WONDERFUL person. Extraordinarily handsome, too.

Adam, who has an incredibly AWESOME smile listened to my pitch about a science fiction book I wrote about aliens coming to earth and…

Wait, you might not know what a pitch is, so I’ll tell you. A pitch is ten minutes you pay twenty-five bucks at a writer’s conference for so that you can try to “sell” or “pitch” you story idea to an agent, publisher, and/or filmmaker who might be interested in your work enough to offer you a multi-million dollar contract that will make you rich and famous.

Did I mention that Adam Korn is the NICEST human being I’ve ever met in my ENTIRE life?

A pitch is like a job interview for a job doing what you love to do that someone is offering to give you money to do if you have something they think will in turn, make them money. You have to present your story as so intriguing that the agent (and others) will want to read it. If s/he finds your story to have potential, s/he will take you on as a client and then s/he will pitch your work to publishers and Hollywood magnets who will make it into a movie and give you wheelbarrows full of money so you can quit your day job as a lawyer and start making REAL money, like John Grisham did.

Landing an agent is tough work. Not only do they have to see marketable potential in your work – so it has to be good – they also have to judge whether you’re in it for the long haul. They don’t want a one-trick wonder who only does a single book that takes ten years to write. They want a new book every year for ten years minimum. Let me say this right now. My family has a history of very, very long-lived people. At the rate of ten books every ten years, I could write 100 books, no sweat.

Speaking of speaking, there was this fantastic speaker for lunch named Robert Dugoni who is a best selling author who used to be a lawyer and who is now the new John Grisham. He is living the aforementioned dream, and he’s cute, too. Half-Italian, and anyone who’s been to Italy knows what I’m talking about.

He told this great little story about how we writers get beat down and rejected all the time, and getting published must seem insurmountable. He compared the prospect of getting published to what the giant doors to Mordor probably looked like to Aragorn, (Lord of the Rings), but if we just swing the bat then one of these days we’ll get a hit, but we’ll never get a hit unless we swing the bat. It was an inspiring speech in spite of me taking his two analogies and morphing them into a mess, but if you ever get a chance to hear him talk, be sure to go. Here’s his website: www.robertdugoni.com/

One thing he inspired me to do was develop my craft of writing more. Another agent told me I need “millions” of followers on my blog to convert this to a book – he inspired me to commit suicide. Ha, ha, just kidding. Writer’s joke. He inspired me to look up everyone I’ve ever known in my existence and tell them about my blog which I have not done. All my site members are people I’ve never met.

But I’m so excited. I’M A CELEBRITY!

Remember a few days ago I wrote about the auction I went to that Gene Simmons from KISS was at? Well, someone just emailed me a link to a video about it and I’M IN IT! I’m the yellow hair on the dance floor just under the second “E” in the Legends banner at the 31^st second of the video. I’m on there for three whole seconds! At about second 33 I glance sideways so you can ALMOST SEE MY FACE! This is SOOOOOOOOOO exciting! I’ve been in the paper many times but only a couple of times on TV and never with big celebrities. I’m practically a star myself. Here’s the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpVpwmljeds. Please take note, Agent Korn, that my platform is growing right before your eyes.

Who Is Erma Bombeck?

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 7, 2010

In People

I went to the Willamette Writer’s conference yesterday. Boy what fun! Except for one part, I had a fantastic day. I got to be with my friends from my writing group, all of whom are successfully doing great writing, getting published, getting awards, and getting better looking all the time.

The one exception was my “pitch” meeting with an agent who looked about fourteen. Why, he was so young his diaper was hanging out of his pants leg. He was so young, he was still packing a placenta. He was so young, ah heck, you get the picture and I just Googled “he was so young” and can’t find any more besides these ones I just made up.

But this guy, who, in his bio said he handled “humor,” this guy had never heard of (gasp) Erma Bombeck! Oh my gosh. How can you be an agent who promotes humor writers without knowing something about humor legends?

