Tag: NACA

Gettin’ Schooled

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This past weekend I did a set at a college regional booking event called the NACA Mid-Atlantic Convention in Lancaster, PA.

It was a hubbub times one jillion. See below! Lots of networking and handshaking and soulsearching and dealmaking and networthing and breathtaking!


Highlights:

  • Malcolm Jamal-Warner (people yelled out “Theo” when he came out onstage) recited his own poetry in one of the afternoon showcases. He is very soulful!

  • There was a spotlight on the stand up stage that followed you around like an attention-seeking shadow but the opposite of a shadow in fact.

  • Ben Kweller was in my showcase, strumming the gee-tar. Also soulful! Also really knows what he’s doing during sound check, even during other people’s sound checks (*cough* me *sneeze-snort*). Also his piano player was a kid I went to school with!

  • A complimentary brownie wedge that I had.

  • Some kid told me he wanted to be my best friend, and then I took a picture with him and his cohorts. But they all ended up throwing their arms over each other’s shoulders blasting full camaraderie and I just stood in front like a sassy extra appendage.

  • Everyone quoted jokes that they liked/remembered back to me. Usually this is slightly terrifying, but it meant people were listening (this still blows my mind sometimes)! Sometimes it feels like a test.

  • College kids are surprisingly at ease with themselves. But then again, not everybody is me. How quickly I forget! College was like second high school with more naps for me.

    • It was cold and rainy the whole time I was in Pennsylvania but definitely warmer and bloodier in my heart. All in all, a class-A Experience with a capital E (not the drug).

    P.S. This will come as a surprise to nobody especially the guy who wrote How to Win Friends & Influence People, but I still don’t know how to schmooze. I have perfected the art of flinching in the beam of direct eye contact.

    P.P.S. The rest of the weekend I was a lounge lizard, which might be a future freelance career move for me. Turns out that I am great at sitting around and flipping channels! And occasionally switching sides so my couch potato bod is fully marinated at room temperature.

    Reporting from the Couch Reflecting on the Road

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    i’ve raised the bar too high and wide

    Unforgivable. Only four blog posts in February so far. Unspeakable.

    *gurgle slurrrp*

    That’s the sound of the Internet sucking up unused and dusty domain space.

    Check out these sad abandoned Geocities pages, like remnants of an old civilization. Actually, there is no link. That was a trick. I couldn’t even find any old Geocities pages. The only clear artifact that came up when I googled Geocities pages was someone’s bibliography on their paper on the history of rape. Google, tsk tsk. There’s no need to get fresh with those that came before you. For an even bigger gasp, remember Angelfire? How can you not? Take a gander here, but wear sunglasses and make sure you’re past puberty. Pink on pink was actually a weapon used in ancient warfare, and can singe your eyes off.

    The truth is I’ve been traveling. It might as well be an illegal move in basketball because it has led to a few tiny mind complexes but even more big, strong bodybuilders of ideas. That’s the problem with getting out of town. You suddenly get inspired and foolhardy, and see the world as one big oyster metaphor.

    Take Lewis and Clark for example. Not the indie garage duo, the old-timey adventurer-explorers! They got going westward, and inspired the whole East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry that peaked in the mid-90s. I headed west as well. I was in LA last week. City of Angels, son. I took quite a gander to the place. It gets a bad rep for various reasons, but I like it. It’s sunny. It’s money. It’s oh, honey! It’s phunny (even funnier than funny). For Pete & Pete’s sake, people dress up like trees there and no one minds! (see last post)

    my eyes! my eyes!

    I got to stay with my friend in comedy and life Hari Leigh at her artists’ compound. Well, sort of. Her roommate is also a comedian, and the animal residents are free spirits. Bukowski the frenetic puppy and Bill Murray the rebellious but gentle adolescent cat. Oh the times we had. It was amazing enough having a rent-a-car with a mouthy GPSass Machine, but LA is just chock-full of food-centric experiences including (caution: incoming bullets), but first Bukowski:

    • a flooded neighborhood street, and a tide of questionable water coming in through the open car windows like in a commercial for…Tide.
    • eating delicious veggie-friendly Italian food at a restaurant named Masa (no I don’t know why it’s called that), and having a waiter who would only acknowledge the boobier of us two ladies (i.e., not me) the entire evening to the point where he put both dessert forks on my friend Hari’s side of the plate as if I wasn’t even there! I get it! I am a popular hangout for recessive genes!
    • the brioche french toast at Square One. I still dream about it.
    • eating sushi with Adam and discussing grown-up topics like (gasp!) grown-ups. What kinds of topics? Well, surfing concussions!
    • thinking of a sketch idea with Hari on the night before I had to leave, getting excited, filming it, and ending up in panda/skeleton makeup right before having to perform at a comedy show. It ended up coming off after a split-second decision that may or may not have saved my “career.”
    • thrift store shopping. There are thrift stores all over LA, and identities for sale everywhere!
    • getting to visit some network studios for general meetings, and admiring their office kitchen set ups. One network looked like it was in Narnia.

      • chronicles of aparnia!

    • eating lunch at the Grove with Cissy, an open-air Farmer’s Market and bevy of shops and restaurants where if you lose your parking ticket, you have to pay $15 (I just happen to know that somehow).
    • “hanging” in a cool coffee shop waiting for my friend to get off work and “soaking” up the alternative culture. i was so caffeinated by the time i had to pick her up that the local artwork was shapeshifting.

      • view from a coffeeshop

    • comedy! shows! at! coffee! shops! and! video! stores! and! clubs! and!theatres! some starting at midnight!
    After LA, I went to the NACA national convention in St. Louis, Missouri (code name: wind chill) to perform for college bookers. It was somewhat surreal, and is described in detail at the link at the bottom of the post. The fun parts were trolleying around with the other comedians, and eating. Also I met a lizard there:

    I like to talk about eating. But honestly, that’s how I remember trips. I remember grilled vegetable stack lunch, late night pizza dinner with beer, and then watching Gargoyles at three in the morning, and wondering whether it was worth sleeping before an early morning breakfast, which included Seckel pears (disappointing) and cinnamon bun french toast (surpassing expectations). The wind chill in Missouri is so cold that three days later, I still can’t feel my face. That’s all I got, ReCap’n. Over and out.

    To read further about my recent comedy experiences on the road, clickety here.