Dad Memories: 35 Fake Boot Right Option

35 Fake Boot Right Option

I’d like to thank everyone for their comments and “likes” and even just reading the posts about my dad this week. As an adolescent who thought it was OK to wear a pink baseball hat all the time while simultaneously not being gay, I know that his coolness was a lot of the reason I had friends. He was a youth football coach, baseball umpire and all around nice guy to the Bridgeport community. I assume that most of my friends at that time were either using me to hang out with him (or Char) or they saw potential in me because of what he had become and once this whole pink hat phase ended, I’d be at least comparably cool. For the record, sorry to disappoint all those who believed the latter. You win some, you lose some.

As I mentioned before, my father was a football coach. MY football coach in fact, and during some of my most formative years. If you know anything about me, well you probably know about my respect for Wilson Phillips. But if you know two things, you know I’m a big football fan, as 35-year-old men probably wouldn’t voluntarily bang bodies with 23-year-olds 80 pounds their senior every weekend for a cause they don’t feel strongly about. But before I even had the opportunity to be coached by my father, I was almost scared away from the sport by Coach Yorgey. Picture Hulk Hogan from the 80s and don’t change anything and that was Coach Yorgey.

The first hour of our two-hour practice consisted entirely of Bull in the Ring, which is a “game” where everyone stands around in a circle with one person waiting anxiously in the middle scared to death and questioning why his sadistic father signed him up for this. Once the Hulk chooses your fate by calling out a name from the circle, that person and the person in the middle will just hit each other to the Hulk’s content. The man was nothing if not passionate about boys hitting each other. No lie – my first practice in pads for football ever, I was thrown into the ring against a guy who turned out to be our fullback, Craig Jones, and he hit me so hard I fell backwards and started rolling down the hill. I just used the momentum I had recently been given by Craig and kept going and did not return to practice. I can in fact still hear the Hulk laughing when I look down that hill back home. But this is not a story about him. That would take too long and I legally need my therapist present while rehashing those memories.

I shot the gauntlet and made it through relatively unscathed to a point where I was actually a fairly well-respected quarterback of an underdog team that overachieved. My father was now my coach. He thankfully did not share the same passion for such deathmatch games. He also unfortunately did not share the same knowledge of the game. I remember one time during his first year when he finally came to the realization as a coach that “we don’t have to try to score on every play.” Even at 9, I understood the concept of down and distance at a level that was apparently way over my dad’s head. That’s when I realized that we were in trouble.

But we had the advantage of being a father/son coach/quarterback combo. We had so many extra hours to talk and scheme in addition to the 10 hours a week we had on the field. And that’s when we came up with our signal system. As pee-wee football teams, we were not allowed to have coaches on the field anymore. Most teams would sub in and out a running back or an offensive lineman every play to communicate to the quarterback what play to call in the huddle. Well, our team only had 12 guys. And in the time it took to run the 30 yards from the sideline to the huddle, Georgey would forget the play at least half the time. So my dad and I came up with a system of signs where one half of his body were odd number and the other half were even, and the higher you went, the higher the number was. It was really a fairly simple way to communicate “26 power” into the huddle. My father, however, was not a master of this system which he created. Without getting into too much detail, he would call plays that didn’t exist and couldn’t exist. And more often than not, I’d look over at him trying to figure out what body part to hit – and he’d start and then stare into the air in thought and shake his head and start over – like he was on Password. Every play call looked like a man pantomiming “I just lost my keys.” So I was the only 9-year-old with complete play-calling control in the entire world. Suck that, Peyton.

One of my greatest moments in my life came when we were playing the King of Prussia upper-middle-class Indians. Our rivals. And this was for some sort of championship or at least that’s what I remember being led to believe. They showed up with about 32 people in 4 lines doing jumping jacks before the game. We had 12 scrubs farting on each other. And Georgey couldn’t find his cleats. Dad was better this game than he had been in the past with his signal calling. I remember being impressed that a disproportionate number of the plays he called actually existed in our playbook, whether they were the ones he meant to call or not. But toward the end of the game, we had one drive where we needed to score and it was currently 3^rd and goal on the 5 yard line. 35 fake boot right option. I fake the ball to the 3 back through the 5 hole (left side of the line) and I bootleg right (nobody blocking for me) and have the end on the right side run an out pattern. I have the option to either run it or pass it to that one guy, who in this case was Mike McVoy. I’m not sure how he’s matured as a player since, but that would be the equivalent of calling a play for Todd Pinkston to win the game. Well, on this play, I decided to tuck it and run. Mike’s defender came off him and tackled me at the line of scrimmage.

