Here's another rough piece I foisted upon the insanely generous Moonwork crowd last night - I have this bad habit of not-quite-finishing a piece but giving it a try anyway because of how nice they are. I think this one is no different. I need to figure out an ending, and maybe flesh out the non-review stuff too...
"All the world's a stage, and we are merely players."
Please forgive the pomposity of kicking things off with some lyrics from the band 'Rush', but I thought it appropriate considering the subject matter of this piece.
We are all indeed merely players on this stage of life. But what role has each of us chosen to play? If the role you have chosen is that of a doctor or a lawyer or someone who withholds information about apartments until presented a fee, or perhaps a ninja, then to you the stage called life might seem sufficient. But what if you are one of those who must seek out other stages within this stage called life? A stage...such as an actual stage?
What if you are blessed with the curse of the need to perform?
I am one of those desperate few. A comedian. A writer/performer hybrid. A mutant, whose need for constant attention, acceptance and admiration is matched only by my need for constant admiration, acceptance, and attention. But when did that unquenchable desire for validation uncloak itself in my personality, like some sort of Romulan warship of dysfunction, it's photon torpedoes aimed squarely at my self-esteem?
My first stage was the dinner table. As a young child of three, I would do impromptu animal impressions using a pair of stringbeans, which made excellent tusks:
Elephant - two stringbeans in the corners of my mouth curving up.
Walrus - the same, but pointing down...
That was pretty much it, really. I had a limited repertoire. Elephant and walrus. My first reviews were dismal. Yes, I said reviews. I could not yet read, but my parents would pretend to read reviews of my animal impression one man show aloud from the Arts section of the New York Times. Somehow, they told me, the theater critic from the most prestigious newspaper in all the land had witnessed my latest stringbean performance, and invariably, without fail, they had hated it.
As I sat there in my PJ's, grinning and chewing stringbeans after what I perceived to be yet another smash performance of elephant and walrus, my father would make a grand display of thwapping open the paper. THWAP. And he would say "Oh no. Tsk Tsk tsk. Listen to this review, Andres -- 'A complete waste of stringbeans! Du Bouchet insists on endlessly cycling between his tired old elephant and walrus impressions. Insufferably self-indulgent!"
My mother would sigh, shake her head, and force me to clip the review out of the paper with a pair of scissors and place it in a scrapbook, which she insisted on referring to as the Crapbook. Years later, when I could read, I would find said Crapbook in the attic. The articles were completely random. A sports article here. A political scandal there. I guess my parents were just trying to toughen me up. To prepare me for the inevitable critical drubbings I would receive later in life. They knew I was destined to loom large in the public eye, like the giant E at the top of the optometrist's chart.
But my current success does nothing to mollify the stinging childhood memory of my father thwapping open the New York Times and pretending to read such scathing broadsides as:
"Tonight I eschewed the typical Broadway fare in favor of lurking outside the du Bouchet's kitchen window in the New Jersey suburbs, in order to sneak a look at the show everyone's mocking: Stringbean Toddler Trainwreck. And boy oh boy did it live up to its name. This is one show that is so bad it needs to be seen to be believed. The smug look of happy satisfaction on du Bouchet's face after he gleefully pretends to be a walrus with a pair of stringbeans is utterly repellent."
THWAP.
"Much like the namesake of the bean for which this show is named, Andres du Bouchet's Stringbean Animal Impression Review feels strung together, with no cohesive storyline or theme. From Walrus to Elephant and then back to Walrus, the narrative skitters along schizophrenically and, in the end, predictably. 'Oh he's doing the walrus impression again, I bet the elephant one is right around the corner. And yes, here it is. Is this child really three years old? I would have thought he was two."
THWAP.
"Make no mistake. Terrible theater is created by bad little boys. Therefore, Andres du Bouchet must be the worst little boy there is."
THWAP.
"Bean There, Done That!"
THWAP.
"More like string-has-bean."
THWAP.
"Young du Bouchet's performance belongs where those stringbeans are ultimately going: a colon, and then a toilet, and then a sewer, and then a river, and then the ocean, and then a fish's stomach, and then a person's stomach. A person who is guaranteed to be more talented than du Bouchet."
THWAP.
"You can't spell string bean without 'I ban', and if I could ban one thing it would be Andres du Bouchet. Period."
THWAP.
