Kimberly Welsh Must Be Stopped.

If any of you sees Kimberly Welsh, could you please pound her stupid face in for me? Thanks.

I know what you're thinking. You're all like, "WHHAAAAAAT? But you're Kimberly Welsh!" And to that I say, "I KNOW RIGHT?!?!" But sadly there are a lot of people who don't know, and therein lies the problem. Because it is often said that the only thing you have in this life is your good name. And mine has been stolen.

I don't mean it's been "identity-theft" stolen (not recently, anyway), but I mean I have a name-doppelgängerin, and she is a law-breakin', bill-not-payin' MACHINE! I know this because I started getting friendly phone calls for her in the first month I lived in my condo. This period in my life is also referred to as "That Time I Spent 4 Straight Weeks Walking Around Wild-Eyed Screaming 'WHAT HAVE I DONE?'" Homeownership was not an easy transition for me. Just to paint you a picture: my cat tore the blinds down in my bedroom within an hour of moving in. On the first night, the smoke alarm malfunctioned, which is why I ended up standing on a chest of drawers trying to knock if off the wall with a broom (I succeeded). The next morning, the cat perched himself atop a box, which was sitting beside an open box full of measuring cups and other cookware...and then he puked directly into the box with the measuring cups and cookware. On my way to the kitchen to wash cat puke from my cookery, I noticed that the ratio of ants to food in my dog's bowl was approximately "so many ants that you can no longer see the food". That afternoon, I heard a strange noise and realized that the microwave had turned itself on and was gleefully heating itself up, completely empty, as it continued to do every few hours until I finally just unplugged it.

In other words: things weren't going well at 7pm, when I received my very first phone call on my shiny new phone and a VERY angry VERY pushy person wanted to know how and when I intended to pay off the balance on my Sears card, which I had incurred by purchasing a $2,000 sofa over a year ago. This confused me, because:

1. Do I look like a person who buys furnitureat Sears? I have no need for a Craftsman sofa.

2. Do I look like would rack up $2,000 of debt for anything other than pizza, Midori, or eyeliner? Girl, please.

I was even more confused when the person on the phone insisted that I was definitely the person he wanted to talk to. The issue was only finally resolved when I gave him the last 4 digits of my social security number, thereby confirming that there are, in fact, multiple (2) Kimberly Welshes living in this town. 

In the intervening years, as that Sears card debt has been passed from shady collection agency to shady collection agency, and they have taken turns calling me every 3-5 days, threatening to take a baseball bat to my kneecaps. Over a sofa. From Sears. I've learned that when they say, "Are you Kimberly Welsh?", the correct answer is, "I am a Kimberly Welsh, but I doubt I'm the one you're looking for." And then I take the earliest opportunity to do my SSN trick and escape, Houdini-like, from their bullying nonsense. (Sidenote: Seriously - those bad debt collection agencies are SHA. DY. The government should do something about them, as soon as they're done beating the living crap out of the credit reporting agencies, but that's another issue.)

I never understand why they call me. The debt is now at least 5 years old, and she has evaded them this long.  Do these people genuinely think they're the first ones to search her name in a phone listing? Why has no one thought of this before? Do you really think that after all this time, it's as simple as calling that number? Really? Do some work, lazyface. 

But this isn't nearly as perplexing as the one (and only) (knock on wood) time I got pulled over. I had allegedly rolled through a stop sign, but it's very a much a he said/she said, to be honest. Anyway, I dutifully gave the officer my license and waited patiently for him to run my information. When he returned to the car, he said, AND I QUOTE, "I thought I was going to have to arrest you." And I thought, "Wow. They're really cracking down on rolling stops on barely-trafficked surface streets." He continued, "I ran your name, and there's a warrant out for your arrest." And I thought, "Damn overdue library books!" And then he said, "Yep, you're wanted for...

[WAIT FOR IT]

driving without a license."

Pause.

"But, um, sir...you're holding my license. That's my license. Right there. In your hand."

"I know. That's how I figured there's a different Kimberly Welsh..."

"Oh you have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!"

So please. If you are on Team Law-Abiding Bill-Paying Licensed-Driver Kimberly Welsh, and you know someone who can put their hands on Law-Breaking Deadbeat Pain in My Ass Kimberly Welsh, yank her deadbeat butt of that Craftsman sofa and turn her in to the authorities. 

Hello? Is It Me You're Looking For?

I bet you thought I forgot my password, didn't you? Well I didn't. And you probably weren't thinking that, either. You were probably thinking something more like "What a lazy slob! She writes 300 crappy pages of sketch comedy we don't even get to read and make fun of, and then we never hear from her again! The nerve!" And what if I HAD forgotten my password? I could've spent the last week running around tearing my home - and myself - apart searching for it, frantic at the thought that my loyal readership (BOTH of them) were being denied my razor-sharp wit! Then you'd feel pret-ty bad for being so mean to me.

But like I say, I wasn't. Still, my absence was still perfectly justified and you shouldn't judge me. Because I have

10 Perfectly Good Reasons Why I Haven't Blogged In Nearly A Week

1. This whole Facebook redesign thing has been very difficult for me. And yes, thank you, I did anticipate it by 5 days.
2. I had the Ebola for a while there. Or wait - maybe it was hay fever. Which one do you take Zyrtec for? That one.
3. Every time I tried to write a blog post, I thought about the "DANG MY CAPS WAS LOCKED" guy and laughed so hard I couldn't type.
4. I've been devoting all of my time to my personal campaign against the so-called "Buffet Rule". Keep your paws off my 7-figure income, Uncle Sam!!! I need that money to power the economy! It trickles down every time I tip the guy who dusts my polo ponies!
5. I had to camp out for Weird Al tickets.
6. I started reading He's Just Not That Into You and got completely sucked in by its nauseating, condescending tone! I couldn't put it down, so ultimately I just doused it in gasoline and set it on fire instead.
7. I lost a Twitter follower and spent the entire week trying to figure out who it was. (Answer: a bikini-clad spambot selling vitamin pills)
8. I was up past 10pm last Saturday night, and have been catching up on my sleep ever since.
9. 2 words: Angry Birds.
10. It's taken a week to get the head-to-toe full-body tattoo I'll be sporting for college football season!