4^th and goal from the 5. My dad starts to send in the play. But I had seen something. Something to exploit in their coverage. And I was unfortunately going to have to rely on Todd Pinkston to help me. I started to call the play. I could now hear my dad yelling. I ignored him. He sent Georgey in with the play. I waved him back off. He tried to call a time out. We didn’t have any. He was left with no other options but to hope this worked. Nor was I because an insolent act like that will be tough to be forgotten when it’s time for him to just play the father role of his father/coach combo. Hike! The ball was snapped and we ran the fake and I booted around to the right. Same play, same situation. I had the ball in my right hand to throw it, but Pinkston was covered. So I tucked it and started to run forward. Todd’s corner came off him to make the same tackle he made at the line of scrimmage last play. But I never took my hand off the laces. I pulled up and floated the ball like it was an egg I didn’t want broken. Touchdown. And Todd’s moment of glory. And behind the scenes, it was my moment of glory. For my father, through his own incompetence, had turned me into one of the only play-calling 9-year-olds of all time and I still remain one of the best back-up flag football quarterbacks in the Anne Arundel County full contact football league today. And the 35 fake boot right option does not work nearly as well as it does against 9-year-olds. Thanks for the skill set, pops.

Parts of this post may be exaggerated or completely fabricated due to the fallability of human memory and the need for me to brag about myself.

Dad Memories: The Lyrical Prankster

The Lyrical Prankster

My father enjoyed to mess with me as a child. And as an adolescent. And as a young adult. And he was good, because I wasn’t all that stupid. Every time I grew wise to his ways, he’d reach a new level of straight-faced Kool-Aid that I would once again drink. He got a lot of practice at Markley Billiards, where he and his buddies would mess with the unsuspecting newbies. Whenever a new guy would come in and start eyeing up a stick with his left hand, my dad would tell him that the left-handed sticks had a red dot on the bottom. He would then watch as this poor kid would roam the room looking for a red dot that didn’t exist. I’m not exactly sure how that bit ended.

Well, here’s one that he probably didn’t realize would have the staying power that it did and I really hope it comes across in print like it does when I tell it. I was in the passenger seat of the car on my way down to UMBC for freshman orientation, excited and nervous. This would be the longest time I would be away from my dad ever. We talked all the way down. He gave me advice, we said our goodbyes and we laughed a lot. We noticed a sign that said “No Hazmats in tunnel” on the way down. He asked if I had packed any Hazmats. I don’t know. We had no idea what a Hazmat was. We half expected to be stopped at the tunnel and to have some security officer to pull his gun on us and ask us to take the Hazmat out of the car. I now know what they are and how stupid we both were.

But about halfway down, we saw a sign and he just shouted out “Havre De Grace!” But he pronounced Hav-re as if it rhymed with Ben Stiller’s pronunciation of Fav-re from Something about Mary. And Grace rhymed with Bocce. De was pronounced like day. Now say it altogether to yourself. Havre de Grace (Lava Day Bocce). He just shouted it out loud and when I looked at him like he was full of shit again, he just told me it was Italian. Well, dad was half Italian and a lot more knowledgeable than I about such things. Besides, he had upped his straight man game something fierce. And since this was the first time I had seen it and it seldom came up about an hour south of there, I lived with that pronunciation of it long into my junior year.

Finally, the day came when this happened. I believe I saw a news reporter say something about Harve de Grace and pronounced it so unprofessionally lazy. The way he said it rhymed with the actual pronunciation of Favre with the words Duh Grace after them. Harve de Grace. I was floored at how sloppy this reporter was. Only three syllables, no roll of the tongue, I couldn’t smell marinara sauce in the background when he said it or anything. I brought this up to Barnes, who was in the room with me and about 6 other people. He laughed. No, I’m serious! How can he call himself a journalist?! His laugh reached a different level, likely from pitied approval to an actual real gut laugh. He told me that’s how it was actually pronounced. All this time, they thought I was just being funny when I said it my way and I thought they were just all being lazy when they said it the apparently correct way. I was the inadvertent victim of my father’s long con and in a way, I was voicing his joke to my friends without my knowledge or consent like a puppet unaware he’s a puppet for over two years.

I called my father with a little bit of sarcastic disapproval and told him that it wasn’t pronounced Lava Day Bocce. What? Oh yeah. I had no idea. This is his reconciliation for the lie that made me the fool for two years. What other lies have you been spinning all these years? I still haven’t forgotten about that Santa Claus thing. Still love you though.

