Send In Your Art! No. 1

Hey gang! We are now accepting submissions to the 2007 Portrait contest. As many of you know, Abbi's favorite thing to paint is portraits.


If your favorite thing is Abbi, bring the two together! What a great combo; like chocolate and peanutbutter or hairnets and actors pretending to work in cereal factories.

This first entry was submitted by a fan from Washington, DC (A.K.A. Abbi's sister).

But what do you WIN? The comedian/artist herself will paint YOUR portrait if you are selected as the grand prize winner. We'll post her work here soon. It's good.

E-mail your scanned drawing, etching, painting, sculpture, or macaroni art to: curlycomedy@yahoo.com

DEADLINE IS AUGUST 1, 2007

Drawings and paintings of Tracee Ellis Ross are also accepted.

Yours truly,

Mike Sullivan

President of Abbi's CurlyComedy Blog 2007 Portrait Contest

(not to be confused with the kid in grade school who once told Abbi no one could ever draw her because her giant, buckteeth would not fit on a page)

Coats for Comedians

Radio Free NY is working on launching a video podcast series this winter and one of their segments is called the "60-second Bug Off". I got to tape one last October talking about what really REALLY bugs me. Why don't we start with my jacket? It was freezing that day, and this is the best I could do. Is it so hard to buy a coat? I'd have a trendy one by now if I weren't so cheap. I saw one of those long ones filled with goose feathers and with a real, fur-lined hood (possibly squirrel?) that came with a tag that said, Compare to $345.00 Should I? Or are they trying to psyche me out? Compare to five hundred dollars. Just compare. How about a trip to Hawaii? This is much cheaper.

Every Time I Try To Watch Football

This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.
This is our country.This is our country.

Evolution of Tastiness

Dear McDonalds,
In about five years, nobody will want McGriddles anymore because of a classic culinary combination adopted by your rivals that will sweep the nation. Fried chicken and waffles. Fortunately, I have a plan to maintain the integrity of your delicious breakfast while riding the trend train: the nuggets and flapjacks basket. You will call them Breakfast Bites, and they will sell for $3.69.

I know you're not a Basket Restaurant, but a cardboard box can be transformed into one if holes are cut in a lattice pattern on the lid. You stamp M's on the miniature pancakes, the nuggets stay the same, and you have delivered to the public the new best friend they never knew they wanted. Syrup dipping sauce will come on the side. I am sure that you will be glad to include my likeness (wearing a chef's hat) in the advertisements.

Sincerely,
Abbi Crutchfield

We're All Old

I recently performed in a show that had the laughs in the right places but an overall sense of "Huh?" from the audience. This could be because I was not on my A-game that night, or it could be attributed to the fact that a lot of the crowd was young and male. If I were a college comic the room would have rocked with hoots and spilled beer. But instead, the candles on the tables flickered periodically from chuckles, and I was unsure of whether my Alan Thicke references would be properly savored.

Dear youthful crowd,
I don't want to let an age gap between us intimidate me because no matter who you are, there is someone younger than you. You know how you think you're awesome because you scored a fake id? Try to rock a pair of Heely's. Hear that? It's the sound of your youth whizzing by.

If you don't think you're old yet you will. It happens by accident. Your eyes trail from the comics to the electronics ads. Then they see a picture of a politician. Then they read the article! You think,Stop. Go back to reading the comics. Sigh, these jokes are so...unfulfilling. Wait, I mean they suck. Yeah. These comics suck. Hey, what's this? Today's Family Circus is so...touching. You're not the loudest on the subway anymore. Then someone calls you Sir, and you laugh, and they're serious. Your parents don't even have to have gray hair yet or stop paying for your loans for the transition to happen.

So just live life and try not to regret how old you are or how lame the older girl on stage is when she says, "Who's watchin' the Antiques Road Show here? I see ya! I see ya!"

LYLAS,
Abbi

Page-ing All Losers

There are many ways to monitor fame. Some people think that if you are on the World Wide Web, your star is rising. I Googled my name, and it turns out there are 636 pages yielding information. Only the first four actually talk about me. Four divided by Six hundred thirty-six is Point-oh-oh-six(4 ÷ 636 = .006). Conclusion: Less than one percent of what you read on the Internet is true.

