We dwell anonymously, flying down the interstate at odd hours between semi-major metropolitan areas, lodging where it’s least expensive, performing for people who can’t afford the Black Eyed Peas. Most people don’t understand that you can make your living as a performer without their having heard of you. Well we're everywhere, and you had no idea.
For every Johnny Depp there’s a thousand guys like me lurking around the rest stops of major highways, sleeping in the Motel 6’es of America, hawking our wares to anyone who can afford a show fee plus four meals (two vegan, please).
We once descended upon the office of a Jewish community center somewhere in the Midwest to use their computers. I guess they thought we were coming over to juggle and tell jokes, because they were surprised when we just said “hi” and parked in front of four monitors, fingers flying, keys clacking, our faces reflecting the cool, blue glow of the PC screens. When we’re not performing, we’re working. If we had normal jobs, we’d be rich.
Today you might have read about Brittney’s first post rehab outing, but I bet you didn’t know how many times I had to spell “Reibstein” for a mechanic in Kentucky. That mechanic’s name? Actually Mike Hunt.
I also:
-priced out travel to a prep school in Georgia
-ate a burrito
-left a message at a bar in Kent, Ohio where we forgot a vest, beret, and mustache
-used a toothpick
-cashed a claim check from when somebody tried to break into the van in Peoria
-missed my family
-found out the guy who edited our last anti-Walmart video also made the controversial Obama you tube video
-stared out the window
-looked over an application for us to tour military bases in Afghanistan
-cried a little
-edited a script in which a member of Aerosmith will be playing Borat
And what did Johnny Depp do? Probably just drink champagne and cackle.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
How Do You Guys Exercise?
To answer the question posed by the title of this post, I'll say bizarrely, or never.
As one of the Dresden Dolls pointed out, the irony of becoming a successful artist is that you live a lifestyle antithetic to art. Or, in our case, to exercise.
Thanks to touring, I’ve observed new and undesireable things happening to my body. Some of them are painful, some audible. I’m not as fat as many Americans, but neither are pigs or whales.
I exaggerate, and to show you how absurd it is to even have the words “fat,” “my,” and “body” in one post, I have attached a photo of myself looking fit after our first year of touring. But it’s my obsessive attention to detail that makes me an ideal candidate to pick apart society with the tweezers and needle of comedy. In fact, our material has been described as “blistering” by at least one journalist we’re friends with.
I suppose using Outlook on long drives just doesn’t keep me as toned as I used to be. Guess the OUTLOOK on my HEALTH doesn’t look so good! Actually, it’s really sad.
As one of the Dresden Dolls pointed out, the irony of becoming a successful artist is that you live a lifestyle antithetic to art. Or, in our case, to exercise.
Thanks to touring, I’ve observed new and undesireable things happening to my body. Some of them are painful, some audible. I’m not as fat as many Americans, but neither are pigs or whales.
I exaggerate, and to show you how absurd it is to even have the words “fat,” “my,” and “body” in one post, I have attached a photo of myself looking fit after our first year of touring. But it’s my obsessive attention to detail that makes me an ideal candidate to pick apart society with the tweezers and needle of comedy. In fact, our material has been described as “blistering” by at least one journalist we’re friends with.
I suppose using Outlook on long drives just doesn’t keep me as toned as I used to be. Guess the OUTLOOK on my HEALTH doesn’t look so good! Actually, it’s really sad.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Prog Com or "Is the new..." Is the New "Making a Joke"
As a fairly busy comic, I rarely get to see the work of other comics. When I do, it’s a treat to come across material that matches my exacting standards. You see, I like comics to be funny rather than making me feel like the jury of 500 hundred Athenians felt about Socrates.
Fortunately, there’s a new wave of upper middle class, white, male comics here to save all the upper middle class, white, male comedy fans from the unfunny and offensive material that all too often passes for humor. The closed circle is now a safer space.
A good comedy show that doesn’t drag society backwards with every laugh is a veritable ivory billed woodpecker. But the bird has been cited more and more, and it’s now safe to say that we’re enjoying a new wave of progressive comedy, or as I just decided to start calling it, Prog Com.