Dad Memories: You Snooze You Lose

I’ve created my own Father’s Day routine since my dad has passed away back in 2005. I listen to The Living Years, watch Big Fish and reread The Heartbreak of Breathing, a short story I wrote about his passing. Yes, I cry. It’s OK. And it’s actually not that uncommon. Lots of things make me cry, including – but not limited to – most Monk episodes, Ron Artest’s psychiatrist-thanking speech, and watching Last Comic Standing episodes. But I consciously make an effort to remember my dad and try to recall things about him that I haven’t thought about in a while. As you may know, I credit him for my sense of humor. Thankfully, I credit mom for my looks [bazinga]. Anyway, I’ve already chronicled in this website many of the things I remember very vividly about my father (note the Father’s Day section on the top right). Well each day this week, I’ll chronicle another memory of him that I haven’t shared with the greater public (Tom – and apparently Nichol. Hi and thanks for reading) on this website yet.

You Snooze You Lose

I believe I can link the fall of the American dollar and the economic depression of the 80s to the invention of the snooze alarm. Instantly, the entire country stopped getting the rest they needed AND no longer showed up to work or the school bus stop on time. It was a downward spiral of unproductivity we knew we were in and yet could not escape, like a spider being flushed down a low to middle class toilet. I was one such victim of the fad. And as our house was quite small, so was my family. The ear-splitting siren would sound and I’d usually be able to get to it before the third deafening beep. Whether I would stay awake or fall back asleep was dictated by a randomly generated Schrodinger-type experiment in my head.

My mother would come in to make sure I was getting ready for school because she was not only a good mother, but also because she didn’t want me to have to ride my bike to school, thus making her feel guilty. But she was too sweet to get me up permanently. And I was a good sleeper. She would come in after about 2 or 3 snoozes. If I ever made it to round 4, that’s when dad would show up. Not as sweet and always a lot angry that he was awoken 4 or 5 times in a row in the morning at seemingly random 9 minute increments. Like Tony Montana-type anger. So I rarely let it get that far.

But one such morning, I was apparently incredibly tired. As stated before, this alarm was so terrifyingly loud, I have nightmares about it still. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Well on this particular morning, I made it to the 4^th snooze. It was Scarface time. But this time, I was completely asleep. My head was inches from this Three Mile Island alarm and people in neighboring counties were putting pillows over their heads. My father came storming in, as the alarm was likely going off for possibly 50 mind-melting beeps in a row. You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!

I was awoken with mixed feelings of confusion, guilt and a terror I wouldn’t feel again until I went skydiving, which hasn’t even happened yet. Realizing the alarm was going off and I had miraculously slept through it, I saw a look of frustrated confusion on Tony’s face. I couldn’t tell you if I thought he expected me to be awake and jamming to the beeps or downstairs and unaware of the alarm. I prefer to think the latter, since he seemed perplexed that I was asleep in the room, which means that his tirade was meant specifically for that alarm clock. It would be a while before I would sleep passed the alarm again, mostly because I couldn’t fall asleep in that house for three months. To this day, when I hear that beep from an alarm clock, part of me expects Tony to come bursting through whatever hotel or guest room door I’m in. I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one. Do you understand? Miss you, dad.

Review of "Caddyshack"

Review of "Caddyshack"

You guys remember Caddyshack? Of course you do. Or do you? It’s been like 30 years since it came out. I just watched a documentary on the classic sports comedy and was inspired to watch it again. Here’s what I remembered about it before tonight in approximate order of most vivid memory:

1. Animatronic gopher dancing to I’m Alright by Kenny Loggins.


2. The golf course exploding to the 1812 Overture at the end.


3. Bill Murray’s over-the-top character, specifically the self-narrated cabbage-mutilation scene.


4. The old man’s best round of golf in the hurricane, culminating in a lightning strike.


5. Rodney Dangerfield’s awkward, ridiculous golf swing and his awkward, ridiculous eyes.

Having loved this as a child and having just watched it mere days ago, I am now questioning just what else I’ve been able to trick myself into believing over the years. This is not a good movie. I question whether or not I ever really liked it now. It’s possible because I haven’t seen it in about 25 years that I just bought into all the cult hype that has strangely grown over time and merely assumed I liked it. Or more likely, just said I did to fit in (he was even more insecure back in high school). Sure, Murray and Dangerfield are still funny if you enjoy cartoons and/or fart jokes. But I don’t.

This movie was made in an obviously different time period of feature length film. One in which sound mixing was just not important enough to the editors. I’m not a proponent of the MTV quick cut version of film, but the pacing in this was ridiculous. What the hell was with the boat scene between Dangerfield and Ted Knight? It was 5-7 minutes of wasted time and probably not much money. In 1993, Universal Studios had the guts to cut a multi-million dollar scene of the island blowing up at the end of Jurassic Park. I don’t see why they couldn’t have thrown away a glorified dinghy for the sake of continuity. And the pool scene was so overhyped in this documentary. Another wasted 5-7 minutes. No laughs, no plot development, no reason for it to be in there. What a let-down.

