http://www.alexjmann.com Alex J. Mann Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:27:00 +0000 http://www.alexjmann.com en http://alexjmann.com/Classroom-Orchestra http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Classroom-Orchestra Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:27:00 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2742869 CLASSROOM ORCHESTRA is a sketch about an elementary school teacher who conducts his students into an unusual orchestra. (function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })(); http://alexjmann.com/Twitter http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Twitter Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:48:13 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2635008 Writing jokes on Twitter certainly doesn't count as standup comedy. However, many of the bits I perform start as tweets. I use Twitter as my notepad; a notepad with an audience. You can follow me on Twitter here. You can read my most popular tweets here. Below is an illustration of one of my tweets from the guys over at Twaggies. <img src="http://payload16.cargocollective.com/1/5/176451/2635008/Twag_0047.jpg" width="350" height="450" width_o="350" height_o="450" src_o="http://payload16.cargocollective.com/1/5/176451/2635008/Twag_0047_o.jpg" data-mid="13336106" border="0" align="left"/> http://alexjmann.com/Honest-Advertising http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Honest-Advertising Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:15:31 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2630773 HONEST ADVERTISING is a sketch that delivers honest endorsements for three of America's favorite products: cigarettes, coffee, and hot sauce. http://alexjmann.com/Charming-Bastard http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Charming-Bastard Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:30:05 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2630474 CHARMING BASTARD is short film about a twenty-something male who relies on a pick-up line generator to talk to a girl. The film follows his dates while providing commentary on how technology mediates our relationships. http://alexjmann.com/Humility http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Humility Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:05:25 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590949 I sat at a bus stop on a bench. Waiting. An old woman sat to my right, your left if you watched. The old woman wore a purple and teal nylon tracksuit. The pants purple, the jacket teal with grey stripes down the sleeves. The logo on the jacket was unrecognizable, like something you’d buy at a flea market. Her sneakers were tied and clean, though worn around the edges. Buses passed; the old woman never got on. “Everyone has a story,” the old woman said between short breaths. She was quiet, or what some might call a good listener. I told the old woman about Sarah, a middle school classmate. Sarah’s feet pointed inward and she tripped easily, even if she stepped on something small like an eraser. Sarah sat next to me in science class. One day Sarah told me she would be missing school the next day because she was volunteering at the Special Olympics. During role call the next day, the teacher asked where Sarah was. “Oh, Sarah?” I said, “She’s at the Special Olympics.” The teacher frowned. “There’s no being right if everyone is wrong,” the old woman said. “All you can do is laugh.” I told the old woman about my grandparents who live in Florida and forward me conspiracy emails with subject lines like “How To Deal With People Who Claim The Holocaust Didn’t Happen (i.e. Mel Gibson).” My grandparents have poor eyesight, so when returning their emails, even the absurd ones, I have to avoid condescension while making sure my message is legible. I once bumped up the font to size 30—a derisive one word per line. Realizing this, I dropped the font to size 28. Okay, two words per line. “If you ever decide to email me, let’s stick with font size 30,” said the old woman. She squinted as a bus pulled away. I told the old woman about my friend David, an addict. He sent me a text message when he left rehab: “I’m back in the game.” I hoped it wasn’t the drug game. I learned his game was Glee. A new addiction. Within a week of being home David started an Glee blog, a mailing list, and a Facebook page with pictures of his face copied and pasted into pictures with the Glee cast. “Glee? Send that boy back to rehab,” said the old woman between chuckles. After a pause, the old woman turned her head my direction. “Where you heading, anyway?” I told her I was going to visit Sarah, the girl with the inverted walk. I showed her Sarah’s address on the back of a envelope. “No need to take a bus. Sarah lives just a few blocks away.” The old woman pointed. I stood up to leave. “Your socks.” the old woman said. “They don’t match.” I looked at the old woman. She lifted up both legs of her purple track pants and pointed to her ankles. “Mine don’t either.” I nodded. She smiled. I walked toward Sarah’s. I thought about Sarah’s inverted walk and my grandparent’s conspiracy emails and David’s Glee addiction. I thought about the old woman’s mismatched socks. I glanced back at the bench; it was vacant. I heard the swish of the tracksuit, the rhythm of the sneakers. The old woman was on an afternoon jog. Jogging at the speed of walking. But still jogging in her mismatched socks. It’s a good sign when people take their pursuits seriously, but themselves less so. http://alexjmann.com/The-Score http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/The-Score Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:02:25 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590920 I rummaged through a wooden crate of digital wax -- CDs with cracked, plastic shells muffled with finger prints from the previous browser’s rampant indecisiveness -- placing keepers in an even stack by my side. Rejects were forced deeper to the bottom, back corner of the crate and further out-of-reach from my searching hands. The record store. Exploring it was a hobby. A pastime. My replacement for video games or television or anything else a typical ten-year old might do in his spare time. Back then, when my Mom asked me what I wanted to do for the day, it wasn’t the movie theatre or the mall or the baseball card shop. It wasn’t even a friend’s house -- it was back to . . . The shelves, crates and bins of unexplored sound. Sounds that would be iconic in defining moments of youth, creating a real-life soundtrack. Sounds that would give me an uplifting high as quick as they would drive me back into the ground. Sounds that would act as a common language, a secret hand-shake, between me and others in my life: girls, friends, mentors, parents, and so on. The employees who could rattle of facts --- useless, really -- about your favorite artist’s favorite producer’s favorite brit-pop-psychedelic-singer-songwriter of 1969, and just as quickly shoot down your own musical recommendation, dismissing it as radio garbage, pop-junk, poser-ish, or overplayed. The saturated walls covered in posters, sometimes covering the ceiling too (I remember thinking, “How did they get them up there?). Glossy images of everyone from B.B King to Hendrix to Prince to Wu-Tang to Kurt Cobain. Artists I recognized by name, but didn’t really yet know. I’d learn. The record store was a place of solitude. It wasn’t about you; it was about the music. Someone, the record store clerk, my Mom or another customer -- I don’t remember -- held an album in front of my face, blocking my vision of the crate of discs I was browsing. I didn’t recognize the name of the artist; it sounded like something from history class. The cover art was cinematic, like the poster for a film. Three faces graced the cover -- one of them a woman. The colors of the album, black and orange, were gripping, darker than the discs I had been browsing. “Have you heard this one?” the person asked. “I don’t think so.” The top left of the cover read “The Fugees.” The bottom right, “The Score.” I gripped the plastic case with both hands and brought it close. It reflected the light above, burning my eyes. A black and white Parental Advisory sticker was visible on the corner. I was intrigued. I had never heard rap music before, but the Fugees made me feel like I had. Lauryn’s harmonies were soulful, like Aretha. Wyclef’s flow sounded like jazz, like Miles. Pras could rhyme -- it reminded me of bebop. It was a new sound. A new sound composed of old sounds. Hip-hop. A sound that I would chase to this day. http://alexjmann.com/Tuesday http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Tuesday Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:59:26 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590900 I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change. — Bob Dylan August I heard a cluster