Sketch Challenge, 4th & 5th Sets: It Is Done.

WARNING: CONTAINS GRATUITOUS SELF-INDULGENT YAMMERING

Oh.

My.

God.

It's done. It's over. I'm finished. I literally cannot believe it.

When I first hatched this bright-ass idea, I thought it would be fun! Then I thought it would be educational! Then I thought it would be a great way to sharpen my writing skills!

...and then I thought, "If I drink enough tequila to drown a horse, I will feel better."

Luckily I managed to come back with a vengeance these last two weeks and I FINISHED. I don't know what suddenly motivated me to get off my ass (or rather, to get back on my ass in front of my computer), but I'm glad I did! The thing is, I usually start a challenging creative project, get about 80% done, and quit/give up/whatever you want to call it. When progress ground to a halt in the 4th set, I feared I had gone as far as I was gonna go. So now, even though the last two sets aren't my best work, they're done. And I'm pretty ridiculously pleased about that.

So did I achieve my goals? And while I'm thinking about it, what the hell were my goals? I'm WAY too lazy to reread the original posts, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to:
1. amuse myself
2. find out what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline (which is why the deadlines were modeled on John Finnemore's for his sketch show)
3. become a better writer

We'll take them individually. Because it's MY blog. And I have achieved something for a change, so I will talk about it for as long as I damn well please.

1. Did I amuse myself? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. More often than not, I would walk away from a writing session saying something like "Mother of GOD I suck!" This was decidedly unamusing, and was also a large part of the reason my liver took such a massive hit in the middle few weeks. But there were also numerous times when I would reread something a few weeks after writing it and find myself actually laughing, pleasantly surprised at the quality of my work. So I was amused some of the time. I'll say this for the overall project: it was consistently 100% amusing to watch myself try to rationalize my failures and procrastinations. Hilarious. Five stars.

2. Do I now know what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline? Again: yes and no. I definitely got a healthy dose of reality about it. I mean, I read a lot (like, A LOT) of interviews with/blogs maintained by people who write comedy (not just John Finnemore), and I had seen patterns emerge in their collective characterization of the process. But when people keep saying writing comedy is like pulling teeth...I guess I just couldn't grasp it. I mean, writing my master's thesis was like pulling teeth. Doing writing samples for job applications is like pulling teeth. But comedy? Something funny? How can that ever be work?

I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IT CAN VERY EASILY BE WORK. AND VERY VERY DIFFICULT WORK, AT THAT.

Now when I read those interviews/blogs, I can genuinely relate to what those people are saying. I know exactly what they mean. So in that respect, I "know what's like" now.

On the other hand, I still have no idea "what it's like" in terms of deadlines. It's fantastic that I finished today, but I was supposed to be done on August 27th. And that was after I gave myself a 2-week mental health break in the middle. I'm willing to give myself a little bit of leeway here, in that it was never possible for me to truly replicate Being a Full-Time Comedy Writer, since I'm already a Full-Time Something Else and a Part-Time Improv Actress. And then my Full-Time Something Else Employer went and staged a MAJOR acquisition right in the middle of my Sketch Challenge (the nerve!), which meant I ended up spending even more time and energy in that sphere than usual. So maybe it wasn't realistic to expect myself to meet the same deadlines as John Finnemore. On the other hand, he was doing sketch show stuff while doing Cabin Pressure stuff and becoming The Definitive Summarizer of the NOTW Scandal on The Now Show, so it's not like he was able to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on sketch writing either. That's why I'm not completely excused. Quit yer bitchin', Welsh! We all have other shit going on! (<-- 99% sure this is not how John Finnemore would talk.)

3. Did it make me a better writer? In all honesty, I think the quality went steadily downhill from the middle of the 3rd set onward. The dialogue got more stilted, the jokes (on the rare occasion when there were discernible jokes after the 3rd set) weren't any good and tended to be ill-timed...everything just felt clunkier. Maybe it was because I had run out of ideas. Or maybe it was because I had too much other stuff going on (see: Employer situation). Or maybe it was because I went on vacation and lost my mojo. Or maybe I got bored and stopped paying attention - I will readily admit that by the time I got to the last 3 pages, I would gladly have written my name over and over again just to fill the space and be DONE. I think I'll just postpone this assessment. If there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's that everything gets better when extensively edited. And right now I'm putting the sketches aside for 2 weeks so I can come back completely fresh and edit the living crap out of them in October. I'll tell you on 1 November whether I've learned anything as a writer.

For now, here are 10 things I have learned during the Sketch Challenge:
1. The more tired I am, the less likely I am to fall asleep.
2. I can't write with ambient music playing. I just need the same 10 songs (with lyrics) to play over and over and over while I work.
3. "Butter London" is a Seattle-based company. WTF?!?!?
4. I have a friend who can do TEN official Disney character autographs!
5. Yellow roses symbolize jealousy(?!?!)
6. This: "?!?!!" is called an "interrobang". You're welcome.
7. There is a statue of a man walking a gator on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

In case anyone was confused as to the meaning of the term "baller"

8. I don't like eating doughnuts as much as I like thinking about eating doughnuts.
9. 97% of guys named Ben are hot. FACT.
10. The Scrivener project target bar really does turn green...eventually.

I am Happy. I am Sorry.

OK, so I guess I'm making this up but I thought that title was stolen from a tweet which was tweeted by one of my favorite UK comedian/blogger types, Michael Legge. But I can't find it in his timeline now, so clearly I invented it out of thin air, along with the story of how he tweeted it while he was in Edinburgh, as well as my own inference that what he meant was that he didn't have anything funny to say, because he wasn't mad about anything, because he was happy.

But that whole paragraph is apparently a mixture of fiction and fantasy. I hope you enjoyed it.

ANYWAY! If it had been true, then I would know exactly how he hypothetically felt! Because I've been struggling with my own blog for the past week, and not because I'm so depressed I want to drink myself into a coma and then slowly die in a puddle of my own vomit, which was the previous reason I was having trouble blogging. Now I'm just too damn happy and I don't have anything to say!

