Crushing one another with colossal expectations. Dependent, undisciplined, and sleeping late

Finally, a blog

I totally sat down and wrote a huge blog entry the other day and when I was almost through the whole thing I clicked "save" and .... nothing. Gone like it never happened. I'm trying to not see it as a sign and go back to months of silence between short blogs promising more blogging.

There's been no lack of things worth sitting down to write about, actually quite the opposite.

I don't know if that's the problem or not but I left off "regular" blogging all the way back during TCIF and some weird, nagging part of my brain was still telling me I need to wrap that up, as if there was a list of topics just waiting for my cheap opinions just piling up.

Anyway - the Nerd Parade is here and it is trampling everything in sight.

I feel like the standard thing is to remark on how it just snuck up on me this year but looking back I realize that's always been the case, even when I was involved in putting parts of it together - suddenly it's opening weekend.

It didn't help that I was in Denver until the day before opening and I didn't even have my costume back or my clown makeup purchased, which was great for that shift from "oh there's plenty of time to think about Festival" to "Holy Fucking Shit, there's NO time left to think about Festival!" - which flipped on like a switch the night before.

The weirdest thing is that even 12 hours before opening I couldn't tell you with total certainty about one single bit that I do on the street, more than a couple of super-regular bits in the show, or even for sure which eye my makeup goes on - but none of that worries me. I am remarkably free of worry when it comes to time to deliver on the street since none of it is planned even a little bit anyway. Sure, patterns have developed and if they keep working I'm sure they'll come back to me and if new things happen, all the better.

That's a big sigh of relief to breathe.

So the brain doesn't store anything, it all lives out at the show, which is nice.

Saturday morning I woke up early and raced the sunrise out to site, snapped my usual photo of the place waking up (I do like being there for it and it was a pretty damn decent photo for a phone camera - you can see the mist rolling back as the sun starts to come up) and soon I was in front of the greenroom mirror doing my makeup, shortly after that I was listening to Swing Low.

All is right in the weird little world.

The show itself went well, if a little off-kilter to begin with.

Our day is now broken up totally different than previous years, with no shows for a huge stretch of time I used to have to be mindful of and suddenly commitments where there were none before. Gave the whole day the feeling of being out of sync, even if the small moments were going really well.

What did I do....? Beats me, I can't recall much (which is pretty normal) but I know I had a super fun time with Kat right off the bat that ended with a big round of applause and Will snapping up the crowd like a pro

Stopped by the cage and abused Mark, per usual.

Things got weird when a guy in the audience took off his hook hand and gave it to me to throw at Mark. Just in case you missed that - a guy with an honest-to-god stump instead of a hand took off his big, solid steel hook (not one of those useful prosthetics that can pick things up, no this was straight up pirate time) and gave it to me.

When and where the hell else will THAT ever happen?!?

So we had to use it, of course. Mark was asking what I'm saving for the rest of the run while I'm busy saying fuck it, we're gonna burn it all and make new stuff and really digging it.

George and I had our show late in the day on a new stage, I was a little concerned with the switch but once we were there it confirmed what I had been thinking for a while - that we're actually a really good fit for the new stage, right in between classic clowning and literary jokes.

First day, about 75% of the audience put their hands up when asked who had never seen the show before and the reactions all around were very positive and welcoming, which was great since I came off stage feeling like we kept losing them.

I think it's just the physical dynamic of the stage, we're used to playing almost within arms reach and only a few inches higher that ground level and now we're playing a good 5 feet out and at least 4 feet up from the front row. Turns out we weren't losing them, I was just too far away to feel it like I'm used to.

the big trick then was dealing with George being gone the next day - I would hate to win over an audience, ask them to come back and see us and then have no show waiting for anyone that did actually return a day later. So Sunday I did 1 Child Left Behind.

It was FUCKING TERRIFYING. And incredibly fun and liberating.

I had something in my head about how I wanted to explain it and just be honest with the audience about the whole process, the entire thing from what my partner would normally do to how fucking crazy it was making me finding all the little bumps and things I depend on having him there for. After that I did everything I could to not allow myself to think about the show or plan anything out. And let the fear build.

So Sunday was weird. it was super weird. And scary. Right before I stepped out my brain was trying to go a million miles an hour into panic mode and sneak in some last-second ideas for what to do - and I just kept reminding myself that nothing could possibly go wrong up there - and if it did, they might just laugh at me.

it's an awesome feeling to just step into something you're scared shitless of and still know that everything, ultimately, is going to be ok. And to come out the other side was very informative.

I learned a ton about the dynamics of our show (because, since I don't let it do anything else, my brain is constantly analyzing performances for later....I wish I could explain it. Only George knows how deep the problem goes) and how I relate to the audience vs how the pair of us do it.

Overall it was very cool and I'm proud and glad that I did it.

And that was only 30 of the 1200 minutes of showtime the first weekend.

I would go say most of them were great fun, for this guy at least.

and I get to do it again in about 14 hours.

I'm excited.