Baby, I Can Put My Name In Lights

Thanks to everyone who stopped by yesterday for the interview, and a million thanks to Amy Guth and her publicist Jen for affording me the opportunity to host it, and to get to know Amy. Yay!

So I'm on the mailing list for the New York NeoFuturists, a theatre troupe that was started in Chicago and featured none other than the awesome Ayun Halliday and her husband, Urinetown author Greg Kotis. The Neos are famous for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, an attempt to perform thirty plays in sixty minutes. I get this email today that says they're looking for actors to fill out their troupe, so what do I do? Email them to set up an appointment! Oh, I delude myself in spades. Assuming they would take my fat amateur ass, am I really up for turning my Friday and Saturday nights over to late-night theater? What about my acting class? What about my therapy group? How am I going to explain this to my family--oh, wait, that's not an issue, thank god. They'll probably just ask me what the hell has taken me so long. Breathe. Just breathe.

Anyway, we shall see. Chances are not great, but what the hell? Clearly I'm stage-sick--the latest draft of my novel begins with my narrator explaining that the reason she temps is because she's in a comedy troupe called the Misanthropes, the toast of every dank basement in Chinatown and Williamsburg. Maybe I'm just doing it backwards.

I forgot to mention that while Ruth was here, I saw a hilarious show on Queens Public Access. No, I swear--it was genuinely hilarious, not accidentally so. It was a comedy troupe called Cheese Theatre that bills itself as Queens' only sketch comedy troupe. For all I pay attention to my borough of residence, they might well be. The awesome thing about NYC public access is that they're somehow allowed to use words you've never heard in the Bible (christ, they show porn over in Manhattan!), and these folks made good with plenty of "shits" and "motherfuckers." My favorite was an ad for "Gun Clock" by "Malo" in which one fellow is telling another how he was on an elevator with Bill Maher at the same time he was fucking a girl up the ass. Then the clock strikes five and--boom!--the two guys get shot. That's my kind of sketch comedy! I can't tell if this means I'm tremendously evolved or severely emotionally underdeveloped. Perhaps I should get to know my neighbors...?

Anyhoo, wish me luck. I can't tell if I've put my foot in it or I'm about to change my life. Maybe neither.