I mean, I could tell you about how happy I am, but that would be boring. It's not like I even have any news to share. I didn't meet any great guys or win a million dollars or anything like that. I managed to enjoy a vacation, which is a pretty major personal victory, but there's only so much you can say about that.

And now it is very cold outside (remembering of course that I am from the South, and anything below 80 degrees is "very cold" to me), which makes me simultaneously happy and sad. I mean let's face it, those three-digit temperatures weren't doing anybody any favors, and probably contributed to what I can only describe as "mass insanity" in August, which led to rioting in England, Rick Perry being taken seriously in the US, and me trying to give up booze and chocolate at the same time. WHAT WERE WE THINKING, YOU GUYS? LOL!

So yeah. Here's this incredibly boring blog post. I couldn't even work up enough snark to write a half-assed Top Ten list or some shit. Here's hoping something makes me miserable again soon!

Packin' It Up. Packin' It Oooooonnnnn Up.

When I started this blog, lo these 3 whole months ago, I was wide-eyed and optimistic. I was excited! I had decided I wanted to be a comedy writer! I was going to write sketches and sitcoms and funny articles, and I would have the blog for ideas that wouldn't fit anywhere else, or just as a place to find my voice and keep in touch with all the cool people I met along the way!

It was a good time. I told myself I needed to post on the blog at least 3 times a week, just to keep my skills sharp and get into the habit of generating content.

But the last few days few weeks month has been really rough, in terms of Real Life. I absolutely refuse to get into it here, because that's not what this is for, but it has been exasperating and draining and frustrating. As a result, I've been in a Really Quite Bad Mood. I'm afraid that if I keep insisting on a 3-blog post/week minimum, the blog itself will become a draining stressor. As it's one of the purely pleasant things in my life at the moment, that's a risk I don't want to take.

SO! I'm not "taking a break from blogging", because I will definitely be back whenever I have something to say and the time/discipline to say it. But I am releasing myself from my obligation to post three times a week*. I'll be back whenever I feel like being back. And maybe I'll try something different, like posting audio or video or updating my tumblr blog, to snap myself out of my funk. Whatever happens, I'll see ya when I see ya, instead of seeing ya while feeling snarly. Better that way, I think we can all agree.

*Note: Of course, now that I've said I don't have to blog 3x/week, I will be blogging all the freaking time. That's the way these things usually work, anyway ;)

The Case of the Jolly Green Giant Marital Aid

Tonight we start a new recurring feature. While the other recurring features such as John of the Week, Not Very Nice Quizzes, and Kwerky Poetry Corner are all pleasant, fun, and/or life-affirming, this particular feature will be in a separate category altogether. And this category will be known as "Recurring Features I Wish Didn't Exist At All, But I Am Powerless to Prevent Their Existence Because Other People Have No Consideration Whatsoever". Allow me to paint you a picture:

You buy a home. One of the things you like most about your new home is the lovely view. In fact, this gorgeously landscaped pool view is so pretty that your home was ever so slightly pricier than its neighbors, owing to its lovely view. But shortly after you move in, you come home from work, go to enjoy your lovely view, and find that your window looks out over...a landfill. 

Welcome to my life.

You see, the average American household generates over 13 tons of trash every week, according to a wildly exaggerated© statistic I just made up. Those of us that are civilized human beings generally pack our trash into specially designed "trash bags", which we then convey to the nearest dumpster, or to the curb to be picked up by specially trained trash-disposing professionals. But my upstairs neighbors are no ordinary civilized human beings! They don't have TIME for "trash bags" and "dumpsters" and "doing anything with their trash other than hurling it over their balcony so it lands on mine". I mean, I estimate that it takes me *maybe* 5 minutes to bag my trash and walk it to the dumpster, so the fact that they don't have that kind of time leads me to the inevitable conclusion that these people are mere seconds away from curing HIV, or making contact with extraterrestrials, or inventing a calorie-free sweetener that doesn't dry your mouth out. They are IMPORTANT, dammit! Let someone ELSE worry about their trash! Someone like ME! 

I've let this go on for quite some time. I really don't want to confront these people, as the sounds I hear coming from their home lead me to believe that in addition to whatever life-saving research they do, they are also either Olympic shot-putters, expert meth chefs, or some combination of those. I want no part of that exchange. Over the months, some of their refuse, such as the beef blood-stained paper towel, have been cleared away by Mother Nature. But the rest hasn't. And today I walked through my door, looked out the window, saw the most ridiculously egregious thing yet, and said, "Right. It's all going in the trash." I waited til nightfall, dashed out under cover of darkness, and recovered it. Is this insanity? Yes. Is this my job/responsibility? Absolutely not. But if I have to do it (and I clearly do, because I'm not going to keep looking out my window at someone else's trash, and no one else is going to come get it), then I'm going to have some fun at their expense.

Random Trash My Upstairs Neighbors Saw Fit to Throw Over Their Balcony So I Have to Look at It

Exhibit A: The Big Green Dildo

This thing appeared just outside my balcony about a year ago. A long, green, hollow plastic cylinder. The first time I saw it, I was horrified. It was the biggest, greenest, most oddly shaped marital aid I'd ever seen in my life. I shuddered to think what weird Kermit fantasies were being indulged just above my head.

Now that I've brought it inside, I can see that it says "DOGSAVERS", and is therefore probably (hopefully) just a dog toy. Still, there are a few standard-issue questions we need to ask.
#1: How did it get tossed over the balcony?
This dog barks incessantly. I don't think it's a particularly bad dog, but I don't get the impression that they like it very much. Thus do we logically conclude that they threw the dildo dog toy over the balcony in the hope that the dog would chase it and fall to its death. Inconsiderate AND evil.

#2: Why did it get tossed over the balcony?
This has basically already been answered in #1, but we could also consider some other possibilities. For example, maybe it was just old and they didn't want it anymore. Maybe they did use it as a sex toy and were so disgusted with themselves that they couldn't look at it anymore. Maybe it was shot-putting practice and someone didn't know their own strength. Or maybe they just didn't know the strength of gravity. Or maybe - just maybe - they were too damn lazy to dispose of it appropriately.