I am not going to go off on this guy here. Well, yeah I am. When I was young, of course I knew all the bands/writers/politicians from my time period, but I knew previous ones too, if for no other reason than to make fun of them. If all I knew was what was occurring now or in the most recent past, I would have been a pretty dull person. I was pretty, but I was not dull. Well, actually I was cute. That’s what everyone always said, “Suzanne is so cute.” Strangers used to come up and pinch my cheek. “You’re so CUTE,” like they’d do to a baby. I’d bite them.

My daughter and her friends know the words to all the old songs. “How do you know the words to that song?” I asked, and they ignored me, as usual, so I don’t know how they know, but they do.

So this agent had never heard of the woman who wrote a syndicated humor column read by millions, who wrote several best-selling books, who was a speaker all over the world, on TV and at the White House, a champion of women, a household name, and still has such a following that the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop in Ohio sells out every year. Plus at least a couple of times a year I get an email with her sayings about how she wish she’d done some things differently and slowed down and enjoyed life more.

A great resource for humor writers is a website dedicated to her, www.humorwriters.org (where you can register for the Workshop, see a picture of Erma, and learn about her funny life). Here are some of her quotes that I snagged off the website in case you don’t bother going there.

“Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

“The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again.”

“Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.”

“In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn’t danced on TV.”

“When humor goes, there goes civilization.”

“Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.”

“Never loan your car to anyone to whom you’ve given birth.”

“The grass is always greener over the septic tank.”

“A child needs your love more when he deserves it least.”

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”

“If you can laugh at it, you can live with it.”

Never heard of Erma Bombeck…what is this world coming to?

Southern Speaking

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 4, 2010

In Words

I can say, “Hi, how are you,” and in those four words people know that I am from the south. My accent isn’t as thick as it was when I first came to Portland. Back then I couldn’t even say “Hi” without people saying, “Where’re you from?”

The crazy thing is, they’d use a fake Southern accent to ask me, like, “You all ain’t from around these parts, are you?”

I didn’t like having a voice everyone recognized. I’d call girlfriends with toddlers who answered the phone, “Hel-wo,” and I’d say, “Is your mommy home?” They’d drop the phone on the counter and yell, “MOMMMMMEEEEE, IT’S SUZANNE ON THE PHONE!” 4 words is all it took.

One time I tried to disguise my voice by making it real low, like a gruff old man. “Is your mom home?” The phone slammed down and I heard, “MOMMMMMEEEEEE, THERE’S A MAN ON THE PHONE AND HE SOUNDS LIKE SUZANNE.”

I started trying to figure out what makes southern speech different.

One thing is that it’s rambling. Southerners talk as if they’re sitting on the front porch swing sipping sassafras tea with nothing in particular to do for the next six months. For instance, normal people might say, “I went to the store at noon.” Southerners would say, “I went down to the super market long about noon or a little bit after or maybe it was a little bit before, it’s hard to recall because it’s been awhile, but the point I’m trying to make right here is that when I went down to the grocery store long about noon today, I ran into…”

Southern talk is lazy. We take shortcuts. Everybody probably knows about dropping the g’s on words ending in “ing.” Southerners are laughin, walkin, talkin, fightin, bitin, chewin and spittin. But we also run words together. Like the rapper who named himself after a half dollar. 50 cent. He pronounces it fiddy cent. If you ask someone in the south if they have change for a dollar, they’d say, “Sorry, I’ve only got fiddy cent.” We also say, “Let’s go in nair.” “What chew doin?” and “How’s ’bout we sit a spell.”

Southern talk might be lazy, but we add in a bunch of syllables to make up for it. In fact, there is not one 1-syllable word in the southern accent that I know about. I found this out one time when my son had a friend over when they were both around seven or eight. I gave them a couple of choices for drinks with lunch. The friend looked puzzled and whispered something to my son. My son said, “She wants to know if you want milk or water.” The kid said to me, “What was that other choice?” I said, “What other choice?” He said, “The meal–ulk one.” That was the first time I realized that I had made milk into two syllables. We do that with everything. We say, “Pa-ass the br-ead.”