of footsteps move in the direction of the door. I opened my eyes and saw people scramble inside. The door opened. The porch shook, sending jolts of distress through my upper body. I closed my eyes again and repositioned my arm. A sliver of wood snagged my t-shirt sleeve, tearing the skin below it. I hoped I wouldn’t have a splinter — one of those splinters you need to pull out using tweezers from the girl who lives down the hall because it’s lodged too deep in your skin to pull out with the nails of your thumb and index finger. I awaited the next blow to the ribs, chest, stomach — or, again, the face. I opened my eyes again. A pattern of nails held each plank of the wooden porch in its place. The nails formed a perfect row of black dots. I started to count them but was interrupted by the heel of a boot to the center of my back. I rolled down the steps, off the porch and onto the cool, dewy grass. I looked up, eyes numb. April 4 months earlier “Benjamin, you seem to be diligently taking notes in the back row. Why don’t you educate your classmates with an explanation of the time-value of money?” I slid my leather-bound music notebook off the edge of the desk, skimming the jeans of the girl sitting next to me. She glanced at me without turning her head, then returned her attention to her Blackberry. Tip, tap, tip, tap. I reached into the backpack and grabbed my “Financial Modeling” notebook — fresh from the student bookstore and not a scribble inside of it, though I had scrawled fuck down the front cover in bold letters using the “f” from “financial.” “Benjamin, for the sake of this academic institution you will soon represent, please instill some confidence in me that I’ve taught you at least one thing this semester. You are supposed to graduate in one month! The real world will have no patience. I do, so I will wait,” said Dr. Bancroft. The crease of her lips tightened her entire face, lowering her blue glasses a quarter-inch down her nose. When her glasses lowered, her forehead bunched. It was my last month as an undergrad, and class meant nothing more than attendance credit. I needed to attend at least 80 percent of the semester’s lectures — a huge time suck — in order to pass. I would’ve lost that credit entirely if not for the guys on my fraternity house floor dragging me out of my room each afternoon (“Yo, Ben, bring your guitar to class if you have to.”). The material was intuitive. I just didn’t feel the need to learn it. A few other hazy-eyed students in navy blue sweatshirts half-turned at their desks when I didn’t respond. I didn’t know any of them but recognized some faces from other classes, or the gym, or the bar, or maybe not at all. Stomps, backpack zippers and loud voices resounded from outside of the classroom door. The voices were indistinct, sodden with echos from the hallway. They were headed to corporate boot camp. The “career fair.” Thousands of students in unaltered suits and unflattering blouses, each clutching the same warm stack of paper: Times New Roman, one-inch margins, embellished feats of leadership. “The answer to your question, Dr. Bancroft” — I paused, cocked my head slightly, and stuck out my chin — “is that the time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest, earned over a given amount of time. A dollar today is, in theory, worth more than a dollar tomorrow.” She clicked to the next slide. The students turned and faced front. I slid the finance notebook off the desk. Again I opened my music notebook and stared down at the partially written song. It was Tuesday, I remembered. The frustration was gone. These memories can’t wait There’s a party in my mind In a few hours, my band would play for a gang of drunk students. I met Cameron in an independent studies course at the engineering school. The course was a study hall with loose mentoring from a faculty member. To be accepted you had to develop a proposal for the “advancement of higher learning through a student-made syllabus.” I stressed the economic opportunities for local bars and restaurants willing to open their doors to the school’s emerging music scene. The proposal was approved; the emerging music scene didn’t exist. Cameron and I started a band. I played guitar. Cameron played drums. As it goes, the homework assignment became a creative obsession. Evening practice sessions in the basement turned into night-long jam sessions rich with covers of 90s grunge rock, the music we grew up on. Our two-man project — a creation of “the system,” we were hasty to forget — became a three-man show when Neil, a bassist, a non-fraternity guy and Cameron’s roommate, joined the band. We recorded our first gig on a Tuesday night at Desolation Row and submitted it as our final presentation. Not only did we pass the course, but Row gave us a Tuesday night residency for the rest of the semester. We played every Tuesday through senior year. The final Tuesday show of the semester came the week before finals. The three of us met at Stonehenge, a quiet bar frequented by locals and avoided by students, a few blocks from Desolation Row. Cameron and I walked there together from fraternity row. Neil met us outside. He combined the personality of a bassist with the look of a frontman: pale, unwashed hair, skinny jeans, torn-up Chuck Taylors (“Dude, I bought them this way.”), a white v-neck with orange stains and a black motorcycle jacket. A silver cross hung on a chain right below the neck of his shirt. Our eyes met. He walked into Stonehenge and sat down on a bar stool. “Who does he think he is, Mick Jagger?” Cameron laughed, hoping I would laugh with him. Cameron and Neil’s friendship had deteriorated since we started taking our band, The Rooney, more seriously. Neil used it for his image, not as an artistic outlet. Cameron, on the other hand, was a raging closet intellectual. He played drums and wrote poetry, but none of this hurt his GPA. “Our final Tuesday night show,” I said. With a nod to the bartender, I ordered a pitcher of Blue Moon, part of our weekly routine. Having already ordered a beer for himself, Neil sipped it instead of making conversation. “It is,” Cameron said into his beer. “And what’s weird is that this started from a course. You, Ben, started a band, for a course — and you hate college.” “I don’t hate college.” Social life? Mundane. Dim nights of drinking where vomit meant success. Classes were a wash, blocks of time to focus on my presiding interest of the moment — as long as it had nothing to do with the lecture I was in. “Whatever. Can the three of us cheers?” Cameron raised his glass and looked at Neil, who was adjusting the collar on his leather jacket. “You too, Jagger.” I clinked my glass with Cameron’s. It left a dash of frost on his mug. Neil’s gaze remained fixed on his hands. I gave him an elbow to his ribs. He relented. “Let’s have a solid final show.” Neil raised his beer, glanced briefly at Cameron, then me, and we cheered. The fresh foam spilled into a puddle on the redwood bar. Its fish-eye reflection of the three of us disappeared when Cameron slammed down his glass. “We’re on in ten minutes. Let’s rip this joint. It’s gonna save your soul!” He slid off the stool, picked up his drumsticks from underneath it and left the bar. Neil and I looked at each other and pounded the rest of our beers. We left a few dollars and grabbed our instruments. A flock of sorority girls smoked cigarettes outside Desolation Row, exhaling clouds that faded in unison. Through the haze I recognized one of the girls as Sloane. Although guys considered Sloane one of the more attractive girls in her group, she never quite made it. Sloane’s friends knew this, which is why they liked her so much. We had a writing class together freshman year, sitting, mostly fidgeting, next to each other on the first day. We stayed in the same seats for the rest of the semester. Exchanges in class were friendly, futile — comments on the erratic weather, essay grades, weekend hangovers. After that we ran into each other only twice: at a record store and after one of my shows junior year. Sloane approached me after the show, stirring a strand of hair like she used to in class. She wanted to learn guitar. I called her a week later. No answer. I looked away when Sloane returned the stare. I walked to the bar’s entrance. “Let me see some IDs, gentlemen.” Jack was Desolation Row’s doorman, a star defensive lineman from the class of ’96 who got injured his senior year. The rumor was that Jack’s “career-ending injury” was not actually a football injury, but the result of a bizarre gardening accident. This hadn’t been confirmed. He was so dedicated to the football program that he hadn’t left campus since. He’d show up drunk at fraternity parties, wearing his game jersey, which hadn’t been washed since graduation. He was wearing a black, fitted polo shirt with the red logo of the bar printed above the left pocket. His bulging forearm had a tattoo of the