#3: Why haven't they tried to get it back?
I always wonder about this one. Do they wander through like periodically saying, "Hey - has anybody seen the DOGSAVERS dildo? I swear I haven't been able to find it in months!"? Or did they stand there, watch it go tumbling over the railing, shrug their shoulders, and go back to bubbling hydrogen chloride gas through their liquid meth mixture?


They have to know it's gone; they just don't want it back. It's clearly been used in a homicide, and they had to ditch the evidence. Somewhere out there is a John Doe in a county morgue, riddled with 1-inch diameter circular welts, stinking of dog spit, covered in bludgeon marks embossed with the word DOGSAVERS. These people are not messing around. That's the kind of person who throws their trash over their balcony and walks away. DON'T BE LIKE THAT.

Sketch Challenge, 4th Set: I Don't Even Know, You Guys.

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams


Remember last weekend, when I said I'd only written 5 pages of the 4th set? Well, Saturday was the deadline and I've still written 5 pages of the 4th set. No more. WHY? I'll answer that to the tune of "Tropical Heatwave":

I'm having a breakdooooowwwwn
A writer's block breakdoooooown
My blood pressure's rising
It isn't surprising
I certainly can't.


Can't. Can't. 

I mean, I can, obviously. But I'm not, obviously. I essentially ran out of ideas. And when I tried to force an idea, all I got was really, really bad stuff. Just total crap. I appreciate that this is an exercise and a learning experience, so there will be some crap written. In fact, a great deal of crap has already been written. But there's crap, and then there's crap. And this was CRAP. I also spent more time at the theatre than usual last week, which meant I had spent a lot of creative energy before I even got to my writing desk.

Anyway, I figure that's probably enough excuses for right now. I have 2 weeks until THE Deadline for the whole project, so maybe I'll see if I can churn out the remaining 120 pages in that time. The good news is that I find I'm slowly getting some decent ideas again, after a week off, so maybe all hope is not lost.

WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF? WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?...

I thought that would be a funny title for a blog post on Wednesday, 8/whatever-last-Wednesday-was/2011. I had just come home from a self-defense workshop with my fellow improv actors (what's funnier than improv actors doing improv? Improv actors doing self-defense!), and I was struck by the fact that in 2 hours of punching, eyeball-poking, kicking, and pinching, I had done no damage whatsoever to anyone or anything else. I had, however, really given my own right knee what for! I had kneed SO many fake groins SO hard that I had a combination bruise/swelling/friction burn thing. I hobbled for most of Thursday, and the scabs still haven't healed up and fallen off. Basically, if that night was any indication, a violent attacker in a parking lot or dark alley will be met with me yelling "GIVE ME THAT!", taking his gun, and shooting myself in the face. It seems this is how I roll. You're welcome, hardened criminals.

But that blog post title was substantially less funny when it occurred to me again today. You see, I live in a condo complex with a parking garage. Among this parking garage's ultra-modern features:
- grossly undersized parking spaces, so you have to enter and exit them with surgical precision, even if you drive a little Barbie's Dreamcar Mazda Miata
- lanes too narrow to accommodate more than one car at a time, so you must be ready to dive into a space at any moment to avoid collision
- MASSIVE concrete columns every 10 feet on either side of the lane, which are convenient for testing the efficacy of your airbag, blocking available space you might otherwise use to avoid collision, and conveniently preventing you from seeing what's coming when backing out of a space. I like to think of them as Complacency Prevention Measures.
- a 7-year old whose asshole parents categorically REFUSE to prevent him from zipping through the parking garage on various non-automobile conveyances, no matter how many times the newsletter specifically states that no one should be electro-scootering, rollerblading, skateboarding, etc. in the crowded and dangerous parking garage. Dear That Kid's Parents: Be sure to take out a life insurance policy on him! Love, Darwin

I lost my passenger side mirror to a concrete column the first week I lived here, but in the subsequent four years have developed good parking garage survival instincts and avoided further trouble. Until Saturday...

On my way to the gate, I found myself at one of the many points where the lane is not wide enough for 2 cars to turn in opposing directions at the same time. Being a fundamentally polite person, I stopped and waited for the oncoming car to move past me. Then I waited for the next one. And the next. And the next. Around car #6, I couldn't help feeling that in all fairness, my turn had come, and since car #7 had fallen a little behind, I figured I could start my turn, he would see me/stop, and then I could move forward. Instead, I pulled forward, he saw me...and decided to play chicken with me.

I am nothing if not a huge chicken.

Unfortunately, he was such an aggressive sportsman that he had advanced too quickly for a simple stop to be sufficient to avoid head-on collision, so I also had to swerve...thereby slamming the back half of my car into the concrete column on my right.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but people are HUGE assholes. Seriously.

I heard the crunch zone of my rear passenger door surrendering to the concrete, and I immediately went into my Vehicular Emergency Coping Procedure:
Step 1: Close eyes. Think "That did not just happen. That did not just happen. That did not just happen."
Step 2: Open eyes. Faced with the unavoidable reality that something bad did just happen, find the nearest place to pull over. Convey your vehicle to that point for assessment.
Step 3: Unlock all doors, knowing you are having a breakdown and are INCREDIBLY likely to accidentally lock yourself out. Then go have a look.
Step 4: Crumble into a heap.

And just in case you think I'm kidding about Step 1, I once had an accident in which I rolled into the car ahead of me in bumper-to-bumper rain-induced traffic. After the initial BAM, I commenced Step 1. When the car behind me rolled into me and I felt the subsequent identical BAM, I became completely and utterly convinced that I had been swallowed up into a temporal loop, and was doomed to sit in that bucket seat, slamming into the car in front of me over and over and over, for the rest of eternity. I am not kidding. The only way I eventually realized I wasn't in Purgatory was when I saw the rain-soaked face of the driver from the car behind me, knocking on my window and asking if I was alright.

