Backyard Comedy

I got offered a backyard comedy gig and, I have to admit, my heart leapt at the opportunity. The temptation to get back into comedy brain was too strong to pass up. It hit me right in the pleasure center, like an familiar olfactory triggered memory. I could smell it like, a cartoon shark smelling blood or a comic strip alcoholic smelling booze and I wanted in unecivocally and voraciously.

David is setting up the show for his wife’s 40th birthday and as we talked details, I could hear in his voice a lot of what I have felt these past couple months when I tried to do or plan anything. Its a sense of exasperation, at a loss, too tired to try, every idea puncured and sunk with well, what about this and what about that? He was on the fence about the whole thing and I could tell if I didn’t think it could work, he was going to let it go. Quarantine fatigue I think is what they are calling it. The tension is shifting constantly, which will be interesting for the show.

What do I believe? I have to take a stand and risk judgement at some point. I played it safe for a long time when it came to my opinion, increasingly so as the country divides more and more. Its was self-protection thing, it was a survival mechanism that served me well as a kid but as adult and certainly as a comic, its lost its value. I find myself in weary conversations with some people in my outer circle. Its like, I’m making more of an effort to reconnect with people I only talk to a few times a year, or haven’t talked to in years and suddenly they are curious about what I got at the grocery store? What could be behind the sudden curiosity of my grocery list? Are you that bored or are you assessing my purchases to see if I am truly only shopping for essentials?

Maybe Idaho is rubbing off and maybe thats a good thing and maybe its not. But I believe that we can maintain a safe physical distance while in the presence of each other, continue to not gather in large groups, limit trips to the store and wear masks. We should wash our hands and sanitize as often as possible. Those have been the guidelines from the beginning and we should continue to do our best at maintaining them. I don’t believe in blatantly abandoning all precautions. I also don’t believe in judging and shaming and looking wearily at each other. We shouldn't have to prove ourselves precautions at every turn out of fear that people will write us off if we don’t think and behave exactly like them. A silver lining to all the division in our country is that it is increasingly impossible to please everyone and for those of us who are groomed for it, we have to choose. We have to choose to stand behind ourselves and our beliefs and be ok with the fact that some might not agree with that choice. We have to accept that they may throw our relationship out with the bathwater. I guess this is my way of saying, Im choosing to do the show.

So into comedy brain I go… I figured I’d write out my set here, its as good a place as any.

Intro-Hey Neighbors! Hi! thanks for coming out to David and Tanya’s backyard for this unconventional and technically illegal comedy show! Big round of applause to David for bootlegging entertainment during these uncertain times. Though I don’t know about you but I never felt we were living in certain times. Lets give a bigger shout out to the reason we are all here- Happy Birthday Tanya! …

… We have a great outdoors themed show for you this afternoon; we’ve brought some of the best local talent in Boise- Montanta Burke who hates the outdoors and Dylan Hunter who clearly is the outdoors. (Dylan has a mangey beard and is very self-deprecating.) My name is Beth Norton, Ill be your host and sanitation worker this evening. (Leave a little space here to comment on the “venue” or make another topical joke if it comes to mind?)

Clap if you’re from Idaho….

Short Distance relationships

7th Generation Idahoan

Greg

Tinder

Laundry Day -> Needs/IUD

Can I get you pregnant?

Saved

(Tone shift- most raunchy)

Rollerblades

Balls-Breasts

New transition… fear is a funny thing….

Skydiver Sam (check time)

follow up with 27 club, new joke! ->Visitor

Orthodontist bit

Vagina Dialogue

Bus Testicle

And that should be 20-25 minutes. Maybe I’ll riff a bit about telling an old friend this morning that I was doing this show and they asked how many people would be there. David said, 12-20 but I told her 10. Maybe there are some battles I just don’t want to have, or I am total chicken shit, ok?!

Starring out windows is what self-isolators do best

This might be the day that productivity fails me and I forgo a bra. I don’t want to get dressed or go for a walk. I probably wouldn’t even be writing this if I hadn’t made the commitment and if I didn’t know that there were at least one or two of you out there who are bored enough to read it. I read what I wrote yesterday and yeah this blog is terrible. So if you are reading it, I am sorry and I will try to be better but honestly probably not today. This is just what I am doing to keep myself mentally moving forward. I do wonder what book Brene Brown is writing right now. She and the people who are already at the top of their careers, the famous comedians, skilled authors and journalists, the people of our times, they will tell the stories of this time in our history and for that I am jealous. All I have are grand hopes for our collective conscious shift and a fundamental change to our systems and this quarantine blog.