school mascot, the Bowlin’ Bear. If you asked about it — and really, why would you? — he would talk about the other one on his back. “Good one, Jack,” I said. I was never sure if he repeated this joke because he didn’t have any others or because he’d forgotten who we were. “Right! Next week, huh? Shit, man, feels like I just graduated. Senior year, amazing — until I, uh, got injured!” His high-pitched wheeze of a laugh lingered a second too long. “But, yeah, before that shit happened, college was awesome,” he continued. “I guess that’s why I’m still here! The football games, they were the best. This one night after the last regular season game, we were hanging out with the cheerleading squad — you know, like football players do — and . . .” Jack leaned in to whisper something, but was interrupted by the manager. “Ben, let’s go,” the manager said. “I’ve been waiting for you guys. I can’t run a bar without music.” I looked at Cameron and Neil. We nodded to Jack, who waved us into the bar, still desperate to finish his story. “Play that new Usher song!” he said as the wooden door closed behind us. The bar was packed body to body all the way to the stage. Students tilted mugs to their lips and tended to the keypads of their phones — Tip, tap, tip, tap — texting, two thumbs. Neil and I pushed through the sweaty crowd. We held our cases above our heads. “Excuse me, folks. The band has arrived. Make way for the stars.” On the scuffed stage, I approached the microphone — “check, check.” I plugged in my guitar. Ebony solid body, mahogany neck, unclipped strings at the head. The amplifier hissed. Neil plugged in his bass. He rolled up the sleeves on his leather jacket. Cameron tapped lightly on his cymbal. “You boys ready?” I discerned floating, beady, black dots: drunken pupils of the student body. Sloane. I thought I saw her in the back of the crowd. The inebriated chatter faded. I turned my back on the audience to give Cameron and Neil a nod, which they returned. I turned back around and eyed the audience. I struck the first chord of the song. The clash of drums and the first thump of bass followed. As I played, I squinted into the crowd attempting to make out the silhouettes of my friends. I hoped they were watching. It’s always show time, here at the edge of the stage May I touched the tip of the black pen to the paper and dragged it off the page, which made a line on the desk: the first feeling of mental distress. Words. Everywhere but on the paper. The dot. The single, vibrating black dot was another attempt at making, creating, just writing something, anything new. It joined ten others on the page. When I paused to finish a thought, the dots stirred. I pulled my chair closer to the desk and leaned over the paper as if to intimidate them. I touched pen to paper, pulled away, then pressed hard again. I scribbled two lines: Class today Hungover and no drugs to feel the way I crossed the lyrics out in two strikes. It’s only castles burning. Again. Class today Hungover and no drugs to feel the way No purpose here The way we pass isn’t fair Trite. Crossed out. They joined the lines before them. Class today Hung over and no Advil to lead the way No purpose here The way you pass doesn’t seem fair The anxiety surrounding graduation lingered. Dissonance. My peers saw the mortarboards-soaring-through-the-air bullshit as the end of livelihood. I needed to leave. The future was open-ended, less scripted. I planned to rent a house off-campus and record the music I had developed in spurts throughout college to capture whatever traces of fleeting inspiration — little black dots, gnats swarming at dusk, gone by dark — remained after semesters of intemperance and hundreds of refreshes on my Facebook profile. If it was naïve to think that committing music and lyrics to digital wax would save me from falling deeper into the cycle, the repetition, I didn’t care. Change, maturity, professionalism — any of those other abstract promises were not what I was hunting. Let’s be honest, Dr. Bancroft’s course wasn’t an exception to the bridge of intellect that was supposedly being built elsewhere on campus: all of my classes became blocks of time to work on other meaningful shit, not just doodles on the back of my notebook. I pushed away the failed lyrics. I stared at the blank, white wall in the corner of my room for a moment, then walked to my closet. I slid my blue graduation gown off of the hanger that had hung idle for the past two months, still fresh with fold lines from its original packaging. I slipped it over my blue jeans and grey t-shirt. The alarm clock showed a red 1:07; 23 minutes to hustle to the football field. I glanced in the mirror, laughed, and walked to the door. My fingers met the handle. I considered the direction I would have to walk to reach the football field after leaving the house. Students who’d never been to a football game wouldn’t know where the field was. Lost on the last day. I opened the door an inch. A stale breeze: a combination of beer, ammonia, and a mop that should have been thrown out. The familiar smell of last night’s party. I shut the door, shielding me from the smell. I returned to my desk to scribble a few more lines. Nomads today With a map and compass to lead the way There’s no desert here No freight trains and no clean air I dropped my pen back on the desk. The dots stopped dancing. I put the sheet of lyrics, folded four ways, into my back pocket. We sat a few inches apart on the football field. It had rained the night before. Beads of sweat dripped onto my honorary gown, little black dots on the fabric. My chair sunk into the turf. Next to me sat my fraternity brothers. The other students I never got to know. Somewhere in the audience: my parents, grandparents, younger sister and brother. A mother and father — not mine — waved at me. A retired executive, gracing his alma mater with a third graduation speech, approached the podium. He shook hands with each of the university faculty members. Aside from clicking cameras and occasional coughs, the crowd went silent. The speaker cleared his throat twice. He lifted his hands. “Graduates of today, I stand before you this beautiful afternoon to remind you this country faces a difficult period. You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” “Four years is a long time,” I thought as a freshman. Each year I subtracted that year but created a new context to make graduation seem distant. Four years: I reminded myself how long high school felt. Three years: I reminded myself how long ago I passed my driver’s test. Two years: I reminded myself how long ago I had my license suspended. In my final year it was tough to create anything. The speaker continued: “People meander through life maintaining separation from their peers, failing to preserve the relationships they’ve built on campus. Embrace the friendships and experience you’ve gained over the past four years; both are more valuable than you realize. When you leave this fine university in the next few days, carry you with an artifact, a token of your experience. Whatever it is you gained these past four years, hold it close. Do not leave without it.” I unfolded the song lyrics on my lap. I looked down. The black dots stirred. There we were in matching caps, listening to a speaker who said the same thing the year before. It was the same speech at every graduation across the country. What were they saying right now? Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them. I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Internet! Life moves fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you’re gonna miss it. Digital cameras clicked from the bleachers. The family that wasn’t mine. I shook my head, trying to signal to them that I wasn’t who they thought I was. I gave up. They smiled. The speaker began his labored conclusion: “Your future is an empty manuscript. You are the sole pen, writing the song along the way. Take smart risks, because in every way that you act, you represent productive economic beings, moral beings, social beings. In all those actions, when collected, you will have the opportunity to make history.” I spotted my real family. My sister drummed her thumbs on her phone. Something else was taking place before her. My friends exchanged handshakes and I joined one extended my way. I took a quick glance over my shoulder and saw a single girl crying as she tapped away on her Blackberry — Tip, tap, tip, tap. Mascara dripped down her cheeks and onto the phone. I smiled as the speaker delivered his closing line. “Ladies and gentlemen, women and men, students of today, Godspeed!” June Loaf of white bread, $3 Box of Hi-Ho crackers, $2 Bag of frozen mixed berries, $2 Package of chicken thighs, $4 I stared at the layer of items at the bottom of my shopping cart. Over budget by $2. I checked the orange juice’s price and returned it to its refrigerated shelf. Water this week. I rolled my