Speaking of plot, there apparently originally was one. Because of the need to get all these stars more screen time, the producers kinda threw it away. This is the reason, but still doesn’t grant them a pardon. Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Ted Knight are all in this movie and none of them are the main character. When watching this again, I really could care less about Michael O’Keefe. So much of the plot was trimmed out in favor of Dangerfield’s eye bulge and Murray’s mumbles that I couldn’t root for his character’s ambitions or desires. And what the hell was the point of the broad? She banged both Chase’s character and O’Keefe’s character and that was it. No development, no explanation. I’m all for gratuitous slutiness, but there wasn’t even an attempt to make it make sense. And that theme followed the film throughout.

I still enjoyed the parts that I remembered. I especially enjoyed the documentary glancing a little too casually over the part where they took the golf club owners out to dinner and blew up their golf course. And like Harold Ramis – first-time director – said, having an animatronic gopher dancing in the first scene kinda let them off the hook for having a plot or following any kind of rules whatsoever. I do not want to rid the world of all copies of this movie, I just want to get it out of the #2 spot on ESPN's best sports movies of all time (below Hoosiers) and the #2 spot in Bravo’s Funniest Movies of All Time (below Animal House. Of course, any list with Arthur in the top 10 can probably be completely discounted). 4 bugs (out of 10).

Still Standing Right Here...

Video - Death By Kitten (Speakeasy)

Dustin Fisher tells a true story at SpeakeasyDC's open mic. from SpeakeasyDC on Vimeo.

Holy Quick Turnaround, Batman! I have to thank the incredibly talented and apparently extremely fast-video-editing Nick Newlin for getting this video out less than a week after it was shot. This is the video from all that nonsense I posted over the weekend about going Inside the Head of a Performer. Now you can see the fruits of my efforts. There's about a second or two when the video skips, possibly by accident, possibly because I said the F word one too many times. It's not perfect, but neither am I.

• Inside the Head of a Performer II - Part 1


• Inside the Head of a Performer II - Part 2


• Three Beer Rule

Still Standing Right Here...

Inside the Head of a Performer II - Part 2

Inside the Head of a Performer II – Part 2

If you haven’t read Inside the Head of a Performer II – Part 1, you should probably do that first. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

…I had chugged my third beer about a minute before going up onto the stage. I was ready. And once again, I hadn’t planned to do this mic stand bit, but it was already in progress and I remembered from last time, so I decided to close it out. See, at the Speakeasy, the host will adjust the microphone and stand for you so all you have to worry about is telling your story. In stand up, you are expected to do it yourself and often times, will just be handed the microphone. So I decided to play with Amy. She was adjusting it and I pantomimed the universal symbol for “higher” with my hands, while making some exaggerated facial expression to the crowd to include them in on the joke. After an inch or so, I gave her the “lower” symbol. The crowd was already laughing a little. She started to realize she was the butt of a joke, but God love her, she took it in stride (if cursing him under her breath is taking it in stride). I was finally done playing with her and she left the stage. On her way down the three stairs, so that she was the only one who couldn’t see this, I took the microphone out of the stand and placed the stand behind me, smiling at the crowd. They were certainly alive tonight and already on my side before I said a word. If this were stand up, I’d have thanked Amy and the crowd, but storytelling is a little different, and so with respect for the genre, I went into my material.

The first line was “I hate cats.” It went on from there to describe their worthlessness and one person clapped. I didn’t want to lose the crowd that I got on my side from the beginning. I thanked the one person in the crowd clapping. Crowd connection is a cheap way to get crowd members on your side in stand up, and not just the one or more people you connect with. There’s a barrier that you break down and you turn more into a guy talking about a story than a professional. And that atmosphere just makes things more funny because subliminally, they sounds less rehearsed and more real. Some of the crowd laughed, but it was the gesture that was more important than the laughter. I then went on to a joke I almost cut out for the sake of time about how modern psychology would be set back 300 years of Pavlov’s wife was a cat person instead of a dog person. I never thought the crowd wouldn’t get it, I just wasn’t sure if it was worth the time, as it’s just a throwaway line and I was pushing 7 minutes. Well, I’m glad I kept it in. They loved it and it’s likely not a cat joke they’ve heard before. My first 30 seconds was definitely above average and my credos is that I want to get out of the gate strong. If you get them to laugh at your jokes in the beginning, they will start to laugh at your personality later. That’s the theory at least.

