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I've learned a lot about life by making a mess of my own.
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I've learned a lot about life by making a mess of my own.
Send your love letters to:
thetyping [at] gmail [dot] com
My Real Blog | Tweets | Tunes | The Past
So apparently it’s happening today and, unfortunately, I appear to have left all of my talents boxed and stacked in that storage place that looks like the opening credits for a Lifetime movie about a small town serial killer.
Anyway.
Things I Have Done In Actual Talent Shows:
1) A Choreographed Dance to Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract” (Fifth Grade): The day of the show, my group informed me that I had to play the part of MC Skat Kat because—I was told—my dancing looked only slightly less spastic than a lobster being dropped into boiling water. I couldn’t argue but I was still pissed about it, because A) it was my Paula Abdul CD; B) I was the one who suggested that all we wear splatter-painted leggings and C) I had just gotten a spiral perm and I was worried that putting a set of cat ears on would damage the integrity of my bangs.
2) A Choreographed Dance to Was (Not Was) “Walk the Dinosaur” (Fourth Grade): I was outfitted with a leash and a collar and had to be led around the basketball court by a kid named Tony who had a rat tail and a homemade Fred Flintstone shirt. I’ll refrain from making further comments about my future relationships.
3) Lip Sync to Mary Wells’ “My Guy” (Sixth Grade): I had to be the guy. And no, that caused zero problems for me in my rural elementary school, what with the way I rolled a pack of candy cigarettes into the sleeve of a white t-shirt and artfully painted my face with stubble.
4) Various Magic Tricks and Impressions, All of Which Failed Miserably (Sixth Grade): I apparently discovered the spotlight in sixth grade and held a mic for an incredibly awkward five minutes during the spring talent show. I don’t recall the majority of the act but I do remember that I dropped my fake thumb on the way to the stage, somehow got the scarf for the “Fatima the Dancer” trick tangled in the clasp of my training bra, and no one really got my impressions of UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali or my spot-on mockery of Lennie from Of Mice and Men.
5) Stand Up (Eighth Grade): As a member of the Future Homemakers of America (SHUT UP, YO) I had to attend the annual conference at a wooded resort in the mountains of West Virginia. On that Saturday night, we had a talent contest and the winner earned a coveted extra serving of peach cobbler and had a Polaroid taken that would be sent to the FHA magazine. I was one of three entrants, the other two being a kid who played Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” on acoustic guitar and a dude who put on headphones, held his Discman and belted out an a capella (to the rest of us) version of Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.
At that point, I didn’t understand that comics wrote all of their own material, so I did a handful of Stephen Wright jokes before unveiling ROBO-WITCH, my idea for how the Wizard of Oz should be updated. I also riffed a bit on the regulations of the cabins and, for reals, brought down the house.
From that moment on—or, more accurately, from the moment my Home Ec teacher brought a video of my set back to school and played it for the entire student body—I was doomed (or destined) to do be a comic. And I’m pretty sure I failed Home Ec.
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As for today, my skills are pretty much limited to beating damn near anyone in the 100m sprint, doing almost as many pullups as Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, and alienating most of my friends with my inability to carry on a conversation without dragging some English musician’s name into it.
Do I win?