The fourth thing we do is pronounce our vowels all wrong. I’s sound like ah. “Ah’m gonna go outside.” Or we’ll add an “r” to it, so that if I’m sleepy I might say, “I’m tarred.” And our e’s sound like a’s. Me sounds like may. My kids used to love to say “me” like that. “Give that toy to may.” “No, give it to may.” They started out saying it like that to make fun of me, but now they keep saying it out of habit, and I think it’s cute.

I have given my southern accent a lot of thought and decided that it’s something that makes me stand out. I know I’ve used it to my advantage to get out of traffic tickets and so forth. I’ve decided that I’m proud of it. If you are interested in talking southern, I’ll try to come up with some more lessons. Until then, just say, “Y’all.” You’ll have people eating of your hand.

Almost Close to a Celebrity

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 3, 2010

In People

I promised last night to tell you about Gene Simmons.

We were at the Legends golf tournament, hosted by Tommy Thayer, a member of the band, KISS. I don’t know much about the band except they sing that song, “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night, and Party Ev-er-ry Day,” and they do Dr. Pepper commercials. And that Tommy Thayer is one heck of a nice guy who has helped raise money for Pacific University for the last 4 years, according to the stuff I just Googled. He gets a bunch of celebrity “legends” together (hence the name) and they come to the dinner/auction on Sunday night and then play golf with athletic supporters. They also play with other golfers. Pretty bad, huh? Well, I am getting NO sleep around here and it’s the freaking best I can do.

We went last year to the dinner for the first time and it was scads of fun. All of these musicians got up on stage after dinner and sang great songs. We decided to go back this year.

Yes, I’m getting to Gene Simmons. He’s the lead singer of KISS, the one with the tongue that could lick his own forehead it’s so long. Personally I think it’s a tongue extension. I bet there are lots of Gene Simmons tongue jokes on the internet. I’ll go hunt for one.

Well, the only one I came up with quickly is from some reporter who quipped, “Gene Simmons gave me a tongue lashing.” Lame, but better than nothing.

Anyway, he also has a TV reality show called Gene Simmons Family Jewels. I watched parts of it a couple of times and he seems like a nice, regular guy. I really like his girlfriend/mother-of-his-grown-children, Shannon Tweed, who he’s been with for 25 years.

Here was my little taste of celebrity. Gene Simmons walks into the big outdoor room under a circus tent with Shannon and an entourage, with cameramen in front, on the sides, and behind him and a guy holding a microphone boom thingy. It was like being on the red carpet! One of the ladies I was sitting with said, “That must be awful having all those people following you around all the time,” and I said, “I think all those people represent money in Gene Simmons’ pocket. When nobody’s around, he’ll be a poor guy.”

He walked in slowly because the other celebrities came up to greet him. I didn’t know who they were, but I live a sheltered life. Many were star athletes with honors and awards a mile long, but they weren’t Joe Montana so I didn’t recognize their names. There were also music legends, including the drummer from the band, Chicago. Boy was he good!

Gene had on sunglasses even in the darkish tent, and a black shirt, black pants and silver/gray cowboy boots. He would have been your nice, average Mafia guy if it hadn’t been for the cameras. Shannon looked just like she does on TV.

I think the reason KISS has had such a long run of fame and fortune is Gene Simmons’ marketing skills. He was filming the auction as part of a Family Jewel’s episode, and he offered bidders a chance to be seen on the show, which drove prices up. When people were bidding to have him on their golf team the next day, and the bid only got up to $6,500, he bid on himself for $10,000. “This is a fundraiser,” he said, “and I’m here to raise money.” The auctioneer said, “Gene, am I understanding this? You’re bidding $10,000 to play with yourself?” That got some laughs.

Someone bid $10,500, and Gene bid $11,000. He kept counter-bidding until he’d driven his own price up to $15,000. I thought about the poor guy who would be writing a check for that in order to play one round of golf and get a cameo on a reality show, but hey, I’m not criticizing – if I’d had a wheelbarrow full of spare money, I’d probably have bid as well.