But I digress. The thing is, I was completely devastated by Saturday's turn of events. Not because I'm that materialistic and can't cope with cosmetic damage to my car, but because 1) I DO NOT have the funds to cover the repair of the damage caused when I essentially drove into a concrete column of my own accord ("WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?") and 2) if you've stumbled upon my little "About Me" page, you'll know that I have a bad habit of naming/anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. This was not cosmetic damage to my car; this was me being wholly responsible for harming Arionrhod - a wonderful companion who has been nothing but good to me.

Rion in happier times, on the day I got her. MY POOR BABY! WHYYYYYYYYYY??????

I couldn't have felt worse if I had sucker-punched my best friend for no reason. And I would feel really badly about that. To make matters worse, these injuries to my current ride were eerily reminiscent of those sustained by my very first car, Rex, in my very first accident:

The Baby Jesus Dodging Incident

I was 17. I'd had Rex for about 6 months. Christmas was coming. I was going to go to Sunday School, mostly because all of my friends were there. I drove to the church I had attended from the age of 5. I turned down the parking lot aisle in which my family had parked since I was 5. But my way was blocked by the Christmas-y addition of a manger, in which lay the baby Jesus.

A dumpster prevented me from seeing traffic behind me, so I couldn't back into the main thoroughfare. But I also couldn't park in the middle of the lane, as I would be blocking the 4 cars that had gotten the only 4 available spaces. I assessed the situation.

This was the reality of the situation.

This was my perception of the situation.

As you can see from the illustration above, I was pretty sure my car was an aircraft carrier, and the son of God was, quite literally, all around me. Perhaps I should point out that the "baby Jesus" was not an actual baby, but a doll, as you probably expect. My paranoia was not about hitting him and/or caving his manger in on him. The problem was that I was 17 years old. If I had done anything that damaged the manger and/or the representation of the Christ child, I would spend the rest of high school being "The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus". NOBODY'S reputation can take that. NOBODY. So my focus was that I would not, under any circumstances, take out the manger. I took my foot off the brake and started to inch forward. Once Mary and Joseph were even with my side mirror, I figured I was in the clear.

That's when I heard the crunch of surrender on my passenger side and felt Rex come to a total standstill. In my concern to avoid hitting the manger, I had managed to get snagged on the rear corner of the church van. So I was embarrassed, devastated, and unable to free my car from the van's grip. Ultimately a kind soul sent his wife and daughters into the church while he stood in the cold and directed me through the steps to liberate Rex, at which point I engaged in Steps 3 and 4 for the first time in my life.

So I wasn't The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus. Instead, I was The Girl Who Destroyed Her Own Car and a Church Van in Order to Avoid Running Over Jesus. So I saved Jesus, who then saved everybody else, which basically means I am the savior of mankind. You're all welcome. I'm going to hell.

MY POINT IS: there are few things in this life that will make you feel dumber/more publicly humiliated than doing thousands of dollars of damage to your own car all by yourself. Arionrhod's journey back to wholeness will begin on Monday, but I have no idea when (or if) my ego will ever bounce back. I sure hope the asshat who spooked me into the column enjoyed his afternoon at the pool! I'm off to take some more sedatives to try and stop the flashbacks.

Sketch Challenge, What 4th Set?

*punches computer in the face*

5 pages done so far.

Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: Not Now But Soon

I am so tired.

I finished the last 13 pages of Set 3 this morning, about 10 hours late. I won't make any excuses; I just didn't get it done on time. This week's sketches got markedly more political. I had previously avoided that sort of thing, and was still hesitant to do so this week. But in the end I decided that's where my head was, so that's what I'd write. It's not like these will ever see the light of day anyway.

I still feel very disorganized and unstable, though I've made substantial progress in getting things together. This morning I was fondly remembering the first week of Kimberly Welsh's Sketch Challenge and Proof of Insanity, Now No Longer Giving A Shit What The Sketch Is About, Or Indeed Whether It's Funny, So Long As The Page Count Goes Up. Ah, those halcyon days when I was so full of optimism and wonder. I remember how excited I was to carry my little pocket notebook around, seeing the world through the eyes of a kid on an Easter egg hunt, searching for the little nugget of humor in everything. Everything was so shiny and new! Now my house is a disaster area, I scrounge for food, I barely look presentable half the time...

I'm hurtin', y'all.

BUT! This was the whole point of the Sketch Challenge and Gauntlet and Rite of Passage! Because I read that John Finnemore was going to write 5 sketch shows in 10 weeks, and we all know that while that sounds fun, it's probably not as much fun as we might think. And I wanted to know what it would really be like, suspecting all along that it would probably come with one or two major low points. Well at least now I know I was definitely right! And that's not even the thing I'm most proud of! My biggest accomplishment, as assessed by my very own impartial self, is that I haven't quit yet, and I'm NOT GOING TO. I'm sure I've already mentioned my unfinished EP, the two screenplays I half-finished, the various short stories that got outlined but never written... I have a bad habit of not finishing what I start. But NOT. THIS. TIME.

All my deluded expectations of being pleasantly surprised to find that I am a natural-born sketch-writing genius are dead, as are my fantasies of sitting at my spotless writing desk, sipping a cup of tea and laughing pleasantly to myself as I read joke after hilarious joke pouring out of my fingertips during daylight hours. I know now that I might have potential as a sketch writer, but I also have a really long way to go. And that getting there involves my writing desk getting very messy indeed, and me sitting there at 2 in the morning in food-stained pajamas and no makeup, having epiphanies about why people smoke cigarettes and/or do meth.

The really twisted part is: I kinda love it.

So there you have the final assessment of Set 3. Not as funny as the first two sets, a little behind schedule, not the work of genius I'd hoped for, but DONE. Which is all that matters right now.

The little bar is turning a sort of orange instead of red! I may live to see green!

Of course, quality is still a concern, and I don't like thinking I might...well...suck. It's downright depressing, actually. Which is why I was so happy when a friend of mine posted this on the social media, after snagging it from Wil Wheaton's social media, and who knows where WW got it from, but ANYWAY!

I'm getting this tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

I've always felt I'd rather write something and know it sucks than be the oblivious egomaniac who writes sludge and thinks it's comedy gold. And literally everything I'm doing at this point is pretty much 100% an act of faith, so I just have to keep thinking that eventually I will learn something and I will get better at this...provided, of course, that I don't quit. WHICH I WON'T. Reading this occasionally helps keep me reassured and calm. I need more of that.