And this was great, because I knew the next 30 seconds was probably the strongest bit I had, or at least the one I was most certain about. Jenn introduced me to her 22-pound fat cat. I made fun of her fatness, which turned out to be worded about as efficiently as any joke I had “When I first met Sweetie, I was positive she was sitting on AT LEAST one other cat.” Reaction was about a 7. Then Jenn asks if I was allergic. I said no. Oh, well then you’ll love Sweetie. “No. I’m not allergic to… shit either, but I don’t want a 22-pound lump of it sitting on the couch getting hair all over my clothes.” This was my second best laugh of the night. And I’m still unsure if I stepped on my own joke. The laughter erupted right after the word shit, but I kept going as I needed to finish the sentence. I was tempted to let it resonate, but I thought I’d drive the point home. I’m OK with that decision. A definite 9 to 9.5 of laughter.

The next 4-5 minutes were filled with 4 short stories about Poe’s (new kitten’s) discovery, the cruel trick kittens play on you, the dried Sweetie poop toy and the kitty going into heat. They were met with intermittent laughter about as I thought they would be. The story about the Sweetie poop toy was understandably met with the best reaction, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I still had to make sure that I would be able to keep in my new ending. I really needed about 1:30 to pull off this ending without rushing through it to make it both funny and somewhat touching. I was tempted to skip the whole part about her going in heat. There was a contingency plan in place where rather than do the cat’s voice, I would tell a joke about it. This would save me up to 15 seconds. But right before I started to bit about her being in heat, I glanced down to see a clock sitting in front of Stephanie, who was timing the show. I also figured she probably wouldn’t ding me off the stage, but I don’t want to pretend I deserve special treatment. Shit, they dinged Vijai at a livewire. They might throw the bell at me.

Anyway, the clock read 5:00 or somewhere close to that. That was a complete stroke of luck not only to have that much time left over, but also to find out that info when I did. I was able to get into the character of the cat, which didn’t result in as many direct laughs as I’d hoped, but I got to do it and I’m sure those lived with cats in heat will remember that part. And I had about 1:30 to do the ending. The climax came when I get Poe back from the kitty hospital and she had a collar on that said “Poe Fisher.” That’s when I realized that I… was a father. That line was met with some awes and laughs and honestly went over better than I thought.

So I wanted to describe how I was a father to her and one of the funniest parts of my actual life with her is when Jenn and I will talk to her. She actually talks when either one of us gets near her toy. Not meows, but talks. It’s hard to describe, but I did some dialogue on stage. “Mare ma mare ma mare mare mare.” Oh really? Then what happened? “Mare ma mare mare.” Oh really? So the island was real and the flash sideways was purgatory? That’s interesting. “Mare mare.” I should have probably just stopped there and did my final line because that was the 10 on the laughter scale. I was unsure if a LOST reference would be gotten by this Tuesday crowd, but I figure everybody has a DVR anyway. And it’s only one week a month. But it was perfect and because it was interesting on a few different levels. First of all, it came out of nowhere. Nothing had anything to do with LOST in the entire show. Second, this is the first Speakeasy since the finale and topical stuff shows that you’re not just doing stock material all the time (see the connectivity to the crowd bit in the second paragraph). Third, it’s funny to imagine that the cat had figured out this relatively complex concept. And that’s what I was going for when I wrote it. I thought “What would a cat most likely not understand?” After thinking about several different ideas like Quantum Physics and Economics, I decided it really needed to be a current events issue. BP was on the table for a while, but then the LOST idea snuck in and I absolutely needed to see if it would work. And it did. Much better than I thought. There was some touching wrap-up that could have been cut down to one sentence after that line, but I’m still happy with it.

“Don’t get me wrong, I still hate cats. I just love my daughter.” That was the last line. Stephanie said it would be nice to hear a story that showed the crowd that I wasn’t such an ass, because most of the stories I tell paint me as such and she doesn’t think that I actually am in real life. Which was sadly a touching compliment, to be called not so much of an asshole in person. So anyway, I pulled off a story that not only didn’t make me seem like an ass, but also finally didn’t have any girls in it other than Jenn (which she was happy about) AND killed the crowd. Who knew? When Amy came back up on stage, I thought I’d play with her and mess with the mic stand. I lowered it all the way. This was honestly just meant as a follow-up to the first mic stand bit, which the crowd thought was funny, but may have been seen as a short joke, which I think she actually brought up as I was leaving. Oops.

So that’s the kind of shit that goes through my head when I’m performing on stage. This was a very pleasant experience. They aren’t always. And because I had gone over my material so much, I forgot why it was funny. I hate that. But it’s good to see that I was right when I wrote it the first time.

