humans are funny

Category: comedy

  • A year! I could have been pregnant 1.3333 times.

    Last week was the year anniversary of Taboo Tales. Years really sneak up on you. One day you’re seven and teaching your Barbies how to have sex in the back of their Ferrari. And the next day you’re twenty-seven and wondering how come you’ve never had sex in the back of a Ferrari.

    Last October 28th, my friend Corey and I got on a stage and hosted a show in front of 90 people. I don’t even know how we got 90 people to come to a show we didn’t even know would be good. I was, of course, filled to the brim with anxiety. If you trip on a sidewalk in front of some people, it’s not really that big of a deal. You weren’t asking them to look at you. This was to be different. This would be people coming to see us because we asked them to. And if we tripped, they might be pissed and annoyed they drove through LA traffic (which, as we know, can be downright depressing) for something that was a mess. The PRESSURE!

    During that first show, we learned a lot. We learned that even D-list actresses don’t show up on time. We learned that projector remotes only work when they’re right next to the projector. We also learned from our audience that most people don’t mind the LA traffic because they’re masturbating all the while. Yeah. They are. Who knew?

    And then a year passed (I’m still not having sex in the back of a Ferrari). There are as many storytelling shows in LA as there are struggling actors, so we weren’t sure how it would fare. But dare I say that our show is more than a storytelling show? We ask humans (any humans) to tell us a comedic version of their taboo story. All we ask is that it be a personal story that they would not normally feel comfortable telling in public. It must make the storyteller completely vulnerable. On stage. In front of 100 people (now 120. That’s right– more people. Huzzzah.).

    The vulnerability is not just for the enjoyment of the audience though. No way. That’s a side product. Getting vulnerable on stage is rewarding for the storyteller. Letting out their stories to an accepting audience who laughs with them in the right places and cries with them in the right places is pretty freeing.

    My friend was scared to tell his story about how he contracted HIV. That’s the kind of secret that sticks with you just below the surface all the time. You’re reminded of it when you take your pills every day. But it’s so ‘taboo’ that it doesn’t easily roll off the tongue. So when he read his story out loud on stage, that vulnerability was for him. And the best part were the hugs that followed. People heard his story, and they lined up to hug him. They weren’t scared of him.

    That’s usually why we don’t tell our stories. We’re scared of being judged. We’re scared of the labels. But Taboo Tales is not ‘just a storytelling show.’ It’s a place where people can tell their secrets and then get hugs. Lots of hugs. And new friends. My favorite part of the experience is going on Facebook the day after. I can see the threads of all the new friendships made in our theater. It’s proof of acceptance. And proof that humans are capable of loving each other even though the news makes us feel sometimes like that doesn’t happen anymore.

    There have been stories of hemorrhoids, breast cancer, blindness, fat fetishes, eating disorders, OCD, vaginal paranoia (that one was mine), butt licking, low self-confidence, and plenty of rapes. Lots of rapes. One of the biggest lessons I learned was how to spell hemorrhoids. Try it. That’s a painful one. to spell. sorry.

    Now it’s been a year and a few days (still no sex in a Ferrari). I’m so grateful for all the new relationships I have, all the stage confidence I gained, all the lessons about humans and acceptance and love and judgments, and all the people who now see me as a safe sounding board for their secrets. Really, people tell me everything now. EVERYTHING! I love it. I’ll admit that once in a while I find myself judging someone for playing a nine-point word in Scrabble, but that’s the extent of my judging! It’s impossible to judge anyone now that I know that most of my friends shit their pants in Walgreens or think their sons are hot. For this, I’m so lucky. I accept this position.

    Thanks for all the support and for coming to the shows and for encouraging us and for sharing your secrets. Next time I see you in traffic, I won’t be so mad when you’re stopped at a green light for too long.

    Also, if you have a Ferrari: Call me!

  • I carried a watermelon? Peaches would have sounded so much better.

    I did my second stand-up show ever last night at The World Famous Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd (I call bullshit on the ‘world’ part. I don’t know if people in Nigeria really know about this place, but that’s how they sell it to you when they ask you to be in a show that requires you to bring paying audience members.) It did not go as well as my first show. People stared instead of laughed. There were crickets. Many of them.

    And it reminded me of a young man who used to live on my childhood street.

    He was older and cool. And every day after elementary school, he would say, “Laurenne is a blobule.” I didn’t know what that meant, but still I would cry. I thought he was wise (I mean, he was at least 12), so I figured I must have been a blobule. And I hated being a blobule. I wanted nothing more than to not be one. Blobules sucked, according to this mean kid.

    But after some years, I realized that blobules weren’t that bad. And, in fact, they didn’t even exist. But the kid had moved away. So, I spent lots of sixth grade recreating that situation. I could have said, ‘No, you’re a blobule” or ‘Blobule Shmobule’ or ‘Dorkface’ or I could have simply made up a story about how Debbie Gibson was my cousin (which I did later).

    This was one of the first of many conversations I would rebuild throughout my life. You know the ones that you rewrite in your head over and over until you almost convince yourself that you actually did sound a thousand times more intelligent than you really did (Otherwise known as an ‘I carried a watermelon’ conversation)? I’m a professional post-conversation rewriter. At least I used to be. Until a therapist told me that if everyone’s so worried about their part of the conversation, then nobody’s really worried about your part.

