Baby's First Photo Shoot

This is the group photo we decided to use for our 2010 Capital Fringe Festival show, Logic, Luck and Love, scheduled at Goethe Institut on the dates listed on the right column of this very web page. Kevin plays the gay guy, Jenn plays the straight gal, Molly plays the gay gal and I've been typecast as the straight guy. And in DC, that was the toughest role to cast. We were all supposed to dress like our characters and apparently my character is an unshaven, unkempt visor-wearer who doesn't read e-mails all the way through to find out why he's supposed to come to rehearsal dressed in his stage attire. So this was my first ever professional photo shoot and I hadn't even showered in 2 days. Thankfully it wasn't one of those cameras that picks up scent. Anyway, I certainly expect you all to come to one of our showings, especially because I know only Tom and my girlfriend read this. Tom, please bring a date. Thanks.

Inside the Head of a Writer

Inside the Head of a Writer

(Ed note: This was originally titled “Inside the Head of a Performer,” but Dustin went a little too long about writing the damn thing. He does that. You should hear him leave a voice message. JEEZ! Anyway, that will probably follow this soon enough. In the meantime, enjoy.)

Let me start by saying that I am an extreme amateur and anything you read should be with that caveat. You are not going inside the mind of Steve Martin or Steve Carrel. Or even Steve from Blue’s Clues. I will probably never make it big as a performer of any sort and that’s fine with me. It’s just nice to have a creative outlet that will likely reach more people than this does (Hi Tom. And Cheryl. And Jen when I make you read it).

Last night was another Speakeasy Performance, and this one was coming on the heels of last weekend’s Sucker for Love show. That was an ensemble performance that I was paid for and last night was another open mic. What I mean by “ensemble” insofar as you need to know, it means I was picked to do that show because they like me – whereas almost anyone could sign up for the open mic, as evident by the drunk guy who tried to pretend he was stoned (or vice versa if you like). So I had put all my time and energy into making sure that was as great a show as possible, so after it was over on Sunday, I breathed a sigh of relief on Monday and woke up Tuesday to the tune of “Crap! That other thing is tomorrow!”

Thankfully, I had chosen to do a story which I had told many times before. It’s the Dominos Pizza Story. I know that story like the palm of my hand (hehe). BUT, the part that I know is only about 2 minutes long. The spot was supposed to be 7 minutes. So I wasn’t out of the woods yet. My selection of the story was a little different than usual. Originally, I had convinced Meatwad into doing his story about getting kicked out of the bar, which I thought would have been awesome. But when he punked out, Stephanie (from the Speakeasy) offered me the spot to fill in for the Meatman. Stephanie is what I call my stage coach, because not only does she coach my stories that I’ll be telling on the stage, but she also used to bring people back and forth from Philly to New York in the 1700s in a covered wagon.

The theme was “After Hours: Stories about things that happen at night,” which encompasses everything I’ve ever done. Rather than having a pre-determined story and going to Stephanie with that in mind, I pitched 3 ideas to her of things I’d already written since I knew I’d have little time to focus on this with that Sucker for Love Show in the rear view. They were the Dominoes Pizza Story (which won), the Cicada Party and a Brick Street compilation culminating in Paul getting taken to the police station across the street. Well, she liked the pizza story. Now I just had to figure out how to frame it to have something to do with the night.

I tried at first to make it seem like the night was scary and play up the concept of fear. That watered down the story like a happy hour long island ice tea. Stephanie suggested I try to take more of a customer service angle before she headed out to California for the gold rush. This was a better fit with the Dominos Pizza part, but not the theme. But at this point, I didn’t care. This eventually led to the frame it currently sits in: the difference between Corporate America and the Ma and Pa stores and their relation to my hometown of Bridgeport, PA.

Somewhere along the line, I decided it would be fun to try to play up the angle of my irritation. This involved the inclusion of a couple well placed rants, which would intentionally veer from the topic to other things that angered me to indicate my level of irritation. So what I’ve basically done at this point, is I’ve taken the Dominoes Pizza story – one of the easiest lay-ups already in my comedic story-telling format – and I’ve made it into the most complicated performance I’ve possibly ever given. And on only one day’s preparation. Dustin Fisher, Comedy Masochist.