"I had to dictate this review to my assistant, because I am now blind. Blind from having to watch a wretched toddler commit rape against the very concept of theater itself! I watched a rape and it made me go blind aaaaaaaaaaah! Yes I told my assistant to type aaaaaaaaah!"
THWAP.
THWAP.
THWAP.
Every night my father would read a similar review from the New York Times, because every night my mother made a point of serving string beans. And every night I would do my damnedest to top the previous night's performance. I wracked my brain every night in bed as the salt hardened on my cheeks, planning the next evening's show. I would lie there wondering "Should I lead off with elephant or walrus? And then what? Walrus or elephant? Were there any other animals I should try? Like what? Get real, du Bouchet. You're three fucking years old! If there were any other animals out there in this world which could possibly be crudely mimicked by a sticking pair of string beans against your face you'd have oops I'm asleep".
Well, things are different now. I'm an adult. I make my living as a writer and performer, dammit. And I know my animals. And I know that you, Moonwork, the friendliest, most enthusiastic audience in all the land, will give me the validation that I was denied as a child! So, without further ado, I would like to present to you, Moonwork, my updated rendition of Toddler Stringbean Animal Revue, entitled Andres du Bouchet's Stringbean Cavalcade Of Animals. And scene!
Elephant! Look out or I will stomp you!
Walrus! Get off of my rocky outcropping! These walrus cows are for my mating purposes!
Um. (panic sets in)
Elephant!
Walrus!
(more panic, crying, fleeing stage)
My last performance at Moonwork:
should be to ban bottomless salads. Because I believe that every American deserves to know where the bottom of his or her salad is at.
Here's the last thing I worked on for 'Talkshow With Spike Feresten'. Co-written by Joe Borden and co-starring Ethan Berlin.
Is my new catch-all phrase for awfulness. (Pronounced "aides eleven".)
Good evening, Moonwork! Happy New Year!
How are your New Year's Resolutions coming along? I made one to lose about 50 pounds this year. But I can already tell that's not going too well. So I changed it. My new resolution is to lose 100 pounds. Which means that before I can do that, I've got to gain 50 pounds. Which I can accomplish very easily.
The following story takes place back when I was still paying my dues. Therefore, yes, it involves a crazy actress roommate.
"Crazy actress". That's like saying "this sphere is round" or "I am talking with my voice!" In the total and complete history of all that is redundant, the phrase "crazy actress" is the most redundant of all redundancies. More redundant even than the phrase "hot flame" or the phrase "fun ejaculation". Now, I don't mean to suggest that all actresses are crazy. I mean to state it emphatically. They are all mad. Mad, I tell you. Avoid them at all costs except for the purposes of watching them on stage or screen or having sex with them but then after the sex part find a window and jump through it and then as soon as you hit the ground run, run, run from the actresses. And if any of your female friends who are not actresses ever casually mention that they're thinking about becoming actresses, point to a random spot in the air behind them and scream "what's that?" and then when she turns around to see what you're pointing at shove her hard and linger just long enough to determine in which direction she is falling and then immediately start running in the opposite of that direction. Run from the actresses. They are all lunatics dipped in demon sauce with vacuums for hearts and a pile of dead leaves where their souls should be. And if by some strange, ill-advised chance you do befriend an actress or God forbid fall in love with one and with all the might of your passion and love and inspiration you manage to stir those leaves, you manage to stir those dead, grey leaves in that actresses' soul, scattering them...all you will find where those leaves used to be is a dead squirrel...with bulging, panic-frozen eyes and a gut full of rat poison. Actresses. Are. Fucking. Crazy. All of them except for my fiance who is wonderful. And Kate Winslet, who for some reason seems like she might actually be a nice person.
From the summer of 1997 through the spring of 2003, I lived in an apartment on the Upper East Side with various roommates. The last six months of that time were spent living with the aforementioned crazy actress.
So the incident I am about to relate to you took place in either late 2002 or early 2003.
This actress, i.e. this crazy actress, was an extremely high-strung person. She would chain smoke all day while sitting out on the stoop, talking to anyone and everyone she could. She crouched there in front of our building like some sort of sphinx, except to pass her you didn't need to answer a riddle, you just needed to put up with some inane conversation. One time during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq she said to me "Here's something to make you think - how did our oil get under their sand? Hmm?" Which are some words that do not mean anything.