cart out of the aisle and started to make my way to the checkout. Passing the bread aisle on my right, I spotted a petite brown-haired girl behind another shopper — an old man rummaging through the cake table in his wheelchair. She struggled to reach a loaf of whole wheat bread on the top shelf. She was wearing a thin white t-shirt, bra-visible-if-you-looked-hard-enough. The shirt’s tag stuck out on the back of her neck. As she stood on her toes to reach the bread, her rounded heels lifted out of her sandals. My eyes darted to the tan line below her shorts. I abandoned my cart in the middle of the aisle to become a supermarket hero. Then: a familiar sorority logo on her shorts. I turned around, but she felt me in the corner of her eye. “Ben? Hi!” The old man, startled, paused his cake-sorting and turned his attention to her. He looked at me, mouth open. I looked away. I looked at the register. A cashier was giving two teenagers directions. He pointed. They pointed. “Sloane, funny running into you,” I said. “What are you doing here?” Sloane had permanently bronzed skin. Either she constantly went to the tanning salon or wore progressively lighter shirts. “Just doing my shopping. Did you graduate? I have one more semester left. I’m finishing up this summer, finally.” “I did graduate, but I’m living near campus to finish up some music,” I said. She looked toward the registers. “Oh cool, you must have a job lined up. You studied finance — or was it economics — right?” Her voice was tony. It ticked up when she said “finance” and “economics,” as if she hadn’t said the words before. “I’m actually working. I’m the delivery guy at Ming’s. Just for now. Like, this summer,” I said. At Ming’s, the Chinese restaurant in the center of campus, I was the only delivery guy. Ming’s used to be a record store called City Lights. Sloane and I ran into each other at City Lights sophomore year browsing the used CD section. We agreed that the 1967 Bob Dylan live bootleg was the standout item in the bin, better than the Neil Young record from the same year. The guy at the register debated the quality of both shows to himself. I grabbed the Dylan CD from her hands and playfully held it behind my back. I relented and handed it to her. I said I already had a copy, which was a lie. “Ming’s? Oh, okay,” she said. I noticed the old man still staring in my direction. He laughed with a dry throat. Small ambiguous laughs. He looked back at Sloane when I noticed him. “So, how’ve you been? Let me know if you ever order from Ming’s and I can make sure the food arrives to your door safely.” I said. She didn’t laugh. I considered mentioning the Dylan record. “I’ll order so you can come by to say hello. We should catch up!” Her eyebrows arched. She smiled. “Cool, I’ll see you around. Maybe soon.” I looked down at the items in my cart, back at her, and then continued on my way to the checkout. July I stuck around near campus after graduation, renting a house with money I had saved from working at Ming’s because I didn’t have a real job and the college setting provided context for the song I started in Bancroft’s class. I had to finish the song. Perspiration always gathered in my eyebrows and sideburns as I passed the leaning speed limit sign on my morning run. I usually took five minutes to reach it. I tried to reduce that number by reaching the sign before the first song blaring in my headphones ended. It didn’t matter which song or how long it was. I just had to tap the sign before the sound faded. By the time I broke a sweat, I was another five minutes — another song — from my turnaround point: the Harley-Davidson billboard. I ran on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I’d roll out of bed and throw on my frayed high school basketball shorts and a t-shirt. I knew I was up early enough when the sky was grey and the wind made me forget it was summer. I imagined my house on my run back. Even in the middle of summer the trees cast a dark shadow over its roof. The house was once white, I thought, but the exterior panels had since turned green. A professor lived there during the school year and rented it out to students during the summer. It was a house an elementary school student would draw in crayon: square, door in the middle, windows on either side, symmetrical. The house sat atop a deep, quiet basement where I kept my equipment. The closest sign of civilization besides the Harley-Davidson outlet was the distant outline of the college stadium. Still sweaty from the run, I’d walk down the unlit staircase into the studio. It was really just a simple recording setup: a drum set, four guitars, a bass and a piano. I’d play for three hours, eat a quick lunch — peanut-butter-and-jelly on white bread with a glass of milk — and then play more. I split my time between practicing older songs and newer ones developed since graduation. Then I’d drive to Ming’s. The only thing the restaurant workers knew about me was my name. They yelled it — “Benjamin!” — whenever there was an order to deliver. This happened — “Benjamin!” — all day. Ming’s sat in a strip of stores behind a major apartment complex, with a dying, neon red sign. The restaurant secreted the smell of burnt soy sauce and sesame oil, which met my nostrils even as I parked my car, windows up. Ming’s still looked like City Lights. The checkout counter was hidden to the right of the front doorway to catch shoplifters. Stereo wires across the wall now hung ladles, mixers, forks. The used bins where Sloane and I fought playfully over the Bob Dylan bootleg now stored pots and pans. Memories pushed further out of touch. The place was covered in stickers from City Lights’s heyday: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Robert Plant. They paid me in cash. It was nothing, but the tips added up on weekends. Students were eager to tip for other students. I must have looked like one. The restaurant’s phone rang. Having spent two hours checking my own phone, I looked up to see Marcus, who answered the phone and made the rice, pick up the receiver and scribble on his yellow pad. He looked at me, looked back at the rice cooker, then at me again. “Benjamin you deliver ten minute soon!” Sloane. She ordered. I packed a dragon-print bag with plastic cartons of greasy meat and vegetables. I slid it onto my car’s back seat, slammed the door shut and backed out of the lot. I glanced at my shining forehead in my rear view. A four-minute drive took me into the communal parking lot off of University Drive. Three identical apartment buildings surrounded it. The top three floors looked like they once had balconies. The paper Marcus had handed me read “two chicken broccoli, building C, apartment 33.” Sloane’s name was smudged with grease. I guess that this must be the place I can’t tell one from another Did I find you, or did you find me? I approached building C and piggybacked my way into the building when three guys in hooded sweatshirts left. Once I entered the lobby I made my way to the elevator and reached out to tap the up button. My finger missed the button and landed on the edge around it. I was shaking. I reached out again, tapped the button twice. I heard the elevator activate. The doors opened and I got on. I got out of the elevator at the third-floor hallway. Long, dim yellow lights — transparent graves for flies that had snuck into then died in the fixtures, a mottled collage of black dots — blinked along the third-floor hallway. The whiteboard on apartment 30′s door said “Go State!” in large bubble letters. Apartment 31′s had been partially erased and tagged “Slut” in black Sharpie. Apartment 32′s had a Bob Marley sticker and an outline of a marijuana leaf. Sloane’s door, number 33, had no whiteboard, just a nail hammered below the peephole. Faint giggling leaked through the door. Waiting, paper bag tightly in hand, I imagined looking through the peephole, seeing her looking through at the same time. The creak of a door down the hall startled me. A couple left another apartment in matching sweatshirts and pajama pants. The giggling from Sloane’s room grabbed my attention again. I raised my arm to knock but let it back down. I raised it and knocked twice, looking away. I heard someone fiddle with the handle. Sloane appeared. Black sports bra. The apartment seemed empty. My eyes drifted behind her and spotted ruffled pink pillows on the leather couch. The television played a blender infomercial. “Hey Ben! You came!” she said, her arms crossed. “I did. You’re my last delivery of the night. And I brought you extra crunchy noodles.” “Thanks.” In blue jeans ripped at the knees and brown dress shoes, both untied, I reeked of soy sauce and could feel the sesame oil leaking from my pores. “So, how’s it going?” Another girl, who I recognized as Sarah — dated football players, etc. — walked across the living room in a long v-neck t-shirt, towel wrapped around her head, glass of wine in her hand, no