Pour Yourself Some Coffee

The House Of Boos

I went to the place at around 5:30 p.m. to ask the box office lady how to go about signing up for the comedy open mic night.

Having gotten the information that I should be there around 7 p.m. at "the hostess station," I then proceeded, with 48 cents in my pocket, down Decatur Street to try to busk up at least one beer within the next hour and a half.

I felt tired from the combination of the train ride and the two mile walk over gravel afterwards, along with the disturbed night of sleep in the 38 degree air. I wondered if I was subconsciously reserving energy which would burst forth from the stage later...

No Strings Attached

I came upon some traveling kids with their traveling dogs that had just posted up in a spot convenient to Sydneys beer and liquor store, and were already pounding on their raggedy mandolins and guitars which were missing strings, and "singing" typical traveling kid music, or rather yelling it.

Nice tourists were walking past, veering around them in a wide arc with expression as if they were frying sausages and being spattered in the face with grease, as the music hit their ears. The ones who weren't "performing" musically, were performing vocal art in the form of free style poetry, such as: "Can you spare some change; quarters, dimes, nickels?"

I had thought about setting up at that spot, as it is closest to The House of Blues, out of the places on Decatur Street.

I then continued on to what had previously been "my" spot, in front of the red painted door, nearby the massage parlor where the Asian lady would come out and feed me excellent vegetarian food, and where Sue and I had our infamous argument which was overheard by revelers in the balcony across the street; and who broke into applause after Sue grabbed her stuff and walked off, with one young lady yelling "You need to find a new girlfriend," to me. That happened about 8 months ago, now...
Crooner There Sooner

There was a young "crooner" there, standing up and strumming lazy chords on an acoustic guitar, and singing like Harry Connick Jr.

He has a pretty powerful voice, in his range (which happens to be the late Frank Sinatras range) and he wears a hat which I'm pretty sure is identical to one that was auctioned off out of "Ol' Blue Eyes," estate after his passing; and I think Mr. Connick Jr. may have made the last bid on it.

He is also one of the "stuck up" musicians who snub most street performers and their "styles," as if he is of the opinion that New Orleans needs to be kept a classy place with fine arts, fine clothing and an aura of the heyday of The Jazz Age about it; an allusion to something which Alex in California commented about once, pointing out that, after The Great Depression, those that could afford to do so, made every effort to NOT look like they had been ruined at all by those hard times and strove to distinguish themselves from "that other class" as much as possible, using fashion as a weapon.

If it wasn't cool in the 30's to have the traveling kid look, then I guess it ISN'T cool in the eyes of someone who dresses in fine threads and croons jazz from that era, to have that look.

I walked past him, noticing that some people had stopped to listen to him (as his music IS worthy; despite the attitude) and the lady from an antique shop a little ways down the street, who used to sit in an antiquated chair in front of her place and listen to my late 70's soft-rock, was now doing the same for the crooner.

The crooner, looking dapper in his hat, gave me a nod of acknowledgement, to which I returned a thumbs-up.

The antique lady gave me a smirk and a turn of her head which seemed to indicate "You've been replaced."

...I don't care. I've got a promising future in stand up comedy ahead of me...

I then proceeded on, thinking that I had never seen playing spots so hotly contested there before. It was only 6 p.m. and tourists were only on their way to eat and drink and get in the mood to tip a street performer -that wouldn't start happening for another 5 hours.

The Resonator Gary Davis Jr.

Then, I came upon a black man who was playing pretty incredible Reverend Gary Davis style fingerpicking stuff on a horendously out of tune resonator guitar. 

He had the alternating bass notes of ragtime going on the bottom strings, while he played slick melodies in counterpoint on the top strings, using metal finger picks to further project the banjo-like notes of the 2 thousand dollar resonator guitar, which sounded like it was about to be sick to its stomach.

I could imagine him making very good money playing like that because, while the guitar is a rather pedestrian instrument, a resonator guitar is a rarer bird; and some people really love that style.

He kept stopping to detune the thing more. He would pluck a couple of strings, and I would hear which one was flat, but then, he would adjust the string which was not flat, so then he had two flat strings instead of one.

I wanted to offer to tune the thing for him, but was wary of insulting a guy who could play such sophisticated music (yet couldn't tune a guitar.)

I made some small talk.

