THING ONE: A conversation I had with a (very large) audience member after my show:

(Very Large) Audience Member: Let me tell you what's wrong with your comedy. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Also blah.

Me: Errr....I should go home.


THING TWO: A conversation I *wish* I'd had with a (very large) audience member after my show:

(Very large) Audience Member: Let me tell you what's wrong with your comedy. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Also blah.

Me: You know sir, if you simply walked like two miles a day, you would lose some weight and not be nearly as large as you are. And I think you would be much happier.

(Very large) Audience Member: What? I never asked you what you thought about my weight.

Me: Precisely.

I think "bunny" sounds more like an adjective than a noun.

How are you feeling today, Jim?

Oh, I'm bunnies, Bob. Just bunnies.

That's all.

Last night I performed at an afterparty for a screening of a Star Wars fan film.

Not a Star Wars film.

A Star Wars fan film.

A Star Wars fan film is a film made by people who LOVE Star Wars so much, that they actually devote years of their lives to creating another film based on Star Wars. I find it fascinating.

I had a conversation with the producer a couple of weeks before the show where he informed me that much of the audience might show up to the show in costume.

In conversations like that your comedy-brain becomes so flooded with potential jokes that it is rendered immobile.

I wish people would write "fan jokes" for me. They could write a whole slew of jokes BASED on my jokes. And then I could steal them and use them in my act.

Not that I would ever compare MY jokes to the Star Wars empire.

After all, my jokes have excellent special effects and very little incest.

But both products do involve saving the universe.

p.s. This post was brought to you by Web Design San Diego, Chevrolet San Diego Used Chevy, and Car Pictures. Also Contact Neil Crespi to Donate Stock. But only if you want to.

p.s.2. I do not feel like this is a very good blog entry. I feel like I should spend another two hours revising it and making better jokes. The kind people will actually laugh at. But instead I am going to go sleep peacefully in my batmobile bed.

Live with it.

Apparently, Nintendo has created a diabetes management video game device in which players are rewarded with new game levels if they properly manage their diabetes. The device is called Glucoboy.

I think their slogan should be, "Glucoboy: In case the threat of impending death isn't incentive enough, we'll give you new game levels."

I wish there were similar devices to help me manage various troubles in my own life. I would pay good money for:

Homoboy: A video game device in which I am rewarded with new game levels every time I go a month without turning someone gay.

Or perhaps:

Geckoboy: A game in which I am rewarded with new game levels every time there is a Geiko commercial on TV and I manage not to punch someone in the face.

Or:

I'mABigDorkoboy: A game in which I am rewarded with new game levels every time I have the urge to write another pointless blog entry with no punchline, but choose not to write it. Er, I never really get any extra levels in this game.

Sigh....

I'm done.

I live in an apartment building, but I don't really know my neighbors.

I wish I did.

I wish I had the kind of relationship with my neighbors where I could knock on their door one day and ask to borrow a cup of flour or an egg. Possibly four tablespoons of sugar. Or some baking soda.

But mostly I wish I had the kind relationship with my neighbors where they would take that flour and that egg and that sugar and that baking soda and bake it into a cake before they let me borrow it.

Those are the best sorts of neighbors.

MY AUDITION FOR "LAST COMIC STANDING"

or

THINGS THAT ARE SLIGHTLY WORSE THAN GNAWING OFF YOUR OWN ARM

A good thing about living in New York City is that you can line up for hours and hours to audition for exciting things like slightly-mediocre network tv shows about stand-up comedians.

A bad thing about living in New York City is that you have to do aforementioned waiting in line in twenty-seven degree weather.

That's negative three degrees Celsius.

Also one-hundred eighty-nine in dog-degrees.

Because I am a diligent and career-oriented stand-up comedienne who doesn't really value her extremities, I decided to do this Freezer-esque-Line-Waiting Extravaganza.

"Sleeping on concrete? A joy!," I maintained.

"Who needs toes? Not me!," I opined.

"What could be more fun than spending a night surrounded by my fellow comedians?" I thought.

(NOTE: Truly, I believed none of these things. But, in all honesty, the process of being a stand-up comedian involves a whole lot of "fooling yourself." After years of telling yourself, "Someday I'll be a star," and "If I made one person laugh tonight then it was all worth it," and "Those audience members just threw things to show how much they were enjoying my act," a little bit of "Hey, this audition won't be so bad" isn't so hard to swallow.)

I arrived outside the comedy club at 10pm, twelve hours before the audition was scheduled to start, clad in four shirts, two pairs of pants, and a pocket full of hopes and dreams (and by "hopes and dreams," I mean "gum wrappers".) I was about thirtieth in line.

At that point, I believe the temperature hovered somewhere between "SO COLD" and "FREAKING FREEZING."