    Wise, those therapists are. Way wiser than that blobule who invented blobules. (Blobule isn’t even a good name. How naive I was to be insulted so uncreatively.)

    Flubbing your first joke in front of a crowd of strangers at The World Famous Comedy Store can guarantee you some intense in-brain rewriting, no matter what any therapist says. It’s agonizing.

    I have mentally rewritten my set about 4,352 times since I said it on stage just 24 hours ago. (If only I had added the word ‘Jesus’ more often, etc.) And before that I probably told my jokes to the invisible passenger in my car about 6,412 times. And neither made my performance any better. This whole anxiety-ridden journey has led me to some revelations:

    *A surefire way to tell whether you performed badly is if the very first thing your friend says afterward is: It was not you. Totally the crowd.

    *Not everyone thinks jokes about dead dads are funny.

    *The ‘comedian green room’ sounds cool but really means a roachy box with stained couches and stale snacks. Still, I felt pretty cool.

    *Taking anything too seriously makes it not worth doing.

    This stand-up thing could be really fun (jokes are fun!) or it could be this thing I do that is stressful and hard and has to be done perfectly for fear of my bastard ego, Lawrence, showing up to tell me how I could have done better, looked better, or made more people laugh, which is no fun at all.

    And, since I’m one who learns lessons, I should probably take this one and use it in as many aspects of my life as I can. I should have more fun. Always. And you should too. Because why not? Stuff without fun is so much less fun than stuff with fun.

    From now on, I must remember: It’s okay to suck at something. As long as you’re having fun while sucking. Jenna Jameson agrees. That joke wasn’t at all funny. But at least I had fun while writing an unfunny joke. Man, I’m a fast learner.

  • As long as they laugh, it’s all ok.


    When I was 13, I was deathly embarrassed of my mom. Not because she wore puke green dresses and too big eyeglasses (she did). But mainly because, no matter where we went, she talked too much. It wasn’t just that she brought up the weather in every single elevator or complimented someone’s shoes in every line for popcorn. She also told strangers all of our business. Someone would comment on how we were dressed up, and she would tell them all about how I had just graduated from junior high with a 4.0 GPA and that my grandmother was in town and that we deserved a treat and we were going to get pineapple shakes right after the car wash and the video store. She told every detail to surely uninterested strangers. I would cower. I wasn’t a comic book nerd, but I still pretended to put on an invisibility cloak. How. Embarrassing.

    The other day I told the story of my first blowjob to a room full of strangers. And I write this blog where I recently wrote a story about how my dead father’s rotting body smelled like Korean leftovers. I have clearly surpassed my mother in the lack of discretion department. My 13-year-old self would be mortified. And have braces.

    Now I’ve found a way to be even more revealing, even more honest, and even more embarrassing to any future children I may have. It’s stand-up comedy. And I think I love it. It’s like welcoming hundreds of people inside the chamber of the brain that holds all the secrets. And damn, it’s liberating. I’m seriously hooked. I walked off stage Monday night, and I wanted to immediately walk back on.

    It took 12 weeks of class with 8 other students under the direction of Gerry Katzman (who teaches the best stand-up class in LA) in order to get our sets in order. On the first day, Gerry asked us to come up with a personal topic around which we would write 16 jokes. I thought the fact that I drive a scooter was interesting. No. That’s not what he meant. He was more interested in the fact that I only date unmotivated men who don’t have jobs and make me pay for them and how I do so willingly because I feel like I have to take care of them.
    Oh, that.
    Then, he wanted to know why and when and how. And THAT’s when the jokes got funny. The deeper you dig, the better you get. I was into it. A scooter? Ha.

    After that first day, I knew I’d love peeling off more and more layers of myself in order to get to the jokes. It was easy for me (the being honest about myself part) since I grew up with a mom who talked too much and have a blog where I already share everything. This blog made it easy. Thanks, everybody. I wrote jokes about dead dads and trying to be spiritual, and how it’s hard to be single and/or masturbate, and my mom, who has since stopped buying clothes in puke green (for the most part).

    After writing and rewriting every tiny part of every joke, it all came out on stage on Monday night in 9.5 minutes. There’s a silence you can feel while you’re telling a joke where you realize that you’re holding a microphone and everyone is waiting to hear what you have to say. And then you say something important about your life. And it’s out there. And it’s accepted. And it’s ok. You can admit anything up there, and it’s ok. Because you’re on a stage. And because even the deepest darkest secrets find other people in the audience who can relate. That’s what comedy is all about: Saying things that other people feel but are too scared to admit.
    Once the people laugh, it’s all really ok.

    So I’m hooked. And excited. And ready to do it again.
    But I’m not so sure how I’ll feel when I get up there and share my secrets and nobody laughs. I know that’s going to happen. Any day now. Probably as soon as I start performing without my friends in the audience. And that’s going to be hard. And painful. But probably still pretty liberating. We’ll see. If anything, I’ll just quit and be that lady who unloads information on strangers in elevators. Whatever the case, I still won’t be like my mom. Because I do not wear puke green.

    Stand-up class 2010 in post-show bliss. We know everything about each other now.
    We can only become either best friends or sworn enemies. We’ll see. Not so sure I trust the Koreans.