"These resonators are hard to tune," he said. Then he motioned his head to the guitar on my shoulder and snapped "Is THAT a resonator?!?" as if he wanted to say: If it isn't, then you have no idea what I'm dealing with here.

"Do you have a tuner?" he asked.

"Yes, (sent to me by Alex in California) but the batteries are dead," I said. "But, I could probably...."

"Look, I know what I'm doing!" he said, his frustration mounting as he managed to detune all six strings so that at least they were detuned to each other, but out of tune with the jazz band in the club right up the street, which was loud enough so that he could have taken advantage of tuning to them so that people walking past that place and then approaching him would feel a sense of harmony between him and his surroundings.

"I can tell that you are very advanced musically. How did you develope that finger picking style? Your stuff reminds me of Jorma Koukonen, or the Reverend Gary Davis Jr.

This prompted a fresh volley of "Look, I don't listen to nobody else! I do music the way I want to do it!"

"I would grab a note from that jazz band..." I said, as I turned and walked away, not waiting for him to snap back something like "Then, go grab a note from that jazz band and shove it up your ass!"

I headed back the way I had come, as a sound like someone playing ragtime on an upright piano which had been collecting mold in some dank basement since 1933 resonated behind me.

A New Genre Of Music

I still didn't have that "one" beer to loosen me up for the comedy audition.

Then, I came upon a strange fellow, whom I remembered from my last excursion in this city. I remembered him because he was sitting and reading a book in the same spot where he had been doing the same the first time I met him.

We talked about books for a while (as the time for me to busk up a beer ticked away) and it became clear to me that his mind worked in an unusual way. "Scatterbrained" is a description that might ring a bell with him.

His name is Taylor.

The topic of our conversation drifted from "the likelihood that there is life somewhere else in the universe," to Adam and Eve, which prompted me to say: "I guess we are all the descendants of incestuous relationships, if it all started with them..."

That prompted him to divulge to me that he was himself the prodigy of an incestuous relationship..."My parents were brother and sister," he said.

Our doggie is starving, Maam!

Perhaps because I didn't register any revulsion or judge him upon that head, he seemed to warm up to me. Especially after I told him the story of a kid that I was aware of in Easthampton, Massachusetts whose "family" tree was the result of a male grandchild impregnating the grandmother; resulting in the situation that the kids mother was was also his grandmother; and his father was also his brother.

Taylor found solace in that story.
I couldn't refrain from stealing occasional glances at him and I *did* see a family resemblance....

I decided to break out my guitar and go about tuning it up, as I had fixed the two strings that had broken the last time that I played it. I struggled almost as much as resonator man to do so, but finally got it pretty close.

"Do you mind if I try your guitar?" asked Taylor.

Somewhat surprised to hear that he played the guitar, I handed it to him.

He played up tempo, simple chords and over layed them with lyrics which were very random, very bizarre and flowed out of him as if out of a patient, delirious with a high fever in bedlam. I guess the way I would describe it would be by creating yet another "genre" and calling it "Incest Rock."

While he played, almost every traveling kid that passed (and there were as many of them as tourists) stopped to high-five him, or to sing along for a bit; apparently the lyrics weren't random; because the traveling kids knew some of them.

I mentioned to Taylor that I was going to do stand up comedy at The House of Blues and that I was just trying to get a beer in me before doing so.

Taylor understood well and with a look that seemed to say "Why didn't you say so earlier," he began to spange everyone that walked past, even as I played Beatles songs which sounded like music from another planet after hearing the incest rock.

Soon, Taylor had received about a half dozen cold shoulders, a few scowls, and 3 dollars, from the most unlikely looking sources; not tourists, but street people types.

We went and got a pint of cheap whiskey, which we shared as we walked in the direction of The House of Blues. As we walked, Taylor continued to emit random sounding words and phrases which rhymed.

"Are you free styling?' I asked.

"No, I have all this written down," he said, as I shook my head in bewilderment. I wondered if I could somehow make a comedy routine out of him...

We got to the venue, and I thanked him for giving me more than my 48 cents worth of whiskey. He continued on, and I went inside.

A joke of a....

Comedy Open Mic Night

I approached the bar, where the female bartender gave me the "us or them" test, by asking me if she could get me a drink.

"No, I'm (flat broke and one of "them" and) here to see if I can sign up for the comedy thing.