pants. “Sloane, is that satin dress I wore for our formal in your closet? The one with the beading? I saw it there last — oh, hi.” She moved into what I assumed was Sloane’s room. A closet opened, clothes ruffled. Sloane tilted her head and forced a smile. “So great seeing you again! Thanks for coming by! Have a good summer and good luck with that music thing.” She smiled again. I said goodbye the same way I’d say goodbye to the guy pumping my gas. Sloane waved her hand and closed the door softly, mercifully. I saw two guys leave the elevator with a case of Budweiser. I nodded at them as we passed, but they didn’t return the gesture, and I got on the elevator. Thumb pressed to “Door Open,” I poked my head out of the elevator to see the two guys waiting outside of Sloane’s apartment. “Is this it?” one said. August I awoke to a breeze skimming my face, unaware what day it was. Cool air seeped through the cracks in my windows and rattled the front screen door of the house, as if attempting to break in. I leaned out of bed, peered out of my window. Grey. I remembered: this year, for the first time in memory, I wasn’t going anywhere. Nothing would change except the weather. Leaves are falling all around It’s time I was on my way The sheet of lyrics, teeming with black dots, sat unfinished on my nightstand. I glanced at the clock on my way out of bed. 7:07. The cold made it feel even earlier. The wooden kitchen floor felt cool on my heels and toes. My steps were quick and short. An unusual image caught my attention through the blinds. If you stared at one spot in the street without blinking, the speeding metal figures blurred together: streaks of blue into black, a dash of red into blue, beams of green into grey, white and yellow. They moved fast. Each was tightly packed, patterns of flowers and stripes. The endless line of vehicles — minivans, SUVs, some sedans — rolled toward a common destination, ready to unload bags of things, stuff, articles and objects into dorm rooms. In each SUV and minivan there was a student — maybe more than one student if it was a brother and sister or two friends who somehow fit all of their stuff in one vehicle — who would begin a fresh semester of college. The vehicle would approach the overflowing parking lot of the student’s apartment or dorm. He’d hop out of the vehicle to snag a moving cart while mom and dad parked as close as possible to the building’s entrance. He’d roll his things on the cart from the vehicle to the elevator of the building, where he’d wait for it to be his turn to take his stuff up to his floor. He’d greet his roommates, then run back down the stairs to get more of his stuff. When classes began the next day, he’d cut across the freshly mowed grass with his friends, some new and some old and some he’d never see again, to the auditorium-sized classroom to learn new stuff. That night, he’d party. The first party of the semester. His first college party. I hadn’t thought about my college friends since graduation. The episode with Sloane forced me to forget any lingering memories about a social life. I wondered how my friends were doing. I assumed they took typical routes. The smart, one-dimensional ones began careers in New York, probably in finance. The rich, less ambitious ones worked for their family companies. The confused ones left America to teach English abroad. The rest of them would sit on their parents’ couches, waiting for the economy to turn in their favor. The fresh students would soon begin syllabus week, which is called that because, instead of real coursework, the teachers would hand out syllabi outlining the course material. The students took it upon themselves to party harder than they would for the rest of the semester. But now it’s time for me to go The autumn moon lights my way He cut me off before I could answer. I was glad he did. I was tired of justifying living near school. I probably shouldn’t have picked up my phone in the first place, but I was curious why Brownstein was calling me. Sloane must have told him I was living around campus. “We’re having a party tonight at the senior house for the first night of syllabus week. All the freshmen girls will be out and stupid drunk. Pregame starts at 10 pm. Moskowitz’s sister and friends are coming and you know what that means. You should stop by and fill us in on the life of a big-time college grad.” I thought of different explanations for what I was still doing near campus. I’m preparing to pursue a master’s in mathematics. What am I doing? What are you doing? I’m lounging until my trading position at Goldman Sachs starts. I love this place too much. I tried to leave, but didn’t get far. Super senior! “Nah man, I think I’m over that stuff. I’d feel out of place. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” The easiest answer. I remembered how pathetic it was when graduates would drive hours back to campus for parties just a month or two after graduation. We snickered behind their backs, and I promised myself I would never become the target of that laughter. By then, I knew, I would have moved on to a more mature, intellectual social life. I slouched back to my bed and played guitar, strumming chord progressions from the song I started writing in Bancroft’s class. The routine. The frustrations of a futile practice session sold me on a night of drinking. Around 9 pm, after throwing on a hooded sweatshirt and pocketing my lyrics, I left for campus. A Friday night during syllabus week created a social epidemic on campus. On a ten miles-per-hour drive down fraternity row, you noticed large groups of girls, wearing less clothes than you would expect for the cool, evening weather, walking in a pattern like a flock of birds. They looked better as a flock than any bird looked by herself. The best feature of one covered the weakness of another. The mother bird — typically the one blonde in a group of seven to ten brunette birds — led the flock. She clicked her clunky heels against the pavement while the rest of the birds waddled and chirped close behind. I pulled my red Nissan over the mound of gravel between the road and my old fraternity house. The car bounced on its weak suspension, causing my CD player to skip on the lyric, there isn’t anything left to try. I passed a Range Rover, two BMWs and a Lexus, among other vehicles, until I found an open patch of grass to park. I jammed my keys in my pocket with the lyrics. The rubber heels of my sneakers — the ones I used for running — stuck to the fraternity floor hallway each step after entering the house. The hallway had four doors on each side, each door opening to a room that barely fit two single beds. Each door looked about the same with chipped, blue paint, food stains (putting food on your fraternity brother’s door was a popular activity) and a dent below the lock. The dents were a result of the doors being kicked down. This was a preferred solution to a locksmith if you were locked out of your room. The most common reason for getting locked out was your key was lost or misplaced. If one roommate lost his key and the other was at class, the door got kicked down. If both roommates left their keys in the room and both were locked out, the door got kicked down. If one roommate was pissed at the other, he would kick the door down while the other was in there with a girl. A door at the end of the hallway, propped open by a single red brick, marked the beginning of the party room. In the center of the room sat a lanky wooden table missing a piece of the front right leg, in its place a stack of yellow phonebooks. Perched on the wooden table was a line of bottles, arranged biggest to smallest. Bright, orange sodas and red fruit drinks. Clear, plastic containers of vodka, some with white labels and red labels, the cheapest stuff on the liquor store shelf. Glass handles of rum and whiskey, each with a different but oddly similar picture of a pirate or a viking or a sailor. Next to the bottles: an orange water cooler, the kind a football team keeps on the sideline. In it was a combination of beer, vodka and powdered lemonade mix. We called it Bitches Brew. Behind the table was an empty brick fireplace. Inside there was no wood, no soot: just silver, red, gold, blue and white beer cans, some crushed, others stacked in perfect columns. While I stared at the labels on the bottles of alcohol, the doors swung open behind me — air rushed at my sweaty back and neck. Girls and guys massacred the table of alcohol. The few younger guys I recognized nodded to me, but their attention returned to their red cups. Brownstein patted me on the shoulder and handed me a beer as he entered the room. I turned to say hello. He had moved on to filling a red cup with a fistful of ice at the table. I stood back from the table while everyone hunched around it, reaching over each other for the handles of liquor and liters of soda. I backed up until I bumped into the wall behind me. I had a