Inside the Head of a Performer II - Part 1

Inside the Head of a Performer II – Part 1

In case you didn’t catch this in the original Inside the Head of a Performer (shameless plug), you are about to enter the head of an amateur storyteller/stand-up comedian/calligraphy artist. These are not the thoughts of Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Lewis or even Jerry’s Subs. I take most of my shots 7 minutes at a time at open mic nights. Par example:

This past Tuesday was another open mic night at the Speakeasy. The theme of the evening was “Ranger Rick: Stories about Animals, blah blah blah.” I already knew what I was doing. I was going to finally get to tell on stage The Cicada Eating Contest story. It is one of the very few moments of triumph in my life. Only after I wrote it, there just wasn’t enough funny in it. In fact, I think it was mostly disgusting and I’d rather send the audience sprinting to the bathroom with laughter. So it was outvoted by the jury of one that lives inside my head. And instead, I wrote a story about my cat. Excitement level=very low; comedy level=mid high to high. Hopefully.

I haven’t missed a Speakeasy open mic night since I started going in May of last year. This Tuesday, however, is the first time I decided to try to drive there from Baltimore. My ulterior motive is that I wanted to stay afterwards to go back to the bar where I met Tony Reali (who hasn’t called or written or texted since) in hopes to run into him and be a guest panelist on Around the Horn or at least say hi in a less awestruck and middle school girlish way and I knew Jenn wouldn’t want to if we had to take the Metro home. Having never driven there and never really driven on 495 anytime before 8pm, I had NO IDEA it was that fucking busy. I started to shit on my way down. I called Stephanie to tell her I’d be late and called 911 to get a police escort. While that didn’t work out so much, traffic lightened up a ton, but not before I gave myself more anxiety on top of the normal performance anxiety I feel (just stage performance anxiety, ladies). At least this time, I felt mostly prepared – as opposed to February, when I strung myself a little thin just after the Sucker for Love Show ended and wrote my story the day before.

So once I got to Towne, the Three Beer Rule was in full effect. That seemed to relax the nerves a bunch in as noticeable a way as I ever remember. Or maybe it’s because I took my boxers off in the car. Either way, I was starting to calm down. I found out that I was 5^th in the lineup, just before the break. It has been told to me before that this is a power position. Stephanie said they like to put people there who will lead into the break with a decent story so that nobody leaves during the break. I’ll take that as a compliment, as I’ve been either there or 4^th in all 3 of my open mic nights. I also had friends to entertain, as Leigh and Craig continued to prove their awesomeness by surprising me by coming down. Jenn also had 3 coworker friends of hers come with her. I also had two fellow cast members and the two directors from our upcoming Fringe Festival Show – Logic, Luck and Love – show up. Not only was I responsible for my story tonight, but I was representing our show and needed to market before, during and after my performance. Almost decided to increase to the Four Beers and a shot of Jack Rule, but thought better of it.

Once the show started, I had my 5 note cards out in the corner of the bar and was half listening and half studying. The way I had practiced my story, it was originally 9 minutes and I needed to cut it down to 7. I managed to get it down to 7:45 before I added the ending I wanted. So I had to trim more and so on until I had done it successfully in 6:45 – or 7:45 depending on my smoothness and bullshitting and such. So I had decisions to make that I was going to have to do on the fly, because I really wanted to make sure to hit my ending bit, which I had just written the night before, but was convinced would be a great closer.

The first act was a guy named Mike who jumped out of the gate with a story of how he never thought he’d be a cat person but now he is. My ears perked up. Holy crap. We were telling the same damn story. And he was doing it first and going to steal all my thunder. And more importantly, my jokes. He danced around a lot of the lines I had and actually had bits in his that I had cut out of mine, but our streams never completely crossed. At least not enough to kill Gozer or a like creature. But he was funny. Which is actually better for me as a performer that goes after him, because he gets the crowd warmed up and on their heels and in the laughing position. But I’m still secretly jealous of him and his laughers and the lines that I didn’t think of to put in my story that he did. But oh well, back to the note cards.

The next three performers were a little bit of a blur. I heard some laughter and thankfully not much about cats in there. I had actually originally misread the lineup and thought I was 6^th, forgetting to include Amy, our lovely hostess, deep into her own Three Beer Rule. So when Adam was announced and I knew him to be the guy right before me, I had a decision to make. Was I going to chug this beer, knowing I needed it to complete the Three Beer Rule, or just leave well enough alone, as I already felt that I was crossing the threshold of uncomfortably drunk? Well, it’s not called the Three Beer Recommendation. Bottoms up. “Next coming to our stage…”

to be continued...

Three Beer Rule

Three Beer Rule

I have alluded to it before. Let me explain it now. First of all, it ONLY applies to stage performances. The formulas for talking to pretty girls, dancing at weddings and religious conversations with ex-girlfriends and/or family members are much different and constantly in flux. But the Three Beer Rule has yet to let me down since its discovery.