These comics include(d) Mitch Hedberg, Dmitri Martin, Mike Birbiglia, and Myq Kaplan. Actually, those are just the ones I know. (See sentence #1.) The LNP had the pleasure of opening for Martin, catching Birbiglia’s act last night, going to school with Kaplan, and will perhaps meet Hedberg when our van crashes into an oncoming semi.
These comics actually cook up new jokes rather than rehashing the old “men leave the toilet seat up but women use all the toilet paper” bit or delighting us with advancements in the art of “_______ is the new _________.” And when they say "fagott," you can tell by their messy, hipstery hair that they're actually making fun of people who say fagott. Or they're talking about burning sticks.
Fortunately, there’s a new wave of upper middle class, white, male comics here to save all the upper middle class, white, male comedy fans from the unfunny and offensive material that all too often passes for humor. The closed circle is now a safer space.
A good comedy show that doesn’t drag society backwards with every laugh is a veritable ivory billed woodpecker. But the bird has been cited more and more, and it’s now safe to say that we’re enjoying a new wave of progressive comedy, or as I just decided to start calling it, Prog Com.
These comics include(d) Mitch Hedberg, Dmitri Martin, Mike Birbiglia, and Myq Kaplan. Actually, those are just the ones I know. (See sentence #1.) The LNP had the pleasure of opening for Martin, catching Birbiglia’s act last night, going to school with Kaplan, and will perhaps meet Hedberg when our van crashes into an oncoming semi.
These comics actually cook up new jokes rather than rehashing the old “men leave the toilet seat up but women use all the toilet paper” bit or delighting us with advancements in the art of “_______ is the new _________.” And when they say "fagott," you can tell by their messy, hipstery hair that they're actually making fun of people who say fagott. Or they're talking about burning sticks.
Why?
You may be wondering why four college grads decided to do what we do. You might think “Hey, these guys probably should have gone to grad school.” You’re probably right.
Based on some feedback I received after my last post, I feel the need to explain why we continue in such a difficult line of work. That feedback:
“I feel horrible. You must really love what you do to put up with all the crap that comes with being on the road. And if the four of you were girls, you'd have scratched each other up and blown all your money by now.”
- Miriam Stern-Kramer
I’m not sure if I agree with her gender analysis, I do think my reader has a point. Life as a touring sketch comic isn’t all tow trucks and traffic jams. In fact, sometimes we perform sketch comedy. But that’s not why I decided on this unique application of my Bachelor of Arts in European Cultural Study. It’s because of a letter I wrote in 1998.
I was then about to graduate high school, and like many others in my position, I wistfully daydreamed about my new life as an academic, wondering whether or not the amount of alcohol my body could tolerate would be considered “cool.” I sat down to write a letter, which is what we used to call e-mailing, and it was then and there that I decided that I would one day be an artist. After graduating from college and reliving the graduation party scene from The Graduate over and over again, I decided that being an artist meant being commercially successful at being an artist. By this rationale, my parents would be satisfied, and Van Gogh was an insane bum.
I didn’t want rave reviews. I didn’t want roses thrown at my feet. I didn’t want Steve Martin turning over in his grave, or Steve Martin to have died. I wanted to pay Rocco Lorenzo four hundred and seventy five dollars - which is what we used to call six hundred dollars - on the first of every month, entirely from my doing comedy. And that would show everyone who said it couldn’t be done that they were wrong. And they were. Because now, I can almost always pay my rent.
How’s that Miriam?
PS – Since there weren’t any traffic accidents in this post, I’ve attached a photo of my hand after I sliced it open transporting our disco ball to remind children of the perils of the theater.
Based on some feedback I received after my last post, I feel the need to explain why we continue in such a difficult line of work. That feedback:
“I feel horrible. You must really love what you do to put up with all the crap that comes with being on the road. And if the four of you were girls, you'd have scratched each other up and blown all your money by now.”
- Miriam Stern-Kramer
I’m not sure if I agree with her gender analysis, I do think my reader has a point. Life as a touring sketch comic isn’t all tow trucks and traffic jams. In fact, sometimes we perform sketch comedy. But that’s not why I decided on this unique application of my Bachelor of Arts in European Cultural Study. It’s because of a letter I wrote in 1998.