And now for the weekly expression of gratitude to someone who said something nice which helped keep me from drinking a whole bottle of Nyquil:
John Brett of the Week! (not like that)
This week's John of the Week is...my friend Brett! I had a late-night mainstage show at the improv theatre last night, which is always a pretty sizable challenge. Holding my own amongst the mainstagers at an hour when I would ordinarily be sound asleep is no small feat for an old lady like me! But the challenge part is offset by the awesome part, which is that I get to perform AND I get to see/work with a ton of awesome people, including my aforementioned friend Brett. In the end, I had a great time with a great cast and a great emcee, which was all I could've asked for. Then I checked my Twitter timeline this afternoon and saw this:

Awwwwww!

And that made my whole weekend a billion times better. Thanks Brett! Brett also once made me an amazing origami penguin, but I am a terrible photographer and could never hope to capture its incredibleness for you here. But it lives by my TV, so you KNOW I love to look at it ;)

Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: Sometimes the Wheels Fall Off

As you may recall, last week represented the single largest FAIL of Kimberly Welsh's Sketch Challenge and Very Public Nervous Breakdown, With No Sketches Whatsoever to date. I decided to ease back into writing last weekend by writing a submission for another website! You may have noticed that I never promoted it, and that's because it was rejected. And then I also didn't put it on my own blog, because frankly I wasn't that impressed with it myself. But I had spent most of the weekend writing/editing it, so the thought that I had burned up 48 hours for nothing was pretty...disheartening.

 I resolved to start fresh this week, then singularly failed to do so, choosing instead to play with Google+ (gplus.to/kwerkygirl, if you're into that sort of thing), and Spotify, and an ill-advised quantity of alcohol. All of this avoidance was part of a vicious cycle that made me feel a little like the great Ernest Hemingway: I drank when I couldn't write, and then I couldn't write because I was drinking too much! Fun fact: It must've been fucking miserable being Ernest Hemingway. [Just as a point of fact, I am a total lightweight. So when I say "I drank too much", that means as much as 3 glasses of wine in one night. It's not like I woke up in the morning and drank a bottle of vodka before I got in the shower.]

And really, I could write; I was just too scared to, in case I couldn't write anything good. So I woke up Friday morning with the apocalyptic hangover from hell and said, "Right! That two weeks was interesting. Now might be a good time to get my shit together." So I have. I haven't gone out or done anything classically "fun" in the last 3 days, but I have written. And then I wrote, then I wrote a little more, and now I'm writing. And that feels very good, in a very geeky sort of way. WAY WAY WAY more fun than being inebriated, trust me. Yesterday, I got 30 pages of sketches written, which puts the total count at 150 pages - the halfway mark!

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel compelled to tell you that if we were to actually perform all the sketch shows I've written, this one would be the weakest BY FAR. I am singularly unimpressed. But! I don't have many good ideas to work with from the last few weeks (I blame the booze and sleep-deprivation), and this is only the first draft. If anything good came out of last weekend's mostly wasted effort, it's that I did more editing that weekend than I have ever done on any of my previous "comedic" work. And even though I didn't think the final draft was worthy of posting, I firmly believe it was about a thousand times better than the first draft. So I have a lot more faith in editing (and my ability to do it effectively) than I did before. And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that I had the benefit of a really fantastic editrix, in the form of my BFF, who critiqued the first draft and sent back some really fantastic and perfectly-worded guidance.

(Boy is she ever going to regret THAT!)

So I'm optimistic that even these horrible first drafts may yet be saved. Well, some of them, anyway.

I've just realized that I have inadvertently continued the unofficial tradition of naming the Sketch Challenge posts using song lyrics. That one up there is from Neil Halstead's "Sometimes the Wheels", which has recently become an anchor in my daily writing playlist, and which I find very comforting whenever I feel another nervous breakdown coming on. Because "Sometimes the wheels fall off, and sometimes you can't get up...and Sometimes the world moves fast, and sometimes you can't keep up, and sometimes I just sit and think, and I don't think much". BONUS: It contains a brilliant 2-line indictment of skinny jeans! Recommended.

Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: "Ack"

I'm applying the "Accountability" label here, even though it doesn't really fit. Because I am completely letting myself off scot-free.

According the various and constant warning alarms on my iPhone, iPod, and laptop, tomorrow is the deadline for the 3rd set of sketches. And John Finnemore blogged about having a show at the Albany tomorrow night, which is basically like a backup alarm for same. So what's my progress looking like?

Nothing. Not a single sketch. Please don't steal my terrible ideas, but this is what the current set looks like, compared with the last set:

Oops.

Wha' Ha' Happen' Was...

*Clears throat* I spent a day visiting my brother in Augusta and when I came back I found a stray dog and he kept me up all night and I didn't get rid of him until the next day and then I was supposed to leave town but my cat sitter went AWOL 12 hours before departure and I had to take an extra day off work to hunt her down or find a new one and I drove all over Buckhead to drop off a key and then I went to Florida with my family so there was no way I could concentrate and when I came back I was too sunburned to move and then I had to go back to work and apparently we're being bought so I had to go to a bunch of special meetings and I was going to write after rehearsal on Wednesday but it was the Summer of Fun so we had a surprise party and I stayed out til 11 and came home too drunk to focus and then I got cast in a show last night and now I have less than 24 hours to write 60 pages of sketches!!!!
(end of excuses)

I barely even scribbled down any ideas for sketches in my trusty notebook. It's been a real setback. And my initial intention when I got up this morning was to power through and try to finish on time, but I've had a realization, and it is as follows: The major problem was being out of town for 4 days. The other things were largely out of my control (with the exception of the sunburn and the drinking) and genuinely prevented me from writing. The perfectionist voice in my head feels very strongly that I have to adhere to the original schedule because the whole point was to write on exactly the same schedule as John Finnemore's Sketch Night. But just between you and me, I rather suspect that JF had some warning about this whole thing and could move his travel plans accordingly. Whereas I literally just woke up one morning and said, "Hey! I know what would be a good idea!" So the 3rd set is hereby postponed, and an additional fortnight of sketch-writing is hereby tacked onto the tail end of Kimberly Welsh's Agonizingly Slow Sketch Suicide, Currently With No Sketches About Coffee, Screaming Children, Or Anything Else For That Matter.