Lucky for ME, I was in line right behind a guitar player and a harmonica player who had the spectacular talent of being able to play the very same unrecognizable, horrible song in two entirely separate keys at the same time. It's not often that someone has talent like THAT and can do stand-up as well.

Sometimes it's easy not to notice the cold when you are instead noticing the blood streaming from your ears.

(ANOTHER NOTE: Don't think that I don't know that there's a thin line between "funny" and "bitter" and I've crossed it. I recognize this fact like the Dickens. )

Oh, let's speed this story up a little. I waited. I got cold. I got ouchy. I got numb. I cuddled with people I've never met. I yelled at people I've never met. (These two groups were not necessarily different people.) I pondered cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery. I drank hot chocolate. I cried.

Fourteen hours later, I auditioned.

The audition went like this:

ME: Blah blah blah, joke. Blah joke. Blah joke. Bla....
JUDGE #1: Thanks, that's enough.
JUDGE #2: I like her. She's funny. I think we should keep her.
JUDGE #1: No, I don't think she's ready. She's too new.
JUDGE #2: I think she's cute.
JUDGE #1: She is cute. But I don't think she's ready.
ME: Wait. Is there anything I can do to convince you?
JUDGE #1: Well, you could take off your.....
ME: Other than that.
JUDGE #2: I guess not. Thanks for your time.

And I went home.

In retrospect, I should have taken off my shirt. After all, I had on three more.

THE END.

(This story was brought to you by Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. , Top Plastic Surgeons, and Search Engine Reputation Management. Yeah, I don't know who they are either.)

You requested this story a while ago but it's not like I've ever claimed that I'm good-at-doing-things-fast or un-lazy-and-punctual. Or tall. Or unlikely to eat too many cookies.

But here it is.

The Time I Wore Roller Skates to a Formal Dance

It's hard to write a story when you've already given away the good part in the title. The crux of the story, already told. I should have called the story, "Guess Where I Wore Roller Skates!"

Or, "The Time I Wore Something-But-I'm-Not-Going-To-Tell-You-What to a Formal Dance."

Er, or maybe, "The Time I Went To a Formal Dance and Something That May or May Not Have Had to do With What I Was Wearing Was a Little Odd. Also There Were Wheels."

Let's start over.

The Time I Went Somewhere and Wore Something But It's All a Secret

'Twas a month before the dance. My friend asked a simple question: "Hey Jill, what are you wearing to the formal?"

My reply?

Roller skates.

Wait, what?? Why would I say that? I can't possibly have just said that. What am I talking about? I don't even OWN roller skates.

Yet at that point, my fate was sealed.

You see, in college every girl has a "type:" sorority girls, theatre girls, sports girls, girls who sit in their rooms and practice kissing on pillows, etc. Well, I suppose I was known as a girl who, at any given moment, just MIGHT just wear roller skates to a formal.

So there was really no turning back.

There are two assumptions that one might make about a girl that chooses to wear roller skates to a formal:

1) She has informed her date of her roller-skating intentions.

2) She knows how to roller skate.

Neither of these assumptions would be, technically, true in this case.

Luckily assumption number one was taken care of almost immediately when aforementioned friend approached my date within approximately fifteen-hundredths of a second and said, "I heard your DATE is wearing roller skates to the formal."

Luckily my date, in addition to being terribly cute and an excellent dresser (i.e. "decided he was gay about 25 minutes into the formal,") handled the information admirably. Rather than saying, "What???" or "Roller skates???" or anything with three or more questions marks, he simply smiled and said,

"What kind of tuxedo goes with roller skates?**"

So there was much to be done in the next few weeks. Dress-shopping and roller-skate shopping, and roller-skate painting (they have to match the dress, you know.) I decided that the BEST way to handle this would be to do it all on the day of the actual dance.

This is how I ended up wearing WET, blue, glittery roller skates to a formal.

See there IS a surprise in the story! I may have given away a lot in the title, but I didn't give away the fact that the roller skates in question were wet and blue and glittery. I'm a regular old expert secret-keeper.

The rest of the story is rather anti-climactic. We went. People clapped. I fell. A lot. Patrick kissed me. Also informed me he thought he was gay. I ended up with very sore ankles. Because of the skates. Him being gay did not make my ankles sore. Don't believe the stereotypes.

It's late.

The end.

**It's possible that this particular date might have already guessed that I'm a bit goofy. I had asked him to said formal by slipping this note under his door:

Patrick:

Will you go to Waltz Ball with me? Please check the appropriate box:
Yes ___
Of Course __
I'd Be Delighted __
Why Not? ___

Kisses,
Jill

If there's one thing you can say about Jill Twiss it's that she may ask people out in a totally immature way but at least she's not stupid enough to put a "No" box.