I was then about to graduate high school, and like many others in my position, I wistfully daydreamed about my new life as an academic, wondering whether or not the amount of alcohol my body could tolerate would be considered “cool.” I sat down to write a letter, which is what we used to call e-mailing, and it was then and there that I decided that I would one day be an artist. After graduating from college and reliving the graduation party scene from The Graduate over and over again, I decided that being an artist meant being commercially successful at being an artist. By this rationale, my parents would be satisfied, and Van Gogh was an insane bum.
I didn’t want rave reviews. I didn’t want roses thrown at my feet. I didn’t want Steve Martin turning over in his grave, or Steve Martin to have died. I wanted to pay Rocco Lorenzo four hundred and seventy five dollars - which is what we used to call six hundred dollars - on the first of every month, entirely from my doing comedy. And that would show everyone who said it couldn’t be done that they were wrong. And they were. Because now, I can almost always pay my rent.
How’s that Miriam?
PS – Since there weren’t any traffic accidents in this post, I’ve attached a photo of my hand after I sliced it open transporting our disco ball to remind children of the perils of the theater.
Monday, March 12, 2007
100 Miles in 6 Hours, iii
I ended up driving a rental car back from Nashville to pick up Seth and Zach, who passed their time at the gas station in a semi comatose state taking turns in front of a space heater they came to call “Polonius.” I don’t know what happened there in Horse Cave, but I do know that they really didn’t want to leave "him" when I finally did show up.
Having gone in the tow truck with Red Calf and J. to Nashville, I had to make the 100 mile return trip back to Horse Cave to get the guys at the end of a long day that had already sucked more than a name without a story. It took me 6 hours. I spent most of that time far from the company of Polonius and stuck in my tracks in two separate, gridlocked traffic jams caused by an inch of snow, roughly the same amount New England has had in total this winter. It would be more accurate to say the jams were caused by the inability of Kentuckians to drive through that inch, but I don’t want to point fingers.
Six solo hours in a traffic jam at the end of a day already full of time consuming automotive mishaps was more than I could handle, and I went mad. I felt bad doing so, knowing that no matter how bad is was for me, I was probably more alive than the people in the cars that were blocking the road.
Having gone in the tow truck with Red Calf and J. to Nashville, I had to make the 100 mile return trip back to Horse Cave to get the guys at the end of a long day that had already sucked more than a name without a story. It took me 6 hours. I spent most of that time far from the company of Polonius and stuck in my tracks in two separate, gridlocked traffic jams caused by an inch of snow, roughly the same amount New England has had in total this winter. It would be more accurate to say the jams were caused by the inability of Kentuckians to drive through that inch, but I don’t want to point fingers.
Six solo hours in a traffic jam at the end of a day already full of time consuming automotive mishaps was more than I could handle, and I went mad. I felt bad doing so, knowing that no matter how bad is was for me, I was probably more alive than the people in the cars that were blocking the road.
100 Miles in 6 Hours, ii
So it was an ordinary day at the Late Night Players office, meaning that we were dodging semi’s to make it to the breakdown lane sans power steering while haggling with AAA to honor our free five mile tow. And if we were to rename Horse Cave based on what we discovered there, it would now be called Hours and Hours Waiting in A Gas Station and Two Hundred Twenty Dollars for A Tow Truck To Nashville and A Dry Chicken Breast Sandwich Cave.
The story of how we decided to get the van out of our temporary HQ in HC is really too boring for the attention span of anyone who does their reading on the internet, so I’ll skip it. But I will share some wisdom from our tow truck driver, as it pertains to tattoos and, in his words, “boobies.”
J. told us that if you rub salt and lemon juice into a tattoo on the day you get it, it will disappear. Part of his forearm is testament to this delicious and inexpensive alternative to a laser, and the rest of it illustrates what happens if you don’t perform the Horse Cave Scrub.