It is very basic. On the night of a performance, I’ve found that I need to drink three beers. No more, no less. EXACTLY three beers. Any less and I can feel the nerves and can’t get as into the moment. Any more and I forget shit and hit on the front row, regardless of gender or social class. Now there have been situations where I’ve needed to concentrate or remembering shit more, so I’ll drink less. Also, there are easy gigs or parties with a stage where being over the three-beer limit isn’t as inappropriate. But you’ve all now been introduced to the Three Beer Rule.*

(* Ed note – The “Three Beer Rule” will not get you out of a DUI. In fact, it may earn you one. You’ve been warned)

Sweet Dreams Are Made of Threes

Sweet Dreams Are Made of Threes

I don’t want to say that I knew that Ray Allen was going to set a record for 3s in an NBA Finals game, but I seriously just had a dream about him the night before. We were sitting on my dorm bedroom and I remember him wearing a green jersey, but I don’t know if it was Boston or Seattle. The only thing I really remember is that we talked about how stupid Doc Rivers was for hiding a couple thousand bucks in the ceiling of Staples Center’s visiting locker room.

Apparently, the coach of the Celtics took $100 from every player and hid it in the ceiling of the visitor’s locker room in L.A. back in February and said the only way they would get it back was to make it to the finals. The logistics of this are unfathomable. What if a janitor found it? Or another opposing team? OR! What if the Lakers didn’t get back to the finals? Ever think of that? The Ray Allen from my dream did and he thought it was stupid. So did Dirk Nowitski, who was also in the room downloading porn on my computer. I love dreams.

So yeah, like I said. My dreams told me he was going to set the record. I’m not exactly sure what Megan Fox is going to do now, but it’s going to be pretty huge.

Video: Sucker For Love 2010

So my first attempt at embedding a video went so well, I'm doing it again! This is my story from the Sucker For Love 2010 show and probably my best performance yet. Which is saying something since I've probably been on stage close to 50 times now! That was actually meant to be sarcastic, but I realize now that it probably isn't. Anyway, watch it please. I spend a lot of time on this stupid website.

Since the camera was right in front of the speaker, the audio is quiet, so turn up your speakers. Then shut the door if you're at work. Please keep your clothes on though. That is all.

Dustin Fisher in Sucker for Love 2010 from SpeakeasyDC on Vimeo.

The Cicada Monologues 2

This here is the rough draft of a story that I was going to tell at the Speakeasy next week, but aborted it in favor of a story about my cat. I believe I made the correct decision, but here it is. UNCUT!

The Cicada Monologues 2

First of all, let me preface this by saying that I'm probably more proud of this than I should be.

The Spring of 2004 was a very Dustin life-altering couple of months. I had just broken up with the most serious girlfriend I ever had, who promptly moved back to Canada. I took that as I sign she wasn’t interested in getting back together. I was also 29 staring 30 in the face and desperately trying to find a life partner before my resale value got shot to shit. Everyone knows that once you turn 30, you turn invisible to college chicks. Amidst this time of panic and desperation came an event that only happens once every 17 years… the emergence of the cicadas, the most dedicated and least organized animals on the planet.

These cicadas come out of the ground every 17 years, fly around, have sex, lay eggs and die. These eggs then nurture in the ground for 17 years. No more, no less. And nobody knows why. OK, I don’t know why. But that’s dedication to incubation. And because they spend 17 years in an egg underground and only get a two week vacation to fly around and have carefree cicada sex before they die, they have no idea what they’re doing. I'd say they were out in swarms, but I don't really think they could form a swarm. When I think of swarms, I think of organized schools of creatures moving together as one. These guys aren't nearly as organized, which makes them more annoying, but less likely to be the leading role in a FOX made-for-TV horror movie. The way the news portrayed them leading up to their emergence, I thought they were supposed to blanket the sky and cars were going to skid on patches of cicadas on the road, but they are very harmless creatures. They don’t bite or sting. They really only just get in the way, look icky and occasionally dive bomb you in the head and fly away and then fly back and do the same thing more out of incompetence than disrespect. The only thing they could do together was their damn morocco rattlesnake song which was always disproportionally louder than it should be for their size. This was especially annoying for people who slept with their windows open.

But what was even more annoying was driving with your windows open. One day, I was coming to a stop sign at the bottom of a hill. At this point, my brakes were so shot, I could feel the drum solo from Bonzo's Montreaux playing in the wheel well when I tried to stop, so I felt no need to put further wear and tear on my car just to dignify federal law. This stop sign also just happened to be right next to an extremely high cicada traffic area. As I was stopping that day, I noticed that the trajectory of one of those icky fuckers was aimed straight at my window. I thought about skidding to a stop or swerving, but then I thought that was a slight overreaction, so I just ignored the cicada flight path in hopes that it would bank left or something. I'm not going to let these ignorant fuckers dictate how I stop at a stop sign. So I stopped and sure enough the bastard took a B-line for my head and kamikaze dive-bombed into my car. I reacted like a little 3rd grade schoolgirl flailing my arms wildly in an epileptic fit of "get it off!" like it was an active firecracker. I managed to lose the cicada in the car and to this day, haven’t found any signs of it. So I likely still have a dead suffocated or heat-stroked cicada somewhere in my car. And maybe I'll have about 500 more of them in my car in 2021. That would probably shoot the resale value to shit.