Goo But Not Forgotten

There is a debate over whether or not it was appropriate to televise the open casket of James Brown during the viewing at the Apollo Theater. Maybe I am desensitized by the countless figures displayed at Mme. Tussaud’s Wax Museum, but that was the last thing I found disturbing about the wake. The funeral procession, for example, had a lot of potential. With a horse-drawn carriage and thousands of viewers, I expected eyes welled up with tears and Elton John’s voice to waft over the crowd, “Good bye Jimmy Brown…” But there were no bowed heads. Instead the crowd was cheering! Were they glad to see him go? He owed that many people money? Maybe he was a tyrannical dictator. Only his assistant knows for sure. “And it seemed to me you lived your life like a paper bag of gin. Dry and crinkly, full of liquor, with a crazy spin…”

Cut to his arrival at the theater where people are comfortably squatting in lawn chairs like for one of his concerts. “He always makes me wait like this. But it’s worth it to be near him. I’m gonna ask him to sign my velvet portrait when he’s done.” How about Professional Casket Guard Reverend Al Sharpton who was babysitting the stage like a watchful club bouncer? Maybe he just wanted to see what happens to his hair when he’s sleeping. I’ll admit, seeing James Brown lay still is unsettling, but is there anything creepier than his mug shots over the years? That is a plastic terror I will never forget. Why he was dressed like a 1940s bell hop is beyond me, but maybe it was a clause in the first contract he ever signed. The icing on the cake was that the sign next to the body had a soft, rounded, capital D, celebrating “THE GOO FATHER”. The Goo Father of Soup, ladies and gentlemen. Raise a spoon.

Perks

These are the timeless treasures to be had if you win--okay you don't even place--on the Poetry Vs. Comedy show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Silly string! Care to watch "Big", anyone? Let's shoot this at each other, but be careful not to get it anywhere near the eyes, nose or mouth, and then promptly remove it from our clothes so as to minimize the drycleaning bill, and then break out the 409 and Bounty so our landlord won't charge us for the stain on the walls. FUN!! Okay who wants to spray first? My knee-cap region should be appropriate. This is old denim.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

That's my face in BUST magazine! This is the first time I've ever appeared in a publication with glossy pages. I'm so excited!

BUST is a magazine with an agenda to showcase the lives of today's women.

The show that the article highlights is a one of a kind, all-female comedy hour in New York called Chicks and Giggles founded by cupcake-lovin' co-producer Nichelle Stephens and hosted by the bilingual and all-funny co-producer Carolyn Castiglia.

I heard about the show through my fellow GU alumn and comedian Jaqueline Novak, and the article includes a joke by the multi-tasking comedy writer Giulia Rozzi co-creator and host of Stripped Stories.

Go out and buy a copy tonight because when I'm huge, this photo will be worth something and often refered to as "An early shot of Abbi".

This Goes Out to All the Guys in the Bushes

On the road to comedy success, it is wise to anticipate some of the hurdles before they happen. I am prepared for the public backlash when I adopt a tribe of Eskimos, and Time magazine labels me a “modern-day” Joshephine Baker (and later in the article a “stable” Angelina Jolie or a “talented” Madonna). I welcome the day when my bit is tired and my manager talks me into becoming The Face of adult diapers. I have already prepared my speech for the annual banquet of the ‘tween girls club that wears replicas of my signature Lazy Eye (that I haven’t made signature yet).

I’m friendly. I’m smiley. I’m irresistible. I say with all honesty that some day I am going to be stalked by an unattractive person wearing a sweat shirt.

And to you, Sir, I say PREPARE…TO…DIE.

I am not one to be easily intimidated by threats. I will bypass the restraining order and go straight to the machete purchase. In a world of celebrities who get disturbing letters from self-proclaimed fans like you, there are far too few who take the law into their own hands. I will cut up a magazine and glue together an equally sick response. I’m making them now. I have that kind of time. I don’t need a giant bodyguard to muscle you in a dark alley at night. I’ll have already put lye in your morning Starbucks.

It’s survival of the fittest, Looney. Indecisive, scrawny teenagers need not apply. You’d better only come at me if you have three names and Catcher in the Rye in your pocket. You see, your strength is your empty threat. My strength is born from a deep-seated fear from watching too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries and Lifetime Original movies about drifters who hide in the attic. Coupled with a natural, cat-like quickness when it comes to self-defense (I duck whenever I hear a balloon pop), you don’t stand a chance.