He also told us that if we hung a sign up in the back of the van that said “We Want to See Boobies,” we probably would. According to John (that’s his full name) you can get in trouble for exposing your breasts on 65, but not for asking, so we had nothing to lose. Now Johnny also portrayed the stretch of highway between Lincoln’s birthplace and Bowling Green as an erotic hotspot when viewed from the elevated cab of a tow truck, so his perspective may be skewed.
The story of how we decided to get the van out of our temporary HQ in HC is really too boring for the attention span of anyone who does their reading on the internet, so I’ll skip it. But I will share some wisdom from our tow truck driver, as it pertains to tattoos and, in his words, “boobies.”
J. told us that if you rub salt and lemon juice into a tattoo on the day you get it, it will disappear. Part of his forearm is testament to this delicious and inexpensive alternative to a laser, and the rest of it illustrates what happens if you don’t perform the Horse Cave Scrub.
He also told us that if we hung a sign up in the back of the van that said “We Want to See Boobies,” we probably would. According to John (that’s his full name) you can get in trouble for exposing your breasts on 65, but not for asking, so we had nothing to lose. Now Johnny also portrayed the stretch of highway between Lincoln’s birthplace and Bowling Green as an erotic hotspot when viewed from the elevated cab of a tow truck, so his perspective may be skewed.
100 Miles in 6 Hours
We were cruising down I-65 in Kentucky, headed for Nashville, and for the moment everything was normal. Well, as far as traveling the country in a ’97 Chevy Astro loaded with wigs, beards, dresses, tofu jerky and booze goes. (Ordered in most to least.) Then suddenly, in the middle of snowy, heavy traffic, the van completely conked out. Actually, that is pretty normal.
Yes, old “Red Calf” checked out within a stone’s throw of Horse Cave, Kentucky. We call it Red Calf from an old anagram of Charleston Comedy Fest: Red Calf Costs the Money. The following tale will do no harm to that association.
I have no idea, however, why they call it Horse Cave. In fact, neither do they. In their informational pamphlets, it says “no one actually knows how Horse Cave got its name” where there should be a clever anecdote. An explanation of a name that consists mostly of explaining that there is no explanation is, on the scale of dumb, somewhere between using a word to define itself and naming an eatery The No Name _________ [noun]. I’m sorry, but where I come from, a name contains a name. And that’s Boca Raton, aka “Mouth of the Mouse.”
The pamphlet went on to suggest that perhaps the entrance to the famed local cave was large enough for a horse to pass through. But by that rationale, the town could just as easily be named “Floor Lamp Cave,” “TV Cabinet Cave,” or “Upright Mattress Cave.” By the way, I’m writing from a hotel room. I at least expected that the town was named by the bastardization of some local indigenous lore, a culture preserved and honored in the truck stop where we’d been towed to with a selection of, as Yogurt says in Spaceballs, “moichandise!” This included brown skinned and otherwise Aryan featured baby dolls in plastic buckskin, shrink wrapped and made in China. You could also buy tiny tomahawks armed with plastic moulds of rodent jawbones. Clearly, from Boca.
Yes, old “Red Calf” checked out within a stone’s throw of Horse Cave, Kentucky. We call it Red Calf from an old anagram of Charleston Comedy Fest: Red Calf Costs the Money. The following tale will do no harm to that association.
I have no idea, however, why they call it Horse Cave. In fact, neither do they. In their informational pamphlets, it says “no one actually knows how Horse Cave got its name” where there should be a clever anecdote. An explanation of a name that consists mostly of explaining that there is no explanation is, on the scale of dumb, somewhere between using a word to define itself and naming an eatery The No Name _________ [noun]. I’m sorry, but where I come from, a name contains a name. And that’s Boca Raton, aka “Mouth of the Mouse.”
The pamphlet went on to suggest that perhaps the entrance to the famed local cave was large enough for a horse to pass through. But by that rationale, the town could just as easily be named “Floor Lamp Cave,” “TV Cabinet Cave,” or “Upright Mattress Cave.” By the way, I’m writing from a hotel room. I at least expected that the town was named by the bastardization of some local indigenous lore, a culture preserved and honored in the truck stop where we’d been towed to with a selection of, as Yogurt says in Spaceballs, “moichandise!” This included brown skinned and otherwise Aryan featured baby dolls in plastic buckskin, shrink wrapped and made in China. You could also buy tiny tomahawks armed with plastic moulds of rodent jawbones. Clearly, from Boca.