I was directed to the front of the place where I was directed to the back of the place where I met with the guy that runs the show, a skinny comic.

I asked him if everyone in the sparse crowd were comics.

"Yeah, pretty much," he said.

He laid down the rules:

Everyone gets 4 minutes; at 4 minutes you will be cut off; even in the middle of a joke.

No talking while others are up there under threat of being expelled from the place etc.

I was actually happy to hear about the 4 minute limit, thinking; I have only 4 minutes of material and so they will cut me off thinking that I was on a roll and that there was plenty more where it came from.

I told the skinny comic that it would be only my second attempt at doing stand up, to which he turned to nobody in particular and said "Great, that's just what we need..."

"Hey, if you have to have surgery, wouldn't you want someone who was just trying it out because he saw what kind of cars the other surgeons were driving?" I responded, trying to be funny, (because...that was the reason that I was supposedly there.)

It was suggested that I talk to a heavyset blond haired lady who was sitting at a table in the rear, because she was a veteran of the proceedings.

Her "name" was Betty Boop.

She was to go on 7th, and I was to go on last.

The thing was kicked off by the skinny comic, who was not funny, except when talking about raising a son: "How the hell and I going to raise a man, I was never shown how? The only pussy I saw when I was a teenager was my dad!"

Then another comic got up who was not funny. It was hard to tell what the punchlines were even supposed to be. He talked about his breakup "two years ago" and how he yells at his radio for Taylor Swift to shut up whenever she sings "We Are Never, Ever, Getting Back Together."

When he finished, a group of people vacated the front row and walked out, while the skinny comic tried to joke about it.

Then, two consecutive comics from Colorado got up. Both joked about the recent legalization of marijuana in that state. One of them said "So, if you smoke a joint with me, it's more legal than if you smoke with someone from Louisiana..."

The other one, a heavyset man, pointed out a guy in the audience (which had a few non comics now) who had the same jacket as he.

"Your wearing a smaller version of a fat man's jacket. Mine's bigger. My jacket could beat your jacket up. But they wouldn't fight, they would bond in brotherhood."

Then, the rest went up and got barely a chuckle. 

In between their acts and introducing them, the skinny comic got barely a chuckle either. 

It was literally pretty chilly in the canvas covered patio where were were set up and repeatedly the comics said "Boy it's cold in here," in reference to the crowd response.

Finally Betty Boop left our table and got up, and I suppose it became apparent why she was saved until last. She was organized and ran through her jokes quickly and smoothly; but barely got a chuckle. "You've heard it said: It's not the size of the ship, but the motion of the ocean...well, I just happen to like luxury liners..." (chuckle, chuckle...)

Then, it was supposed to have been my turn, but, someone who had shown up late was squeezed in before me. That was fine, because, I was (and was introduced by the skinny comic as) "fresh meat."

He said that I had appeared out of a puff of smoke and wanted to do comedy; almost as if I had insulted the establishment by my pretentiousness. This is New Orleans -no place for beginners, pal!

As I stepped to the microphone, I wavered upon weather I should throw in my surgeon joke of earlier, but decided not to. But it was enough to throw my timing off a bit and I stammered for a second, like a guy doing stand up for the second time in his life on a stage where the microphone smelled like Fiona Apple.

Note to self: Next week include "I LOVE doing this club, the microphone smells like FIONA APPLE...*inhales it deeply*....mmm!

So, I said, "Yeah, I need to try to do something, because I'm unemployed. I had a job as a suicide bomber, but I wasn't very good at it, to be honest...*chuckles, almost laughs*

I'm thinking about taking this job that I was offered selling air conditioners; but they want me to relocate to Nome, Alaska; I'm not sure I want to relocate...*over thier heads?*

What's with all these people walking around asking everyone if they once did a lot of acid? Is anyone else sick of that; I mean, 4 or 5 times a day..."You did a lot of acid once, didn't you? What's with these people? ...It wasn't a lot; no bigger than a postage stamp, I mean, come on..."*one chuckle*

Then, feeling like I had about 3 minutes left (plus, I was on last, and so maybe the skinny comic would let me go over if I was being funny) I started a joke which was supposed to be the following, more or less.

