Happy Birthday-Eve, you say?

Why thank you.

I never watched or listened to stand-up comedians when I was younger. I actually never saw my first stand-up comedy until the very first night I went onstage and performed. But now that I'm performing regularly, I'm trying to catch up on some of the classics that I missed.

Which is why I was so shocked today when, while listening to excerpts from an old Ellen Degeneres album, I came to this horrific realization: Ellen Degeneres has been STEALING my jokes. Blantantly stealing them. Right off my blog.

Not only that, my friends. Oh no, it gets worse.

She STOLE my jokes about ten years before I even WROTE them.

I am unclear as to how to deal with an incomprehensible incident of this magnitude. Clearly I'm not going to the media. I feel certain that they'll focus on all the wrong things.

I'm sure they'll think that,

"Talk-Show Host Has Ability to Time-Travel"

is a WAYYYY better headline than

"Talk-Show Host Steals Jokes From Poor, Unsuspecting, Hard-Working, Comedian Who's About To Have A Birthday."

Sigh....

But I wanted to tell YOU guys. Just in case you find a couple of premises in my writing that looking strikingly similar to those on a classic Ellen Degeneres album....well, you'd know the REAL truth.

Wench.

Today is my Birthday-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve-Eve.

I just thought you would want to know.

Just in case you wanted to send cookies or trampolines or my own golf course.

A JOKE THAT WOULD BE MUCH MORE FORGIVEABLE IF I WAS PERFORMING ON THE VAUDEVILLE CIRCUIT:

A while ago, I decided that I need to quit smoking.

So yesterday I quit cold turkey.

I mean, I still smoke, but I'm THROUGH eating cold turkey.

Note to my mom: No, I don't smoke. I was just saying that I did for the purpose of the joke. But why, you ask, would you say that you smoke for a joke when the joke wasn't even that good? That's a good question, Mom. Sigh....

I'm going to bed.

I thought I was grouchy yesterday. But today I realize that yesterday I didn't even know the MEANING of grouchy.

Yesterday's grouchy was a molehill to today's mountain of grouchy.

Yesterday's grouchy was a grain of sand on the beach of today's grouchy.

On a grouchy scale of one to ten, I'm a thirty-two-point-five.

I get extra credit on the grouchy scale.

The awkward part, though, is that I can't tell you WHY I'm grouchy. Because, well, I've made a habit of TRYING not to badmouth people on my blog. Even if they don't read it, I don't think it's a proper way to relieve my frustrations, exactly.

But I was thinking maybe we could play 20-questions in the comments box. And you could guess why I'm grouchy and I could tell you if you're warm or cold.

It's possible this is a bad idea.

But I like it.

I'm a little grouchy tonight. Not quite kick-someone-in-the-face grouchy. More like blast-my-Broadway-musical-sountracks-really-loud-to-annoy-the-neighbors grouchy. Maybe it's a chemical imbalance. Or perhaps I have lactose intolerance.

In any case, I hosted a show tonight and there was a man who was an EXCEPTIONALLY rotten audience member. We'll call him Jim McDowell, although I feel fairly certain that's not his name at all. And his bad audienceness reminded me that I should re-post my rules for being a bad audience member. You know, just in case you forgot. 'Cause people do. So if YOU want to be a bad audience member like the Not-Jim-McDowell, then read on.

HOW TO BE A BAD AUDIENCE MEMBER
An Essay, by Jill Twiss---Stand Up Comedian to the Stars

Many of us attend comedy shows, hoping desperately to attain the status of Worst Audience Member Ever, but not all of us have the natural talent that it takes.

Fear not, friends. I will show you that anyone can be a crappy audience member if they work hard enough. Thusly, I have compiled a few tips to help you get started:

1) Try, at all costs, to make the show about you. The comedians will want to pretend the show is about them, but don't let them get away with it.

Don't let them hog your limelight.

After all, any schmuck can get up to the microphone and tell jokes, but it takes a real talent to yell obnoxious things throughout the show.

2) If it is a female comedian on the stage, by all means suggest that she take off her shirt. That's what she gets for being a girl, after all.

3) Answer no to any question the comedian asks. For example (and this is a real-life example from my show last night):

Jill: So, do you have any children?
Annoying Audience Member: No.
Jill: Ah, well you've babysat before, right?
AAM: No.
Jill: Have you ever met a child?
AAM: No.
Jill: Let's move on.

4) Drink as much as humanly possible during the show. If your friends consider you "a real asshole when you're drunk," all the better.

5) Have a cell phone? Excellent.

Don't turn it off during the show.

If someone calls, do one of two things: either take the call and talk loudly, or ignore the phone entirely and let it ring six or seven times before voicemail picks up. Bonus points if your phone has a really annoying song for its ring.

Note: this is an effective way of being an annoying member of the human race, in general, and of the audience in particular.

These are only a few suggestions. Feel free to take them, combine them, and improvise. I have faith in you. Work hard, persevere, and become The Worst Audience Member Ever. Godspeed.

I have a musical audition coming up. I'm afraid I'm not great at singing.

Well, unless you compare it to my dancing.

In which case, I'm a great singer.

They cloned a dog.

By "they" I mean the South Koreans and by "dog" I mean dog.

I, for one, feel that there are plenty of dogs. This is something that me and Bob Barker agree on. (Is it coincidence that his last name is Barker? No, I don't think it is.)

There is no dog shortage. You never go outside and say, "You know there's not enough dog poop on the ground. We could use more."

If we're gonna spend millions of dollars cloning stuff, I say let's clone stuff we really NEED.

Like chocolate fountains.

I'm calling the scientists right now and telling 'em my plan. We need more chocolate fountains and we need them NOW. And we're not stopping till there's a chocolate fountain in every pot.

Or suchlike.

This is a Nobel Prize waiting to happen.

I'm a sellout.

A prostitute for blogs, really.

A blogstitute.

You see, someone has offered me MONEY so I will put links on my blog. Links like Boston Office Space and bextra lawsuit.

I'll be honest. I don't care about Boston office space even a little bit. And I don't even know what Bextra is. For all I know, Bextra is a clinical device used solely to torture puppies and kittens and bunnies.

And here I am advertising it on my blog.

I'm a horrible person.

But my theory is that, if I'm making a little money on this blog...well, I can afford to spend more time on it and less time on real work. So in the future I shall try to fit in these links as inobtrusively as possible. I may even turn them into a joke-writing exercise of sorts to challenge myself.

But I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing yet. So if you hate them, tell me.

And I just want to state for the record that I am wholeheartedly agains the torturing of puppies and kittens and bunnies.

But I am wholeheartedly in favor of car insurance.

Sigh....