Notorious

I'm trying. Lordy, I'm trying. If any reader cares about the current state of me and not comics (reviews of which will be up sometime, I've hit my first snag), here's a blog to appease you.

I'll get the blog-atross (a big blog issue, a blog albatross....does that make sense?) out of the way. My job is forcing me to figure out what is wrong with my own mental health in a way. Not in a scary "Buffy in that bad season six episode" way, just the way that makes me reexamine my own outlook on life. The main issue, it seems, is that I find it fundamentally hard to relate to/with people at times. I don't know if this stems from my severely awkward elementary days or has a much deeper root, but it's becoming a problem. Basically, I find it physically impossible for my mouth to mutter words that can be construed as small talk. I do not ask how people's weekends are. I do not say hi. I do not say goodbye. In general, I find a conversation that I have to think about the hardest thing to do (no wonder I do improv comedy). For real, if I once plan out any sentence to say to someone upon seeing them, that sentence then becomes the hardest sentence IN THE WORLD. The most recent example being last night when I called Susie to ask if she received and enjoyed her mix CD. I called and did not ask. I waited for her to bring it up. There you go, I can't do it.

Saying goodbye is another problem. I actually fancy myself to be a notorious no-goodbye-sayer, people regaling themselves with tales of my slippery escapes from numerous parties. Truth being, I like slipping away. I like avoiding the fuss, even if such fuss is just saying "goodbye" and other people saying "goodbye." I mean, this makes sense in party-type situations since saying goodbyes can very well take up a half hour. Why this applies to me at work, I don't know. But I do it.

I also have a hatred for small talk which is an old holdover from my teenage years. I'd be surprised if my parents could name a time that they got more out of me than "nothing" or "I had fun" or "something" in response to a simple question. This is still true, sadly. I'd rather talk about a crazy scheme, a theory on Lost, X-Men, why 80s music sucks, how much I hate my hair, anything other than what I did that weekend or what I plan to do tonight. I actually found it nearly physically impossible to say that my comedy stuff is going well at work the other day. The fact that I called it "comedy stuff" is pretty bad in and of itself.

I don't know how to fix these things. Or I mean, I know how to fix these things but every fiber of my being screams to not. Okay, I'll try...or something...but don't expect me to start saying goodbyes at parties. I don't know if I've gotten that rep in New York yet, and it's one I want!

I've gotten back into the habit of watching Late Show every night, which is both great and as...well, you know...as one would expect. On top of that I'm trying to watch the HBO movie Late Shift about the whole Carson/Leno/Letterman debacle of the early 90s (trying being the operative word; Leno looks like the son of Cher in Mask). The primary thought in my head is that all of this is going to happen again next year. NEXT YEAR. Somehow this came up so quickly. My goal, my goal that I decided upon when moving here, was to position myself in such a way to be able to swoop in and get a job at whatever shows are left in the wake of the Leno/Conan/Letterman switcheroo fiasco that's coming up. Now I've been at my job for over a year and I don't know how close I am. My resume didn't get me hired at Late Show last fall (among many other things, number one being that I'm nothing but a giggling optimistic and immature mess when I walk into that building...I am self-loathing) so I don't know...eh, I don't know. The more I watch late night TV and the more work I do in comedy, the more certain I am that that is where I want to be. That's my calling. And I can't figure out a way to get there.

UCB is going well, even though I'm not interning anymore. Bad Data had an awesome show and some even awesomer practices, so we're all pretty happy with that. Hey! We may even be getting sued! Go to www.baddata.net and check out the latest news, you know, after you watch that totes sweet flash intro. I auditioned to be an actor on a UCB official sketch team (a Maude team). It involved me doing 3 minutes of whatever-the-heck I please. That turned out to be three characters, including Fred Schneider. I pretty much just did this bit, and it got a much bigger laugh that I ever expected. I left the audition quite proud, especially since I didn't even plan on auditioning until the weekend before the submissions were due.

My New Year's resolutions and projects are going well. I've managed to do something non-improv related every weekend (including a smashing Lost party) and I've written five pages a week. So far I've written 12 pages of a 30 Rock spec script and, yes, another 10 or so more pages in my X4 script. So....any writing is good writing. The mix CD club I started up is up and running, and a lot of fun. And my Features book is, well, it's going along as quickly as I thought it would. No rush there, though, just glad I got the questionnaires out.

Okay, so that's it. I'm okay. I'm not close to having a four month stretch of time better than Fall 2006, which is another New Year's goal, but it's only January. Don't expect to get a personal blog again for a while. It's all comic books from now on.