beer in my right hand. It was partially crushed. I turned and squeezed through a flock of girls entering the room. I split the flock in two. Unruffled, they continued their migration toward the promise of free drinks. I looked back to see the flock gather around the table, each bird foraging for a drink in her own way. One approached a guy and displayed her feathers with the hope that he’d pour her a drink. A more aggressive bird went directly for the nest, reaching over other birds to snatch prized bottles of liquor. The remainder went for the easiest target, Bitches Brew, scooping the red cups directly into the cooler’s open top and sipping the yellow nectar in unison. I turned back around, passed the staircase on my right and entered the hallway of dented doors. I walked quickly, letting go of my beer as I neared the end of the hallway. The can crashed to the floor and the remaining liquid seeped under a doorway. I left through the backdoor into the parking lot. I wiped my hand on my jeans. When my hand touched the denim the sheet of lyrics crackled in my pocket. I entered the street in the middle of fraternity row and heard bass thumping from every direction. Unable to determine the origin of the sound, I turned my attention to the house next door, and noticed heavy bass was rattling the basement door. I walked further down the street and heard a similar tone of bass pulsing from the fraternity houses, each with a line of students wrapped around the front yard. The guys and girls stared down at their phones, texting — Tip, tap, tip, tap. — others in other lines at other houses, eyeing the surrounding houses, wondering if they should hop to another line. When the front door opened to let the next group in, there was a moment of silence as the entire back of line stood on their toes and ignored one another to eye who was granted next entrance. I turned the corner away from fraternity row back toward the parking lot so I could get my car. “Ben!” Someone was yelling to another Ben. Sloane? I stopped briefly, but then kept walking, reaching into my back pocket for my headphones. “Yo Ben, that you?” I stopped again. I peaked over my shoulder and saw Donnie, smiling with a red cup in his left hand, who I hadn’t seen since my final Tuesday show at Desolation Row. He was pumping a keg on the deck of his house. Donnie lived in the lacrosse house on the corner of fraternity row. “What’s a college graduate like you doing back at school?” he asked. “Is the real world that bad? Come have a beer!” He turned to a friend and laughed. I opened my mouth but decided against responding. I walked toward the house. Once you begin a gesture, it’s fatal not go through with it. I walked down the sidewalk and onto the house’s lawn, and then walked up to the porch. Donnie had already gone inside, so I got in line for a beer. I stood behind a guy — some blockhead jock — in a tight, white t-shirt, shoulders wider than I was tall. Dark grey areas of sweat were visible in the pits. I waited behind him, playing with my phone, as he carelessly filled two red cups to the brim, cheap swill dripping over the edge with foam. Some of his beer splashed on my foot. He rested the tap on the keg, glanced back at me, looked at this friend, and didn’t move. After about thirty seconds of waiting, I eventually walked around him, squeezed behind a trash can, and approached the silver keg from the opposite side. We were facing each other. I stuck out in this crowd. I wasn’t a lacrosse player; I wasn’t muscular or on any team. I wasn’t even a student. I was a musician living a few miles away, yet here I was at a syllabus week party, hanging with jocks after leaving a party at my own fraternity house. The blockhead pointed his stubby finger into my chest. “Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing here?” He squinted and tilted his head to one side. He pushed his neck out, darting his eyes around the scene to make sure his friend was watching. I considered swinging, even winding my arm back. For a transient moment, I pictured the unfinished song in my pocket saturated with little, screaming black dots. Before I could swing, the blockhead reached across the top of the keg with both of his arms and grabbed my shoulders, flinging my flailing body over the top of the keg. He clutched my neck and drilled my body into the floor of the porch. A lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash. He swung his fist towards my jaw, but missed and skimmed the bottom of my chin. The upward pressure forced my mouth shut. I bit down, my front teeth sinking into my bottom lip. Blood. It dripped down the front of my chin, pooling at my neck and staining the top of my shirt. Another swing. His fist pounded the flesh below my eye and grazed the tip of my nose. My hands instinctively went up to cover my face. The stench of beer from my hands filled my nostrils, but then, a warm, red stream; my nose churned out blood and snot. A foot crashed into the lower section of my ribs, forcing me onto my side where I curled up like a infant. My cheek and the whole side of my body now lay on the wooden porch. I opened my eyes again. A pattern of nails held each plank of the wooden porch in its place. The nails formed a perfect row of black dots. I started to count them but was interrupted by the heel of a boot to the center of my back. I rolled down the steps, off the porch and onto the cool, dewy grass. I looked up, eyes numb. I limped down fraternity row, the houses now quiet, empty, bass-free. The parties were over. Bright screens floated out of doorways, down the sidewalk, through the street, fingers tapping at a keypad. I reached my car and sped south of campus down the main highway. The streets were watching. The car stereo was muted, but the screen on the disc player blinked hit play to begin, again and again. I cracked the driver-side window an inch; the air cooled my skull. The dried blood that had collected in my palms from protecting my face stuck to the rubber coating on the steering wheel. I passed the orange Harley sign on my left. I was home. I turned the car into my driveway, hitting the breaks abruptly upon pulling in. My sternum slammed forward against the steering wheel. I glanced at the disc player, still blinking. Hit play to begin. Hit play to begin. I got out of the car and stared at the silhouette of the house. It looked bigger and nicer at night. I walked to the front of the house and pulled open the screen door. I unlocked the front door and entered. I reached around to the right of the doorway to tap the light switch and stumbled forward in the direction of my bedroom. I caught a reflection in the hallway mirror. I kept the mirror in my peripheral vision, slowly turning. I saw my pupils — beaming black dots — and then noticed my hair pressed down on one side of my head and sticking up in bunches on the other. The follicles, glistening with sweat, were sprinkled with leaf debris. Soft, horizontal lines of dirt and dried blood formed in my forehead’s creases. Strained vessels filled one magenta eye, while the other remained a swollen light pink from the shot below it. Dried blood crusted the edges of both nostrils, forming a bridge to my upper lip. My shirt was damp, torn and transparent. The hallway mirror reflected an image of my bedroom behind me, allowing me to spy on distant memories over my own shoulder. On my desk I spotted the finance notebook from Dr. Bancroft’s class — still not a word written inside she would care about — stacked underneath a pile of albums our band used to try to emulate. I thought of Cameron and Neil. I wondered if they were playing music, or if they were . . . Propped against the edge of my mattress was the ebony guitar. Strings still unclipped. Idle. The once glistening, fingerprint spotted neck was now coated with dust. The instrument, abandoned since that final Tuesday show at Desolation Row when I played that one song . . . My hand jolted down to my pocket. A crumpled paper. The unfinished song. The fragment of my college experience that when written . . . Tossed over the desk chair was the grease-stained shirt from Ming’s — the same shirt I wore the night I delivered to Sloane’s apartment when she decided . . . My diploma lay on the wooden floor, torn by the rear leg of the chair resting on top of it. The mangled document prompted incomplete memories from the graduation speech . . . The floor was lined with a pattern of nails holding each thin plank of wood in its own place. The heads of the nails formed a row of black dots down the room. A perfect row of black dots. I started to count the nails but was interrupted by the hum of a passing car outside my bedroom window driving towards campus. The passing car blew a slight gust of wind through the window, just enough to ruffle the fraying corner of the notebook, the clothes on the chair and the guitar: dust flurries floated off of the neck and into the air. The