So Funny It's Scary iii
After somehow surviving Ghost Night, I expected the girl at checkout to laugh at me when she found out my room number. Instead she showed about as much interest as a block of the cheese that has made her state so famous, and pudgy. Yet when I told her what happened, she became a veritable pepperjack of disbelief, all of which sounded extra endearing in Wisonson-ese: “Oo my gad, why did yoo stee-ay in dere!?”
Apparently, couples who have grown weary of the natural wonders of the act of love sometimes ask if there are any haunted rooms for them to tousle in. She’s always had to disappoint them. Now they’ll be staying in 412.
The next night we drove through a blinding white out so bad that we passed up a stop at Thai Café in Indianapolis, home of the finest coconut pudding in the country. So when we reached our destination, I had to spend another two hours behind the wheel of the van trying to find something much worse to eat. The best I could do was a bar serving chicken wings apparently so bad that no one else had to eat them, until me. I ended the night so irritated that I ran barefoot for three miles on the treadmill back at our Hampton Inn. (Not because I was mad, but because we don’t really have room to pack secondary shoes.) By the time I curled up to sleep on the floor, it not being my turn for a bed, my feet were sort of raw. But hey, at least I don’t have a day job. Plus the lights stayed off.
Apparently, couples who have grown weary of the natural wonders of the act of love sometimes ask if there are any haunted rooms for them to tousle in. She’s always had to disappoint them. Now they’ll be staying in 412.
The next night we drove through a blinding white out so bad that we passed up a stop at Thai Café in Indianapolis, home of the finest coconut pudding in the country. So when we reached our destination, I had to spend another two hours behind the wheel of the van trying to find something much worse to eat. The best I could do was a bar serving chicken wings apparently so bad that no one else had to eat them, until me. I ended the night so irritated that I ran barefoot for three miles on the treadmill back at our Hampton Inn. (Not because I was mad, but because we don’t really have room to pack secondary shoes.) By the time I curled up to sleep on the floor, it not being my turn for a bed, my feet were sort of raw. But hey, at least I don’t have a day job. Plus the lights stayed off.
So Funny It's Scary ii
Many performers are stupid, but we are not. We’re college grads from one of those prestigious institutes in New England that people outside of New England make fun of. On top of that we’ve got oodles of random life experience packed into the past few years of touring. On any given day we might have to change a tire, write a gag for William Shatner, or find the most vegetarian friendly restaurant in London, Ontario (which, by the way, is called Barakat – try the garlic yogurt). Plus it takes brains to drive 1,000 miles in one day and then be funny AND somehow be wearing unwrinkled clothing. Our friends who have become doctors and lawyers have never had it so rough. Financially.
So when the lights in our hotel room starting going off and on by themselves, we certainly thought to flick the switch on and off. We even unscrewed the bulbs halfway. And we continued to be haunted.
Zach: “Just close the bathroom door.”
Me: “No!”
Zach: “Why not? Because you’re scared?”
A long pause followed, in which I weighed my desire to preserve my manliness with my desire to preserve my life from the attack of a ghost.
Me: “Yes. Very.”
I called the front desk, hoping for some reassurance, but when I asked if this kind of thing was normal in an old hotel, all the attendant said was “Oh my god!” and “No way.”
So when the lights in our hotel room starting going off and on by themselves, we certainly thought to flick the switch on and off. We even unscrewed the bulbs halfway. And we continued to be haunted.
Zach: “Just close the bathroom door.”
Me: “No!”
Zach: “Why not? Because you’re scared?”
A long pause followed, in which I weighed my desire to preserve my manliness with my desire to preserve my life from the attack of a ghost.
Me: “Yes. Very.”
I called the front desk, hoping for some reassurance, but when I asked if this kind of thing was normal in an old hotel, all the attendant said was “Oh my god!” and “No way.”
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