The focus for the next two days will now be internet writing (since I've only written one pitiful little blog post this week, and that was interrupted FIVE TIMES by lengthy phone calls). But it might interest you to know about the one thing I did manage to accomplish: I updated the photos and captions on the home page slideshow AND stashed 4 "pages" (which are not the same thing as "posts") around the blog. Secretly. Like Easter Eggs. Happy hunting!

Sketch Challenge, 2nd Set, Final Report: Who's That Girl?

I don't know why I always feel compelled to use song titles for these. Anyway.

It is noon on Saturday, 7/2/2011, and the second 60-page set of sketches is more-or-less finished (pending a printout, lunch, and a walk before coming back to it for final notes. You have to breathe sometime). I was obliged to wrap it up a little earlier than usual today, as I am expected at a family cookout this afternoon, followed immediately by a crew shift at the theatre that will keep me out until 1ish. So how do we feel about this set, as compared to the last one?

Overall, I think this set is much stronger. It flows a little more smoothly and features an improved joke-to-exposition ratio. I'm pretty pleased about that. The biggest area for improvement is consistency in work habits. I got a little busy with other things these past two weeks and didn't maintain the focus I had before. I think this set would've been even better if it had gotten the benefit of my attention more often. Lucky for me, I get to do this [at least] three more times, so I can take that lesson into the next few sets! Like I said at the end of the first set: the whole point of this exercise was to learn and (hopefully) improve, and I can honestly say that I've definitely learned a few things and I like to think I'm seeing improvement. Though I'm not sure I'm the best judge of that.

In a weird and unexpected twist, the Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge and Psychological Torture Chamber, Now With Less Coffee and More Xenophobia has also resulted in some surprising changes in my appearance (hence the title of this post). I've lost 6 pounds so far, and I'm far more tan than anyone who hasn't been on vacation has a right to be. And it's all traceable to 3 important aspects of the Psychosketchual Challenge for People Who Feel Compelled to Mentally Flog Themselves:
1. Anxiety-induced lack of appetite: Anxiety as in "HOLY CRAP WHAT IF I'M NOT FUNNY AT ALL AND EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WRITTEN SUCKS?!?!?"
2. Busy-ness-induced lack of time to eat: Have you ever tried to have a full-time job, apprentice at an improv theatre, publish at least 3 blog posts per week, submit items to Funny not Slutty, write an hourlong sketch show every fortnight AND bathe regularly? It's time-consuming.
3. Head-clearing walks: Remember when I said I felt like my brain was in a blender and/or beaten with a meat tenderizer? I wasn't kidding. I find it increasingly necessary to go walk continuously for at least an hour and half while thinking about nothing (THAT PART IS IMPERATIVE). And since I'm privileged to live in the bright, sunny South...I look like I've been sunning! And it's burning all the calories I didn't have time to eat. On Wednesday, someone actually asked me "if I'd been working on my guns". No, I have not been working on my guns. I've just been trying to walk off the crazy.

So however this whole thing ends, I'll at least be healthier for it. Well, if you don't count the skin cancer I'm probably giving myself. But speaking of "how this whole thing ends", I'm starting to think that if I was really being honest with myself, this is not the pure writing exercise I told myself it was. I'm not getting up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings "as an exercise". And if I am, that's ridiculous. My high school English teacher was always pointing out that plays are meant to be performed, not read, and Mrs. Lacy knew her stuff, so I'm starting to think the same is probably true of sketches. And when it's all over, I might make a sincere effort to do something with these. I just need to find someone who can handle *all* of the technical side for me. Because I will not be doing that part.

Anyway, that's the distant future. In the meantime, I need to focus on the 3rd Set. But I have a very busy day ahead of me (see first paragraph) and a day trip tomorrow, so I'll be taking some time off before getting back to work on America's birthday. And I'll also be out of town next Thursday-Sunday, which means I have to do A LOT more work in the first half of the two-week writing period. Wish me luck.

And now for the weekly expression of gratitude to someone who said something nice which helped keep me out of the state institution in Milledgeville:
John Emily of the Week! (not like that)
This week's John of the week is... Emily! Emily was a friend of mine when we were both knee-high to a grasshopper in elementary school. We also went to the same high school but didn't hang out that much since I was a band geek, and she...well, I guess she was probably having a life instead. Anyway! This week, she discovered my blog and said she was going to pour herself a drink and spend Thursday night reading it! Because it was "fun"! And thus did I live to tell you about another week. Thanks, Emily!

Sketch Challenge, Second Set: This is My Brain in a Blender.

So I'm about 2 days behind on updating you about the PsychoSketchual Challenge, and that is because I feel like my brain has been beaten with a meat tenderizer. There are a number of reasons for that - it's not entirely the fault of the Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge and Cry For Help, Now With Practically NO Sketches About Ordering Coffee. For one thing, I wrote a little breakup letter template for Funny not Slutty. That was super fun and I hope you'll read and enjoy it, but wasn't a sketch. And this is also one of the busiest times of the year for my day job [PUKE], which is seriously cutting into my writing time. AND I had an improv show Thursday. But enough with the jibber jabber and excuses! Current page count for this second set of sketches stands at 44. As a reminder, there are to be 60 pages, all edited to the best of my ability, by this coming Saturday.

Yikes.

So I'm cutting it a little closer this time around, but I'm also going about it a little differently (as part of the trial and error to establish my own optimal process), such that the first drafts aren't *quite* as rough and raw as the last set of first drafts were. Hopefully(?) this means I'll require slightly less editing time. Ta. Da.

And now for a new and almost certainly not regular feature...
John of the Week! (not like that)
You may recall that last week's John was Finnemore, who made my week by commenting on the Viagra post. This week's John is Raffa, who is one of my good friends and fellow improv actors! He didn't comment on anything, but he did specifically request that I write him a part in the Sketch Challenge. His exact words were: "If you're writing it, I want to be in it." Awwwww. And that made my week, which makes him...John of the Week! Congratulations, Raffa! Don't let it go to your head.