Gene offered a home cooked meal and evening at his house to 4 couples, each bidding $11,000 each. He and another guy named Doc egged the crowd on to bid higher, throwing in airfare and hotel. I’m sure there were wealthy people there who could afford it, but not at our table.

They ended up raising about $400,000, and I think a good chunk of that came from people willing to bid sky-high to hang out with Gene Simmons.

I didn’t get to meet him, I was busy trying to entertain Ray Kennedy, the celebrity who was assigned to our table and ended up sitting beside me. He was a handful. He had played with the Beach Boys and a ton of other bands – a very talented guy – but he wasn’t with us much because he was too hyper to sit still, and he knew everyone in the room and kept making the rounds.

I don’t know why I needed to take up a whole blog with this – I guess it’s because I don’t get around “stars” and it was a fun experience. All the musicians jammed, and we danced. A couple of women got up on the stage and danced in the background. If they don’t get edited out, you’ll see them on the show. I’ll let you know when it airs. We were a couple of tables away so maybe we’ll be on TV, too. Then I’ll be a celebrity, too. I’ll send you an autograph.

Laughing for Crying Out Loud

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 29, 2010

In Uncategorized

I went to an open mike comedy club last night. OMG! You talk about painful! (MEAN ALERT! I am going to be hateful right now.)

I did not know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this. We arrived a little late so maybe the “headliners” had already gone on. There were about eleven more people, and despite the emcee’s bubbling introductions that roused warm welcomes and cheers, these guys did not bring a lot of laughs with them.

It might have helped if there had been a few more people in the crowd. There were about 15 people there, and they had all been, or were planning to be, onstage. I only saw one guy with a girlfriend there – they left as soon as he bombed onstage.

Coming from me this might sound hypocritical. There have been many, many, MANY of these posts that I didn’t think were very funny and I’m sure you wholeheartedly agree. Most of the misses were because I was tired, I had eaten a big plate of beans for dinner and my stomach was gurgling, distracting me and making the air was hard to breathe, so I’ll admit I didn’t put a lot of thought into them.

Some of my posts have made tears roll down my eyes (although that might have been the beans, too). But last night at the open mike, I had tears but not from laughing. It was a crying shame how bad many of those guys were.

You could tell they had the talent to be funny – nice voices or great smiles or a rapport with the audience. But their problems were similar to mine. They didn’t put enough time into it.

They came up to the stage carrying notebooks. Oh boy. It’s always nice to see a comic come up on stage and read jokes. After awhile I was hopeful that at least some of these pages contained something that could make me laugh, but alas, ‘twas not the case.

The notebooks, I think, were security blankets. The guys glanced at them, pondered, cocked their heads, cocked them to the other side, and then looked up at us perplexed because maybe the lighting on stage made it so they couldn’t read what they’d written. Whatever the reason, there was nothing on those pages to help these guys in their struggle to be funny.

One guy got onstage and said, “Well, I put my name on the list because I’ve never gotten up in front of a crowd and I wanted to see how it felt. Hmmm, feels pretty strange and pretty scary. Hmmm, I guess it would have been, uh, nice if I had prepared something…” He went on like this, rambling about how he should have prepared for five of the longest minutes in recorded history.

Then a guy got up and said, “I had sex last night with an 80 year old woman.” We groaned because he was about 18 and we all started picturing it in spite of ourselves. The alleged comedian said, “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” More groans. It was even worse when he started describing the sponge bath.

Somewhere in their lives someone must have said to these people, “You’re a funny guy.” Being funny at a party is not the same as performing comedy onstage. Funny stand-up guys actually write jokes and present them in a logical, funny order. They work at it, and this is where the difference comes in.

Another thing these guys did was say, “uh” every 4^th word. “So I…uh….went down to the…uh….corner store and found….uh…..a magazine full of naked….uh….women who were….uh….naked and I….uh…. was….uh….thumbing through it when….uh…..”

