in writing my new “gracetalk” show (WHICH WILL BE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, ONLY SIX WEEKS AWAY!!!), i talk a little about waking up in a kind of surly mood.
this is one of those mornings.
when i saw this cute “mutts,” i felt a tiny glimmer of cheerfulness, but when i went to save it, the computer flashed on the screen that the name i chose to call it to save it WAS NOT VALID.
and it kept flashing the message which was incredibly irritating to me, and so I talked back to it in a very surly voice. OK i said to it. OK OK OK!!! i woulda yelled, but i’m not awake enough yet for that.
i know the theme of mutts all week will be thankfulness, which is a good thing and will hopefully keep the crazies AT BAY.
and then also i think about me sitting here in my red flannel jammies feeling surly and looking all not presentable in any way and not feeling even ONE OUNCE OF FUNNY, and i think about how i must be out of my mind to do another show after this really really long hiatus. last night a nice woman kept saying to me, “you’re so BRAVE to do comedy,” but it’s not the doing of the comedy, it’s all about FORGETTING THE DAMN WORDS. because more and more i’m lucky to remember my own name from one moment to the next, so how do i think i’m gonna manage to memorize the pages and pages of stuff i’ve been churning out?
i’ve been trying to calm myself down about this by telling myself that if i DO totally forget stuff and it’s all just really really horrible, i can always just READ the pages if i do another show.
but that’s a horrible idea. i could just NOT doing another show, is what i could do.
do you know who spalding gray was? he was a wonderful monologist, and i went to see him when i lived in LA, and he read his very entertaining stories. he just sat there on the stage reading them, and was entertaining, and the big venue was packed with attentive fans. I went by myself and later went on one terrible date with a guy who i met who was sitting next to me, but that’s another story. but anyway, spalding gray, entertaining just by reading.
and of course that’s just what david sedaris does; we saw him here at his sold-out show at the sangamon auditorium, and not only was he just reading, but he also has a kind of funny voice, like me. well of course it’s not that ridiculously high, but it’s not one of those pleasing kinds of voices that people on radio have.
spalding gray suffered from depression and ended up killing himself by jumping into the east river in new york, so even all that success and getting his stories out there and being really creative couldn’t save him in the end.
david sedaris, on the other hand, continues his hugely successful career plus he moved to france, giving him even more different things to write about.
i had a point to all this, but now i’ve forgot.
no, just kidding, but i think that i just need to STOP WHINING AND COMPLAINING and move ahead, and the show will probably go fine, it’s only 45 minutes, plus the front half of the (relatively small to begin with) space will be regular seating but the back is going to be table seating “so people can eat,” which means i might have random people wandering in and out so that could make it fairly disastrous also.
but ALSO you, mrs. whiny hughes, need to think about how enjoyable, easy and fun the writing is, not to mention the good time you’re having with the shooting and editing of the videos. yeah yeah yeah you don’t have the huge output and creative success like those other guys, but at least you have a pretty risk-free opportunity to DO SOMETHING YOU ENJOY DOING FOR ONCE.
in conclusion, ALL IS GOOD AND FINE around here on this monday morning, despite the fact that mollie has refused to embrace the time change and starts jingling her collar around and whining starting at 5:00 a.m. and i lie there and grit my teeth until kevin finally wakes up at his usual hour of six, but now it’s more like 5:45, and gets up to feed her.
ok then,
mrs. h.