The Nylon Life

I spent my entire weekend in a wig. The Living Room was a blast on Friday with a great turnout, a completely different lineup than planned, (new host, new mid-show act, and two unexpected visitors that offered their stand-up services), which made the show exciting. Luke and I busted out our first sketch written together in over a year, and the salon setting was perfect for an audience member who happened to be a stylist herself. After the show I asked her if my mimed cutting technique was authentic, and she said yes, but the male character I played had boobs. You can’t think of everything.

On Saturday Luke and I went to a birthday party that had a wig/beard/moustache theme. I wore a shaggy Moses mane and beard, and Luke wore a tight, blond curly wig. Most everyone else in the bar wore their own hair. It felt like the episode of The Golden Girls where they’re accidentally vacationing at a nudist colony. They finally decide to de-robe for a dinner event, and when they get to the resort restaurant, everyone is fully-clothed. We didn’t have any violin music to take us to a commercial, so we sat laughing and waited for anyone we recognized to walk in. Someone did. Hopefully that person would be wearing a wig, we thought. He wasn’t.

The early birds were already huddled around the fast food concessions they brought, leaving vacancy on the couches closest to the karaoke screen. Oh yes, there was karaoke. Broad daylight outside, four wigs inside, McDonalds cheeseburgers cut into quarters and A couple lovingly belting out “Under the Sea” to each other.

I felt better when another guy walked in, looked around, sat down, held his hands in his lap and stared patiently up at the karaoke screen. He looked convincing, like he was watching a basketball game, but the screen was blank…for a really long time. I chatted up a lawyer next to me who was just a regular patron of the bar who was told about the party. He, too, did not know most people. I pretended no one knew each other and was able to loosen up.

If you can’t have fun at a party with free fried chicken and Chalupas, there is something wrong with you.

We left to go hit up Comedy Ain’t Noise Pollution at the Parkside Lounge. This variety show run by Mo Diggs and Trafton Crandall offers up the best hodgepodge in underground comedy. Matt Ruby was a steel baron stand-up in a top hat and handle bar moustache, Bob Bell scatted to an acoustic guitar, Steven Bird talked about the tragedy of attending clown class, and there was a man named John Murdock who did a piece dressed entirely in erotic balloons. My sketch with Luke was fun, but we were ready to show off our hat heads.