If Anybody Ax You Who I Am...

Today marks the first deadline in "Kimberly Welsh's Beyond Redonkulous Sketch Challenge That Only A Complete Nutjob Would Attempt, Now With a Slight Reduction in the Number of Sketches About Ordering Coffee". If you're new to the group, background on this can be found here. As you may recall, I managed to write the requisite first 60 pages with a full week to spare, which I used for tweaking/editing/rewriting. In theory, I needed to end today with 60 pages of sketch material, edited and organized such that I would be perfectly happy to hand it to a bunch of my actor friends and say "GO!"

I am 20% "pleased" and 80% "in total disbelief" to tell you that I HAVE ACHIEVED THIS. There were definitely times when I felt like I was being put through a wringer, and I've noticed that I've taken to saying "Wow. I look really tired." out loud every night after I take my makeup off, but I DID IT. I'm not saying it's all comedy gold, but then again the thing I'm most hoping for (and most excited about) is that I just might be able to see discernible improvement from Part 1 to Part 5.

Now, before you look at the title of this post and recognize it as a line from the R. Kelly song (brilliantly covered by Bonnie "Prince" Billy) entitled "World's Greatest", I must remind you that this is only the beginning. John Finnemore's Sketch Night plays on 5 dates, which means that in order to complete the Challenge, I have to do this 5 times. This is just #1. So we aren't at the "Hey I made it / I'm the world's greatest" part of the song yet. Far from it. We're more at the "I'm that little piece of hope / With my back against the ropes" part right now. The good news is that I stockpiled some more ideas during editing week, so hopefully I'll have something strong to work with when the clock starts on part 2. Which will be bright and early tomorrow morning!

PS - I'm trying to seem all cool and chilled out about it, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the fact that John Finnemore himself commented on one of my blog posts yesterday, and he said it made him laugh. If you'd like to know how I feel about that, ask literally anyone who spoke to me for any reason at any point since it happened, including the tollbooth attendant on Georgia 400. It *might* have made my week ;)

The High Price of Success

As of last night, I have completed the first 60 pages of rough drafts for my Incredibly Mundane Sketchstravaganza Challenge Mostly About Ordering Coffee! It was not easy and a lot of the time it wasn't even all that fun. But it's done now! And I have a few days to edit and improve it before it's time to do the next set. Phew!

I was so happy about it that I went and ordered $70 in nail polish. That wasn't exactly part of my master plan - I think I was just so delirious that I wasn't fully in control of my faculties. Or my credit card. At these prices, who can afford to complete the Beyond Redonkulous Incredibly Mundane Sketchstravaganza? Not me. I might have to hide my credit card from myself when I hit the 40-page mark next time...

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

Just as an FYI, I’ve decided that the “trying really hard to be funny” thing, while entertaining (for me), is not a sufficient raison d’être for a whole entire blog. I will still be doing that going forward, but today’s post is the first in an occasional series of exciting glimpses inside my actual head! At long last! PROOF that something is happening in there!

As some of you may know, I’m on The Twitters (@kwerky_girl - follow at will!). I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much useful information comes through that timeline, and one of the more wonderful items in the past few weeks was the announcement of fortnightly sketch shows penned and performed by one of my most revered writing role models, John Finnemore! They’re taking place in London, which might be a problem for some Atlantans, but not me! My first thought was: “HELL YEAH I will be dumping my savings account into a duffel bag, carrying it to the nearest Delta agent, and yelling ‘LONDON PLEASE’ at the top of my lungs.” But then I remembered that before I can do that, I have to dump $200 of my savings account into a much smaller bag along with a picture of myself to be delivered to the US State Department, then wait 4-6 weeks for them to get out their damn glue stick and slap the picture on a new passport, because the Delta agent will almost certainly notice that my current one expired earlier this year. There’s no way I can make it. [insert heartbreak here] I mean, they do can do a 24-48 hour renewal in extreme/emergency situations, but I bet they have a loophole that excludes “I will kill myself if you don’t give me a passport” from that. Otherwise everybody’d be doing it.

So I was despondent for a while there. I pulled the website up and just to see how nauseatingly affordable the tickets would be if I could just get there (answer: £6. ARGH!). Then I saw the text on the ticket-purchasing site, which reads as follows:

The triumphant return of the least imaginatively named show since 'Cats': John Finnemore, writer and star of Radio 4's Cabin Pressure; regular guest on The Now Show; and popper-up on things like Miranda and That Mitchell and Webb Look, presents an hour of brand new sketches every fortnight over the summer. Completely different material every show. Bloody hell. Now I see it written down, that's a lot of sketches. I should probably get on with them.

And as I read those last few sentences, I thought, “Christ! That really is a lot of sketches. Assuming one page=one minute, that’s 60 pages of original sketch material every two weeks. Jesus. Someone send that man a metric ton of coffee.” And then I thought, “Wow. That would be a really incredible challenge. Especially for someone who, say, needed to dust the cobwebs off her brain and get back in the habit of writing sketches regularly.

Like she used to.

Yep.

60 pages every two weeks.


Quite a challenge.”

And then a [really stupid] part of my brain said, “I ACCEPT!” And thus was born Kimberly Welsh’s Sketch Night. That happened a week ago today, and so far I have 15 pages. And based on their content, I had to modify the name to Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Night (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). Then I realized that there won’t be any public performances, so the “Night” part doesn’t really fit. So: Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). I’ve spent more time rewriting the name than finishing sketches. Not exactly epic progress, but give me a break! I had to work 40 hours and spend 2 evenings at the theatre. I have most of my weekend free, so hopefully I’ll be able to get on track now. Wait - not “hopefully”; DEFINITELY. And while I’m not going to get all obsessively serious about it, I will keep you posted. Why? Because you care.

The good news for everyone is that this will keep me off the streets this summer. And it has taught me a valuable lesson about why it’s important to keep your passport up-to-date at all times: Because you never know when John Finnemore will start a run of sketch shows. Apparently.