The emcee couldn’t take it either. He got up after about 8 people and said, “You know, you see a lot of comics on TV. That’s where all comics want to end up, on TV. And one thing you might want to notice about these comics on TV is that they NEVER have a notebook when they go onstage. Just never see it. Just thought I’d mention that.”

So the very next comic brings his notebook up, but the one after him went onstage empty handed. “Ooooo,” I thought, “maybe this guy is going to be good.” He gets up there and fumbles around with his “uh’s” and “everybody doing okay tonight?” Then he starts contorting his hand around, twisting it this way and that as if he’s trying to find a freckle just below his elbow. Finally he says, “Oh hell, I heard what you said about the notebook and so I wrote my set list on my arm but now I can’t read it.” That got one of the rare laughs of the evening.

Actually, that’s not true, There was an older woman who laughed at everything. You could tell she thought her mission was to help bolster these budding talents. I thought it was very sweet, and I laughed a few times too – but mostly to keep from crying, as they say.

If open mikes are supposed to be funny, they should have “closed” this mike. Ha ha. I think anyone who could remember a few simple jokes would be a great hit at this place. For instance, these jokes would have brought down the house: What do you call shoes that a frog wears? Open toad shoes. Or what do you call a cow that’s had its calf taken away? De-calf-inated. LOL – I could be a comedian! Maybe you’ll see me up there next week.

The South Bugged Me

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 28, 2010

In Bugs

I grew up in the south but I don’t miss it. Actually I miss some of the people – a lot – but I don’t miss the summers. Everybody talks about the heat and the humidity, but the bugs are what did me in.

I’ve been afraid of anything buzzing or crawling all my life. If a bee, just minding his own business, flew too close to me I took off screaming into the house.

The boys knew I hated bugs so they made a point of catching every one they could when I was around. They’d hold a big, squirming beetle with all 6 or 20 legs swimming through the air and slowly come right at me. I’d run screaming with that little girl shriek that could break windows. The boys would be right behind me laughing their spiteful heads off with that beetle held out in front of them.

That’s how I got to be so fast. None of them could catch me. Just when they were too tired to run any further they’d fling that beetle through the air and I’d feel it bounce against my back. I screamed like the tall actor in the first Home Alone movie. If you’ve never seen that guy scream, you’ve missed out on one of the funniest moments in movie history.

The boys used to catch June bugs. They were big, green flying beetles about the size of a 747. Somehow they tied a string to the June bug’s back leg (I was never around to see that part), then they’d let it go. It would fly off until it reached the end of the string, and then climb as high as it could and fly in a circle as the boy held onto the other end of the string. They would fly in circles as long as anyone cared to keep holding them. I only ever saw this last part because the minute one of them said, “Let’s catch us a June bug,” I warped into the house and cowered behind a grown up.

I had no curiosity about any of it. I knew I’d end up running a foot or two in front of a June bug that would fly down my shirt if I slowed down or fell. All I saw through the screen door was the boys huddled around working with their hands, and then the bug flying in a circle.

In the absence of a real bug, boys would pretend to catch one and chase me with it. I could have called their bluff, but if I was wrong, and they had a real bug, I’d be at the mercy of the giant spider they’d fling at me.

In the south they also have horseflies that would buzz your head like a kamikaze pilot. They would bump you in the ear or back of the neck to see if you were a fast swatter. If you didn’t swat right away, they knew they could get in there, chomp down on you, and buzz off before you knew you were being attacked. They drew blood and their bites hurt like a son of a gun. Whenever one started dive-bombing my head, I’d grab a limb full of leaves or pine boughs and swish it all around my head. Sometimes when they came in really close I’d slap my own face with a scratchy pine bough and end up with scratches everywhere, but it was better than getting bit.

They have very, very tiny mosquitoes in East Tennessee with lethal venom. When the sneaky little mosquito got done having its way with you, you had a giant red welt the size of a quarter that itched three times worse than poison ivy.

No, I don’t miss the bugs down there. The boys, either.