I love logistics. I am fascinated by systems and I loathe that they fail us.

(Long Pause)

(Stare out the window)

Systems are people. That is something I learned in the first half of my Master’s in Public Administration program. Systems are the people who make them up. In us, as a people and a system, I see a blind spot when it comes to patterns and our individual parts in them. Our systems have a hard time helping people. Navigating them as a user feels like playing a game you can’t win, like the Hunger Games. They don’t all fail us, all the time. If I receive the unemployment I was quoted for, that system will work for me. I’m thinking primarily right now our crisis response systems at the local, state and federal levels, of coarse. Who isn’t? And ugh, get me back in school cause the next time something like this happens, and there will be a next time, I want to be in a position to contribute to the response, if not the telling.

I promised to revisit the difference between boredom and loneliness. The other night, though I had gone for a good hike in the foothills and delivered food to people and had just a tip top, gorgeously productive day, when I got home and the sun went down, I felt lonely. I hadn’t felt that in a good while. I felt so lonely I got mad at the people who weren’t here and then I started to think, like I used to all the time, “no one loves me…” As soon as I heard myself say those words I was I knew I was in trouble , that I was going to a place that I did not want to go and then thought, “ah yes, there is food for this.” I knew that I needed to immediately love myself to keep from going down that hole and so I ate a second dinner and then a second dessert and passed out before the endorphins could wear off. Its ok to give yourself what you need when you really need it most. So here is my half-baked theory- loneliness can lead to dangerous places and requires some sort of preferably immediate action, where as boredom is a blessing to be fully given into.

This hoodie has food all over it and smells like b.o.

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But what about yard sale season?

On the topic of What do you do with all your spare time? Louise writes off the top, “This is what I can’t decide: -Whether I don’t have any spare time at all, or whether most of my time is spare time.”

Finding a bread recipe for which I have all the tools and ingredients took a bit of searching. No bread stone, stand mixer or even metal loaf pan at my disposal, I’m trying this one and using the dual cast iron alternative method because I also don’t have a dutch over. I’m suddenly craving yard sale season.

Last season I was moving into the apartment I am in now and I needed trash recycling cans. I was working full-time at that point so I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and struggled with the decision between the $50 single canister or the dual auto-opening $200 can for 15-20 minutes when I came to my senses and bought the $50 one. I carried that still relatively expensive trashcan around in my car for a good week, feeling not quite right about the purchase. Ahhhh… wait. I’m out $50 bucks and I still need another trash can? Then I remembered that yard sale season was approaching and I brought that trashcan back. .

It was a particularly magical spring. I devoted a wholeSaturday to the activity of finding trashcans and other things, did the mapping and everything and then I hit the motherhood- an entire subdivision of sales! Turns out it was an annual thing; they had a banner! I walked past house after house of friendly families and elderly home-girls, appliances and clothes, tools and sporting equipment, sun on my face, all for far below retail value, gently USED stuff! I had a full dopamine release, a feeling akin to orgasm, my legs got weak and I had to sit on a curb. I ended up with a nice tall white can for $3.00 another small stainless one, almost identical to the one at BB&B for $5.00 which I haggled down to $4.00 (on principle.) Im not going to pay $5.00 for a trashcan at a yard sale, common.

Its hard to tell how this pandemic will effect the yard, garage, rummage sale biz… will people be de-cluttering and cleaning or ware they finally using all of the stuff they never had time to for before, like Norwegian whisks and proofing baskets?

Louise goes on to say that since she enjoys everything she does, aside from cooking, and because it is all necessary to survival, “there is no demarcation between work and play.” Then she writes at greater length about smelting, or the process of catching very small sardine-like-fish with a short running season, at much greater length than she discusses giving birth. The bread came out just fine, a mere morning of light work between writing this and doing poorly at my boundaries by listening to the news and texting friends. Basically anything that is not looking for ways to make income or temporary relief from unemployment is considered spare time for me and like Louise I enjoy it all, most especially the cooking. I’m going to get to the whole income thing right after I finish detailing all my shoes and watching my favorite Vermont Hippie Mom friend make cookies on google chat.

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