Still Standing Right Here...

QOTD credits: Derek Hills – ("or vice versa if you like")

Dustined

Dustined

I have been outdone. And it doesn't happen often, but this was good. To give a little background, I was officially given celebrity status when I was profiled in the newspaper for basically doing my job. They took a picture of me to go alongside my article. When I got to work Monday morning, there was a picture about 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall of my head taped up to the door. And then I turned the corner. Somebody had plastered my entire wall with at least 200 copies of... well, me. It was the background on my computer, and they had given me a unibrow in one of the pictures. It was quite a sight. Like a very disturbing personal shrine. I half expected there to be a burning pink hat on a plaster model of Steve from Blues Clues in my drawer. So the way it happened apparently was that when I left work Tuesday, Geoff had Anna cut out a bunch of pictures from the newspaper and put them up all over my computer. Well, then Tim and Brian walked in. They didn't stop until it became a fire hazard. It was like two children walking through the gates of Disneyland for the first time. They started copying, cutting, and taping to the wall. They were much more efficient. They enlarged the copy and made about a million of those. Then they e-mailed the newspaper and got them to send a copy of the picture. Then they revived this poster printer in our office, which no one has been able to get to work for 4 months. They wanted to do the whole ceiling too, but Geoff had to stop them and remind them that this was a place of business, however little business actually takes place in it. So props to Geoff, Anna and Matt, but mostly Tim and Brian who spent some long hours while not getting paid to build my shrine...

Quote of the Day 11/29/04

"Somebody pulled a Dustin on Dustin."

-Gary, upon seeing the sight


Revenge is a dish best served naked (or was that cold?).

Check it out: http://www.umbc.edu/athletics/Recreation/Images/Drec/ (Ed note: I'm publishing this on 6/29/09 and that page is still up. That's damn funny.)

I know where you live,

Mr. Popular.


Still Standing Right Here...

Humor is a Funny Thing

Humor is a Funny Thing

I feel an explanation is in order to those of you who are new to the quote of the day and the whole Mr. Dustin experience in general. I consider the quote of the day a sort of humor column, and I'm its author. Now whether or not you feel I deserve to consider myself a humor columnist is up to you, but that's how I see it. So like other humor columnists do (I imagine), I try to make the subject material funny, which involves a lot of catering to the crowd. Passive isn't funny, active is. Cute isn't funny, frustrated is. Forgiving isn't funny, bitter is. Agreeable isn't funny, opinionated is. Of course, you could make an argument that one of those four things is funny, but you'd be wrong. (I just incorporated all of the 4 other things into that one phrase, by the way.) And I embellish a lot of what I say because exaggeration is also funny. So is blatantly lying too. I don't stalk women's volleyball teams. Or redheads. Or 12-year-olds. Hell, I haven't even seen Star Wars yet (kidding again). In some ways, I'm almost an actor playing the part of a guy who is a lot like me. That's actually, confusingly enough, how I am in real life most of the time. Now please don't take this to mean that I have to mask my tears with a comedic face or anything, I just like making people laugh. Just like Jim Carrey. I'm like the Cable Guy. Now most people know when I'm kidding and when I'm not by now, but I know some of you out there don't. I was told by someone the other day that I "take comedy too seriously." That I "sit down and actually consider the tone of something before I consider whether or not its funny." Whereas this person would "just write something and see if it’s funny." This person honestly meant it as a character flaw, but I took it as a compliment. A few years back, I wrote a "research paper" on the subject of comedy. Mike, Good Joe, Kevin and I used to joke that we critiqued humor and the styles and techniques of it so much that we should write a book (again, please keep to yourselves whether you think I'm qualified to write a book on the subject). So I actually started a while back, but as I am a generally unmotivated person, I didn't follow through with the idea. But just recently, Mike figured out a good title for it...

Quote Of the Day 8/10/99

"Dustin and Mike: We're so serious about comedy, it's not funny."

-Mostly Mike


Humor is a very funny thing...

Just a guy trying to make pudding come out of your collective noses,

The Quorax.


Still Standing Right Here...