Anyway, toward the end of the spring of the cicada, a few friends of mine threw a cicada party. I thought that it was just a regular party called "The Cicada Party" to kinda justify having a party for those people who need a better reason than getting drunk and passing out on a floor covered in potato chips and salsa. So I later heard through the grapevine that there would actually be a live cicada eating contest. The gag reflex you're probably all feeling right now was my first reaction also. And if that sentence disgusted you, you may want to leave now. Because it was more than just a live cicada eating contest that made this a cicada party. I showed up and they had old bay cicadas, chocolate covered cicadas and cicadas in taco meat with taco shells and all the fixins. They had posterboard up for anybody who tried the different kinds to write their name down. And in this particular setting, people were impressed by these sort of accomplishments. I later realized that these accomplishments were not met with the same respect and reverence at work. One coworker gagged so much, he started to sweat.

So anyway, these posters were up there just begging for people with low self-esteem struggling to fit in to shove a dirty chocolate covered insect down their throat to earn a spot up on the wall of fame. And so I did. And then some hot chick convinced me to eat an old bay one. They really do taste like shrimp, by the way. But so does everything you douse in old bay. I had thought about signing the poster below it which would have entered me into the live cicada eating contest, but not after seeing the tupperware container full of them sitting outside. If you were even close to on the fence about eating a live cicada, seeing about 100 crawling around each other in a see-though plastic hell was enough to turn you vegan. It was something out of an Indiana Jones movie. And so I played flip cup. And then I played beer pong. And I don't remember specifically, but I probably played asshole too. At some point, I was swayed by either peer pressure, large amounts of alcohol, or a curiosity of my own competitive limitations when it came to winning something, and I registered for the live cicada eating contest. I believe my decision was heavily swayed by the hot chick I was following around for the better part of two hours saying “why not?” She’s right. Why the hell not? After all, this is a Cicada Party. And what better way to impress this hot chick than to enter the premiere event at this party? And if she was to be my savior, I had but a precious few months before I turned invisible to her. And so I made my move.

This was actually an impressively structured contest, with several rounds which increased in both required dexterity and unyielding disgust as the contest progressed. Honestly, I knew that nobody would give me a shot as I can barely do a lemon drop without gagging, but I knew my mind over matter reflex would trump the gag reflex to at least earn me a ride to the second round. I suppose it's also possible that I just don't give enough of a shit about my body to care what I eat. At any rate, I got to the second round. I thankfully remembered a buddy of mine told me that if you pinched their wings together, it rendered them harmless. Leave it to a brown belt in aikido to teach a submission hold on a cicada. Before I had realized it, I was eating cicadas like they were jello. Crunchy, squirming jello that flaps its wings for a half second, but jello nonetheless. The field was narrowed from 24 down to 12 down to 4 and now down to 2 and I was still in the running for champion of an event which only one hour earlier almost made me need to shower for even thinking about it. I had made it to the final round, which combined agility with cicada eating. I was possessed at this point. I could have probably eaten a squirrel if somebody handed it to me. I glanced over at the hot chick who I had already started dating in my very unhealthy mind. She was no longer watching. She was on the phone with her boyfriend. How this hadn’t come up in over 3 hours of conversation is still a mystery to me. But I had come this far and developed such a large fan base, I didn’t need any additional motivation. After completing the two rounds of beer pong and flip cup and live cicada eating, I came out a second ahead some other dude. This marked several firsts in my life. It was the first eating contest I had ever won, it was the first cicada-related activity I had ever participated in, and it was the first time I ran sprinting to the bathroom to puke and had absolutely no desire to. That was weird. I expected to feel a whole lot worse after eating what turned out to be about 24 cicadas. Nothing. I decided not to look at my bowel movements for a week just in case, but other than that, I had no ill effects at all.

I obviously didn’t get the girl that night, but I did learn something about myself. I can do some fucked up shit if I tell myself I’m gonna do it. And I’ll bet you can too. It took the perfect storm of a hot chick, a panic attack and a live cicada eating contest for me to figure it out, but it didn’t have to. Challenge yourself. You may surprise yourself. After all, I am known in certain circles as the Lord of the Cicadas, at least until the summer of 2021.