breeze travelled across the bedroom and brushed the door. I looked away from the mirror. The relief of abandonment. I turned around and held the door open before it could shut. I stood still, alone, legs stiff. Relenting, I entered the bedroom. Once you begin a gesture, it’s fatal not go through with it. I removed the sheet of lyrics from my pocket and held the neck of the guitar firmly enough to replace the sleeping dust with the life of my palm. Gripping the guitar and unfinished song, I walked towards my desk. http://alexjmann.com/Standing-Up http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/Standing-Up Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:55:57 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590872 Five blocks away. I walked at an even pace down the sidewalk, speeding up to cross intersections before cars received their green light. I approached an intersection as the light turned red. I made my move: one step forward. The cab made his: rolling a few inches. I retreated to the curb. The cab sped ahead, taking a small victory. I glanced down at the piece of paper as I walked. It was printed with even rows of text, each line a separate idea I would riff on. It was my set, my bits, my jokes and my gags. My goal was to make a bar full of strangers laugh, and just for a few minutes at a time, loosen their grip on reality. I looked down at the paper, and then back up to make sure I didn’t walk into someone: I spotted packs of men and women in their suits and dresses on cell phones making plans for the evening, looking for relief. I was in my work clothes, t-shirt and jeans, also looking for a sense of relief. Eyes back down on the paper. I read sentences, already memorized. I wanted to read them again. Just in case. If you forget something while you’re up there, take out the paper and have a look. That’s what everyone did last time. That’s what open mics are for: practice. No, no, that’s amateurish. You’ll seem vulnerable and no one will laugh. Four blocks away. Paper still in my hand, but down at my side, folding against my jeans with each step. I ran through my routine (can something be your routine if you haven’t done it before?) in my head, counting 1, 2, 3 before delivering a punchline to an audience that wouldn’t exist for another 20 minutes. The stories and set ups were easy; They were just like a regular conversation. Punchlines were more difficult. Infinite ways to deliver, only a few ways to get a laugh. The 1, 2, 3 pause before a punchline…creates tension. In a few seconds of silence…the ears tense and wait. Relief was the reward for patience. You’re only going to be up there for six minutes. Depending on how quickly you get your first laugh — if you get one at all — it will either feel a lot longer or shorter. Don’t try to seem cool. Just go up there and do it like you practiced. Three blocks away. The paper was now stuffed in my back pocket. I made a detour at a Wells Fargo to use the ATM. The bank was styled like a McDonald’s: glistening reds and cheap, plastic yellows. There’s a joke here somewhere. A bank that’s like McDonald’s… Storing the thought for later, I took a twenty from the ATM. $5 to perform; A small cost for a new experience. Don’t forget to introduce yourself once you step on stage. Your name is easy to remember, and if for some reason you do well, you’ll want them to know it. Do I introduce myself before and after, or just before or just after? Wait to see if the host introduces you, and then decide. Two blocks away. Headphones on. Take the mind in another direction,. Music on. The blues. Comedians are supposed to be sad, right? The link between music and comedy. In music, a verse builds tension, and a repetitive, catchy chorus relieves the tension. In comedy, a story or setup builds tension, and a punchline relieves the tension. One block away. I quickened my pace and approached the club. A guy stood outside puffing a half-burned cigarette. I removed one headphone, looked at him, and reached to my pocket to grab my wallet for my ID. Nevermind. He wasn’t a bouncer; He was a patron temporarily trading his beer for a cigarette. I walked past him and entered the club. I walked to the back of the bar and pushed away a draped black curtain. The room, revealed. Brick walls, bare except for two chalkboards with the week’s schedule. Tomorrow night was trivia night. One bright light — the spotlight — lit the corner stage. I paid my fee at the door. “Yeah, I’m here to perform.” My name was scribbled on the bottom of the list. “That’s Mann with with two n’s,” I said correcting her. I took a seat on the metal folding chair in the back of the room. The jokes about shit and dicks and porn always work, but are easy. I can make Jewish jokes because I’m Jewish, right? Seinfeld did. Most Jewish comedians do. I chipped away at my nails, and a pile nail debris formed by my sneakers. I kicked the pile and sat on my hands. I wasn’t paying attention to the comedian on stage; I was only anticipating my turn. I hope I didn’t have my routine too memorized. Canned material never sounded right, only when Carlin did it. My bin Laden bit is a little dated by now, but the cab driver I told it to the other night still laughed. He was Middle Eastern. Brendan went on stage. He placed a voice recorder on his chair before going up. Brendan is friend and has been performing for about a year. He seemed relaxed, almost bored, greeting the host like he did each week previously. He forgot his new bit half way through his routine and transitioned to the bit about the time he threw up in the back of the cab. Most of Brendan’s bits are about alcohol. He’s Irish, with red hair. It works for him; It wouldn’t work for me. Hopefully the audience is intelligent, cerebral enough to pick up on my references. What if they don’t know who Anne Frank is? That joke I have won’t work if they don’t. I tapped the host, who had taken a seat in front of me after introducing Brendan. “Hey man, it’s my first time doing this. Mind giving me some feedback after my set?” He turned his neck towards me, but not his body. Concerned, he asked, “It’s your first time on stage?” “Yes, well, no. It’s my first time on stage doing standup. I’ve done improv comedy and given speeches…” “You gotta wait until I see you a few times before I give you any feedback.” He turned his head back towards the stage. He was either being honest, or wanted me coming back again and again. Probably both. Brendan left the stage and sat down. The host went back up and grabbed the mic. I was called up. My turn. “Good luck, dude,” Brendan said. Performing for the first time felt like drowning. Trapped, stiff, tense. Each laugh from the audience would be a gulp of air. Get enough laughs and you can breathe, maybe swim to the surface. I made eye contact with a few members of the audience. I had my jokes memorized, but I threw in some “well, what else do I want to talk about?” to make it seem less so. The non-sequitors helped me relax. Jokes are math. Add the right variables together and you’ll get laughs. The room was filled with sad people, or so it seemed, which is more obvious once you are on stage. No smiles until right after joke. Everyone was slouching, beer sipping. Because the audience was made up of other comedians, everyone was on the defensive. “Go ahead, try to make me laugh” is the attitude. Everyone anticipating the other guy’s punchline. The host gave me my red light when I hit the 6 minutes mark: An open cell phone flashed in my line of vision. I was only ¾’s of the way through my material. Too much. Better than not enough. I put the mic stand back in its original position and hopped off stage back to my seat. Brendan nodded, but didn’t make eye contact. “You did well,” he said, staring at the empty stage. I approached the host again at the end of the show and asked how I did. He hesitated, then relented. “It was good that you took the mic off the stand and put it behind you. It lets the audience know, you know, that you mean business.” Some comedian once said there is no practicing in comedy. The only way to get better is to go do it. It’s like boxing; You’ve got to get jabbed in the face a few times until you get better. http://alexjmann.com/The-Blues http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/The-Blues Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:51:36 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590859 I. “You can’t understand the blues until you’ve had your heart broken, and you can’t understand disco until you’ve had group sex on Ecstasy.” – DJ Harvey When I moved to New York City over a year ago, my guitar made the cut: It joined a pile of things I brought with me that I wasn’t sure what to do with, like the blender (someone kept stuffing it deep in my luggage regardless of my attempts to ditch it) and the iron (the wrinkles flatten once a shirt is on anyway, right?). “I’ll play this again.” I eyed the