Having an actress as a roommate is like being at a big sportsbar, where they're showing every single football game from around the country on a dozen big TVs scattered all over the bar. And the place is packed with football fans, fans of all the different teams that are playing. And every once in a while, over the din of your table's conversation, you hear a big cheer, "Yeah! Yeaaaaah!" or groan "Awwwwwwww" or a "What??? NO!" or a "Go! GogogogogogogoYEAH!" Just these periodic outbursts, and every time you hear one you look around at all of the TVs and think to yourself "which game are they reacting to? I can't tell at all. No matter how many times I sweep my vision across all of the televisions, I am not learning any information that can help me process what the fuck those guys were just yelling about. The moment has either passed too quickly, or it really wasn't a big fucking deal to begin with." So you stop trying to figure out what they're carrying on about. Same thing with an actress roommate. She's the table of other guys at the sportsbar, and reality is all of the televisions in the bar. "What is she reacting to?" There are no clues. None. If you assembled an investigative team of Sherlock Holmes, Encyclopedia Brown and Monk, they would fare no better at trying to decipher any linkage between stuff that happens and an actress roommate's reaction to said stuff.
I did not like living with this woman.
At night, she would continue to chain smoke and drink cans of cheap beer until 3 or 4am. Then she would get up at 6 or 7am and do it all over again. She was nuts. Her email address was the name of her dead dog, and on the wall of her bedroom was a big, framed photo of her own naked boobs. Boobs from long, long ago. Boobs that still had hope.
Her eyes were always a bit misty, as if she had just finished crying or was just about to.
I could not stand her.
I would ask her not to smoke in the apartment. She did anyway, but she'd make up for it by leaving these cutesy little notes of apology under my bedroom door. As if the word sorry with a smiley face inside the O had some sort of air-freshening, anti-carcinogen power.
I loathed her.
Our bedroom doors were perpendicular to one another, and the walls in this small apartment were very thin. A thinness that should be measured not in inches but in number of plies. If our walls were toilet paper...well, then they would have collapsed. Anyway, they were thin. So thin that sometimes the sound of her typing and sighing while doing email would keep me up. I usually had to wear earplugs because of how perpetually awake she was, constantly walking around the apartment at the hours during which failed dreams dwell. Typing, sighing, walking, sighing, walking, typing, sighing and oh yes, smoking. She was a living ghost who haunted the apartment, inspiring not terror but annoyance. If my life were A Christmas Carol, she would be the Ghost Of Suck Present.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I would like to mention at this point in the story that my roommate was annoying, and that I did not like living with her. Now, back then, when I wasn't at home being annoyed by my roommate, I was also miserable the rest of the time. I was alternately unemployed or working at crappy office temp jobs during the day, and getting very mixed responses to my comedy at various shows in the backs of bars at night. I was also in a relationship that was destroying my self-confidence, but that I was too insecure to get out of. I was perpetually full of anxiety, anger, and beer.
I had to find joy in the smaller moments. Like this one.
One morning during a weekday, following a night of beers, burgers, Ben & Jerry's and beers, I farted. It was very early in the morning, around the time my roommate might start waking up, but way before I would normally get up for work, or for not work, depending on the day. So I was lying in bed. Under the covers. And I farted. It was a ripper. Loud, wet, sustained and high-pitched. Like someone was starting a helium-powered chain saw. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeowr!!! No sooner had the final notes of this fart faded into the sheets, that I heard the WHAM of my roommate's bedroom door slamming open. Followed by the purposeful thumping of her footsteps across the apartment, away from my bedroom and in the direction of the kitchen. Where our front door was. And then, over the dim static that indicated she was holding down one of the intercom buttons, I heard her hoarsely say "Hello?" Pause. "Hello?" Pause. Then a thump thump thump back to her bedroom. Slam. I chuckled silently for a good long time.
She had thought my fart was the door buzzer.
To her, the pitch and duration of my fart were apparently indistinguishable from the sound the door buzzer makes.
I had made her answer the door by farting.
My fart made her get out of bed, walk the length of the apartment, and answer the door.
My body had processed the food and beer that I'd consumed, transformed it into gas, and expelled it, and then the sound that gas made as it strained out of my anus traveled through the paper thin walls of my apartment, into my roommate's bedroom, and rousted her out of bed to go see what was amiss.
My butt was one of the TVs showing football!
When I look back at what was probably one of the most miserable stretches of my life, it's moments like that...that do not change my opinion that I was miserable back then, but that I enjoy talking about.
Thanks.
Not only have I paid my share of dues, I have collected my share of don'ts. That makes no sense.
Some more of my "acting".