Well, last week sucked overall, but it kept me busy. The beginning of the week was pretty standard, but starting on Wednesday night it became some kind of sleep deprivation experiment for my family. My brother’s band played Wednesday night, so I was there until about 2 am. Then at 7:00 the next morning, we headed out to Birmingham to my grandmother’s funeral. Just over a two hour drive, the funeral, lunch with some family that I am reportedly related to but only see every ten years or so, and driving back home. The whole thing was emotionally and physically exhausting, but the day wasn’t over yet. I still had my first ever improv performance to do in front of everyone I know. So I had to be funny and quick, and to prepare, I went to a funeral. Yippee.

I got to the theatre just in time to warm up with the team. We all had the jitters, and/or explosive diarrhea, and I had to seriously sit and talk to one guy who was really nervous. I was more excited than nervous, but I peeked out from behind the curtain before we went on, and that scared the shit out of me. There were about 100 people there, and at last count, 42 of them were there to see me. When the audience was asked for participants in one of the games, the guy picked my brother and a girl that I have known for a while. Their role in the scene was to give the improvisers a word to complete our sentence when we touched their shoulder. That scene started off very scary, because we forgot to ask the audience for a setting before the scene started. We had five seconds to prepare for the scene, so mark and I just reached into the prop box and grabbed whatever we put our hand on first. The lights come up, I’m standing on stage wearing a sequined roman helmet, and mark is crawling around with a two-foot dog bone. We had our status, and I took the role of some kind of caveman warrior with mark as my weapons designer. We had a battle with a couple of other improvisers who were carrying beef sticks, but we won. I tapped my brother’s shoulder for the name of a weapon, and he did his best. We fought off the SlimJim tribe with a sink. We did two more scenes about equally random stuff, and that was it. The instant I left the stage, I wanted to go back out there. One of the guys in the audience taped it, so I’ll be sure and criticize everything as soon as I see it.

After the show, people were wanting me to go out for a drink with them, but I had to politely decline. I was scheduled to be two hours south of Orlando the next day at noon. Some quick math told me that I would have to leave at 4 am. Some quicker math told me that I had better be resting snug in my bed in the next hour. We drove the eight hours to Florida, took the tour we came for, and drove back as far as Orlando and stayed there for the night. My brother and I saw some sort of event going on in a stadium behind the hotel and went to check it out in hopes of seeing the locals in a carnival setting. It turned out to be a 24 hour walk-a-thon to raise money for a cancer fund. They had some really crappy entertainment, lots of kids running around, and a guy dressed in a storm trooper outfit who removed his helmet to reveal the most amazing mullet I had ever seen on a space warrior. Everyone was walking clockwise around the track, you know, earning money and all. My brother and I, ever the fun seekers, started walking against the flow. Some kid asked why we were going the wrong way, and while I was formulating my answer about how the herd mentality is so pervasive in society and so on, my brother says “Every lap we do takes a dollar away from you guys.” Naturally, I had to follow with “Yeah, and someone gets cancer somewhere.” He gave us a weird look, and we unanimously decided that it was in our best interests to leave the area.

We got back to Atlanta late Saturday, and I found my e-mail box full of all sorts of stuff ranging from my friends telling me they enjoyed the show to some dirty slut who wants me to “put my tongue in her ass”. I don’t know her, but apparently she needs some attention. Christ, I’d rather put it in a light socket. I have also gotten quite a few notices that people are on the list to be notified when I update my Diary.

Thanks, People! I’ll try to keep it entertaining.

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