instrument. The guitar became a fixture in my New York City closet, a prop, a piece of black wood strung with nylon, undoubtedly out of tune. It rested between shirts on hangers and a basket of laundry. I stored it somewhere I would have to see everyday, that is, if I wanted a change of clothes. It was the same guilt-ridden strategy someone might use to be healthier: Place the fruits and vegetables in the front of the refrigerator so you feel shitty reaching around them. Install the pull-up bar under the bedroom door, engulfed in shame each time you walk under without doing one, just one. The best motivation for getting better at something is reminding yourself each day that you still aren’t. The guitar sat there. And sat there. The skills acquired from lessons I took in high school years before — rotting away. “I’ll start playing again. When I have time.” I never made the time. I didn’t have a reason to. II. “The Blues are a mystery, and mysteries are never as simple as they look.” – BB King I recently visited Brazil, a country with a rhythm. The language, the way people eat, walk and dance, they all pulse to a beat. I tapped my hand against my side walking down the street, or gently drummed my fork against my plate after I finished a meal. The rhythm was hard to ignore; It was a rhythm ingrained in the culture. In Brazil, I listened to music with a common rhythm. Not a Brazilian rhythm, but connected similarly. The bands and artists included the the Yardbirds, the Jeff Beck Group, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mike Bloomfield, the Rolling Stones, the Black Keys, and probably a few more. I listened to these artists hundreds, maybe thousands of times before, but I never noticed their shared foundation: the blues. The connected rhythm of Brazil helped me rediscover the blues and its genetic foundation in rock and roll. III. “Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.” – Jimi Hendrix When someone gives me an unsolicited music recommendation, I ignore it. I need to discover music on my own for it to mean something. There is a sense of accomplishment in the conquest. You invested time into seeking a sound; The search happened naturally. “You need to listen to this guy. He’s bluesy, ” or so I’ve been told in my past 20 or so years as a music listener by friends, family, and record shop owners (the latter of whom I’d also consider friends and family by my sheer gratitude for their ability to locate that one album I wanted at the bottom of a crate), but always ignored. The blues in my mind was something…dated. A type of music no one played anymore. It was irrelevant. The artists I listen to the most are blues artists. I wasn’t paying attention. I had to figure this one out on my own to defeat my ignorance. IV. “If you don’t know the blues…there’s no point in picking up the guitar.” – Keith Richards I picked up my guitar for the first time since high school a few months ago. The Brazilian rhythm helped me notice how even a complex web can share a simple foundation, like rock and roll and the blues. Discovering the blues seemed like a good way to get started again, a reason to pull the guitar out of my New York City closet, tune it, and play it. The blues was the foundation I was missing. http://alexjmann.com/The-Recurring-Characters-of-New-York-City-Open-Mics http://alexjmann.com/following/alexjmann.com/The-Recurring-Characters-of-New-York-City-Open-Mics Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:49:00 +0000 Alex J. Mann 2590834 Originally published on: <img src="http://payload14.cargocollective.com/1/5/176451/2590834/0001089355-05-000111_NATIONALLAMPOON.JPG" width="193" height="47" width_o="193" height_o="47" src_o="http://payload14.cargocollective.com/1/5/176451/2590834/0001089355-05-000111_NATIONALLAMPOON_o.JPG" data-mid="13334880" border="0" align="left"/> When I first started participating in New York City open mics, I expected fresh personas each night; I was wrong — for the most part. There is some individuality, but I craved more than the Gallagher doppelgänger in an orange inmate gown who chants repeatedly he’s “just a little gay.” Go to enough New York City open mics, and you start to recognize a cast of recurring characters. Who are the recurring characters of New York City open mics? And more importantly, have I become one of them? THE BITTER JEW The Bitter Jew’s motivation is to break free from the chains of his mother, and always will be. He steps on stage uninhibited, free of judgement from Mom. He’s displeased with his office job: likely an accountant or dental supply salesman. He works in an open cubical and wears Express dress shirts tucked into khaki slacks. Saliva flies as he rambles towards the end of his set when it hits him: the end is near. Style: Gilbert Gottfried on his bar-mitzvah day. Topics: Love (disguised as contempt) for his mother. Rachel from Hebrew school, who he could never quite get it together for. Concentration camps because, “Whose idea was it to call them camps?!” THE HIPSTER GAL The Hipster Gal would rather be at a poetry reading. A sharp exhale of breath follows her being called to the stage. She’s not there for the laughs; she just wants someone to listen. A tattoo on each wrist is complemented by a pair of horn rimmed glasses perched on her nose. Dyed black hair. At dawn she has to open a Williamsburg coffee shop. Style: Marla Singer, but less drugs. Maybe. Topics: Her drummer boyfriend. Last night’s cramped Surfer Blood concert. People who order “grandes” at her coffee shop: “Does this look like Starbucks?” THE OPEN MIC VIRGIN We know why The Open Mic Virgin is here: His friends told him he was funny. Phew! He will tell the host, “Yeah, it’s my first time.” The host will make his obligatory “Poppin’ the cherry!” reference. He’ll hold the mic close to his mouth, antic breaths audible between beats. The mic stand will appear to be the most complex contraption this guy has ever touched. He leaves the stage staring at the floor. Style: The guy at your office who sends you links lol! Topics: “So just the other day” or “so recently” or “so on my way to work” and “so what else should I talk about?” or “so you guys know how” and “so thanks, you guys.” THE BLACK MAN The black man is energetic. He’s the only one that never seems to be nervous. He’s happy to be there. Lots of smiling, unlike the miserable, mostly white comics who fill the audience. When he’s not on stage, he’s laughing hardest at the black jokes, even though the comics delivering are nervous he’ll be angry. Occasionally he reinforces black stereotypes because he’s allowed to. He talks in a rhythm. Like this. And sometimes. Uses. Lots. Of. N. words. Style: Def Comedy Jam, light. Topics: Being black. Not being white. Black people. White girl ass. THE GAY DUDE The Gay Dude opens his set by telling the crowd “So, I’m gay,” but we already knew that. He knew that, too, so he follows by saying “In case you couldn’t tell.” We could. He goes to NYU, and open mics are a great outlet for him since he moved to the “big city” from Kansas or Arkansas. His therapist encourages it. Style: Andy Dick meets Rosie O’Donnell. Topics: Sex toys. White girls. Andy Dick. Rosie O’Donnell. Grindr THE STRIVING INTELLECTUAL The Striving Intellectual’s comedy is observational mixed with shock: He’ll comment on regular things like dating and Facebook, but isn’t opposed to a good old abortion joke. He likes the attention. He’s got a little Bitter Jew in him, but doesn’t hate his job. He loves Andy Kaufman and Richard Pryor. He reads Charlie Kaufman screenplays, just for fun. Style: The kid who argued with every college professor in every class. Topics: Dating. Sexual frustration. Irrationality. The meaning of it all, or lack thereof. ******************************* HONORABLE MENTIONS: THE SCHOOL TEACHER (“Get this: My 12 year old student tells me it hurts when…”) THE FAT SLOPPY GUY LIKE CHRIS FARLEY (“::falls::”) THE SEINFELD WANNABE (“What is with the subway? It’s a train…underground!”) THE JADED MOTHER (“I’m here because my husband and I don’t make love anymore…”) THE KID WHO MOVED FROM LA (“New York. It’s not LA…”) THE MUSIC MAN (“Comics want to be musicians, and musicians want to be comics, so 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4…”) THE DRUNK GURL (“Look at this camel toe!”) THE STONER (“Ben and Jerry’s. So many flavors…”) THE OLD MAN (“My balls touch the toilet when I pee.”) There’s no barrier to participating in an open mic: Pay the cover, or buy a drink, or bring a few friends, sometimes all three, and you can stand on a stage and grip a clammy microphone for five minutes to try to make an audience of strangers laugh. Get a laugh once, even a single chuckle, and you’re hooked, addicted to the reaction of acknowledgement. The recurring characters of New York City open mics, myself included, aren’t trying to be like the next guy — they’re just trying to duplicate the thrill of that first laugh.