"What screwed me up was Little League baseball. I mean, here I was an 8 year old  kid; never been out of my back yard, and I'm up at bat and all these other kids that I didn't even know start yelling 'No batter, no batter...he can't hit; he's a whiffer; and I look over at our dugout thinking...which one of you little bastards leaked the information to them that I was no batter and I can't hit. Then a pitch goes by and one of them keeps yelling Swing!, and I'm thinking that's pretty stupid, if I don't swing, I'm never going to knock it out of the park...
Then the left fielder yells 'No Stick!" and I'm like; no stick?; what the hell's THAT supposed to mean?!?
Then, I figured it out, oh yeah; stick is a euphemism for the bat, which is made out of wood; and in fact, underprivileged kids use an actual stick AS a bat; I get it.
But, by then, I had struck out. And I don't think I've ever recovered from it.
I'm grown up now but those voices follow me around....
Like right now: No comic, no comic. He can't joke. Won't get a laugh. Won't get a laugh....NO SHTICK!!!
SWING!! *rapidly and out of timing* ...ah, I guy goes into a bar and he's got this pirate on his shoulder, I mean this parrot; ah, f*** it!!!
But, I tell you; the worse time is when I'm in the bedroom with a young lady:
No lover, no lover. He can't screw. Won't get her off -never get her off....NO DICK!!!...
SWING!! *thrusts pelvis forward* Oh, I'm sorry, honey! Here, put this steak on it so it won't turn into a shiner....
THANK YOU, YOU'VE BEEN A WONDERFUL AUDIENCE! (And can I take this microphone home?).

You Were Great, Ms. Boop

Our Cartoid Connection

Do you want to know how far I got into that joke which I had run through mentally a dozen times in preparation for the gig, before the skinny comic came and pulled the plug on me, ending the whole show?

"...By the time I figured it (that 'stick' was a euphemism for 'bat) out, I had...*skinny comic comes up and grabs the microphone and pulls Fionas essence away from me*

Then, as I walked off, thinking ...there's no way that was 4 minutes...he began to berate me (even though one of the "rules" was "we weren't here to bust anyones chops or discourage anyone")..

He yelled into the mic: "He said he wasn't a good suicide bomber; well I guess he BOMBED tonight! Gee, when he said he was unemployed, I was shocked! He said he didn't want to uproot; yeah, I guess carrying a backpack to the bus station is pretty traumatic!!!"

I held my tongue, when I was close to yelling back: Hey, that's my shtick; I'm Daniel, the homeless comic!"

I got outside and Betty Boop was mounting her scooter which was parked there.

"That was a fast 4 minutes," I said.

"Yeah, it goes by fast," she said, but didn't offer any encouragement. But, to be fair; I couldn't bring myself to say: "You were great, Ms. Boop" to her, either.

Now, there is the question of whether or not the skinny comic would even let me perform if I were to go back next week.

He might have the New Orleans disease and the "street people are the enemy of the establishment" mentality. He certainly didn't seem to want to give me a chance to succeed. From his quirky intro, which almost seemed designed to throw off my timing (which is "everything" in comedy) to his outro, which crossed into the "personal" he seemed to be working against me.

I actually got more chuckles than anyone else, to be honest. But the audience was made up entirely of aspiring comics by then, who may have had chips on their shoulders after their own cold receptions...

Comic Relief

Then, after waking up flat broke this morning; and with the bad taste still in my mouth after being cut off in the middle of a joke, I went to the Rebuild Center to check my mail. I was 10 minutes late for mail call, but Brother Charles still checked for me.

Ma, Send Me Money Now...
The money order for 25 bucks which my mom had mailed only 6 days prior; had arrived. Brother Charles said "That's amazing, I've never seen it get here that fast," as we looked at the postmark. It was the one that the jail had returned to her after they had moved me to another jail.

I felt like I had been compensated in some way for my efforts the previous night; as if some spirit somewhere was trying to encourage me regardless of ploys of the skinny comic. Kind of like when you help a cripple to cross the street, and then a few blocks later someone totally unrelated to the cripple hands you 10 bucks and say's "God put it on my heart, just now, to give you this."
I'm Gonna Make It Somehow

Call it crazy, but I believe that if you are on the right path; things like that are more than mere coincidence...

I might have to take my routine (which I have added to just today; doubling its length with what I think is a solid bit -certainly compared to what I heard last night it is...) to another club which might be less hostile.