The Injustice of Ladies Golf

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 27, 2010

In Golf

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. I played in a golf tournament today. I realize that the word “tournament” makes me sound like a “real” golfer, but nothing could be further from the truth. Women like me get together in what we call “9-hole groups” because we are either (a) too lazy to play all 18 holes or (b) too lousy to play all 18 holes. These women engage in what we call “Hits and Giggles.”

To make things interesting, we create little “tournaments” for ourselves. These are merely excuses to get a bunch of women together for socializing, eating, drinking, and winning prizes. Yes, we do hit balls, but the nature of these tournaments is to get the competition over as quickly as possible so we can get to the lemon drops and buffet table. Thus we play “Scrambles,” which I suspect were invented by a male golfer to herd women through 9 holes quickly so that the real golfers (men) can have the course back.

The male golf pros put us together in teams of four of varying abilities (from bad golfer to really bad golfer). All four women hit their balls, which makes the pros buckle to the ground clutching their privates. (Snicker). Then the ladies hit their own golf balls. The ball that goes furthest without landing in the water is the one that all four women get to place their balls beside and hit from there. Everyone hits again, they walk to the best ball, and all hit from there until they finally get the ball onto the green and into the cup. Some lucky teams manage to par a hole here and there, and they usually win the tournament.

Today my team had two very bossy women who were driving me and the 4^th team member nuts. The 4^th team member, Pat, was 81 years old and wasn’t about to be bossed around by some 50 year old whipper snapper. Things got testy. When Karen started giving Pat advice, Pat snapped, “Who’s hitting this ball, you or me?” It was a tense moment, but luckily Karen backed up and said, “Whoa. Have at it,” and bloodshed was avoided.

Despite the barrage of advice (you can always tell an “amateur” golfer because they love to give advice to everyone even as their own balls ricochet off trees and hop from sand trap to sand trap. One of these days I’m going to slap one of them – I came this close to doing it this morning).

We managed to finish without snatching each other’s hair out and actually started having a good time once Pat and I stopped pouting. We joined all the other ladies in the dining room and anticipated the awards. They give prizes for 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place teams. We waited to see if our names were called but they weren’t. I wasn’t really expecting it, but our game didn’t totally suck and I thought we might come in third. It’s hard to tell when they figure in the handicaps how your score will stack up against the others.

Are you sick of golf? Just bear with me for a couple more minutes and I’ll wrap this puppy up.

After everyone got their prizes and the raffle prizes were awarded, I ended up with zip. I said to my teammates, “I used to win a raffle prize every single time but lately I haven’t won diddly.”

“What would you do with diddly if you won it?” Pat asked. She’s one sharp 81 year old woman.

“I bet we came in 4^th,” I said, lacking a clever comeback, as usual. “Probably just one point off the money.”

“Let’s go see,” Karen said. “The board is over there.” I hadn’t noticed the board, which the golf pro had written all our scores on. Many of the women had already gotten up and left – anxious to get to their soaps. The four of us filed over to the board and looked for our score. “23.7” Karen said.

“What was the winning score?” I asked.

“23.9,” Wendy said.

I’m looking at that and thinking, “Hmmm, now in golf the goal is to get the LOWEST score, and isn’t 23.7 lower than 23.9?” I said this out loud.

“Yes, it is lower,” Karen said. “We should have been the winners!”

“Oh my gosh, how did they screw that up? We won and nobody even noticed?”

We called the two ladies who planned the tournament over and showed them the numbers. They both raised their hands to their mouths and said, “Oh my. There’s been a terrible mistake. What can we do?”

The answer to that was obvious. We split up right now and run out to the parking lot and snatch our winnings off of those other women. We throw pies in the face of the golf pro who made the mistake. And we sue the place for whatever reason an ambulance chaser can come up with like wrongful neglect of proper scoring, mens rea and gluteus maximus ad infinitum.

This is what I was saying in my heart, but since golf is a genteel sport, we all said, “Oh it’s okay, we’re just happy we won, don’t think anything of it,” and other assorted BS that none of us meant. We came away empty handed without a shred of glory.

There is no justice in this world, or my luck is so bad that I can’t win even when I do win. Pitiful.