What a tough crowd!

T

he smell of stale beer is barely masked by the haze of cigarette smoke in this nondescript club at a rundown resort on the back roads of Xanga.

The stage is black, the back curtains, too. The bartender busily washes dirty, lipstick-smeared glasses behind a bar where only one customer sits. Hunched over a drink he's been nursing for twenty minutes, Mumbling as he flips through the pages of a Constitutional Law textbook.

"Damn, I knew that answer..."

There are twenty-one tables haphazardly placed in front of the stage, but only six are occupied, two or three patrons per. Men and women, all drinking, taking turns waving their cigarettes around importantly as they try to out-impress each other with blogs of their narcissistic lives. The conversations are fragmented.

"I was gonna go incognito, but I just can't leave y'all."

"I was stabbed once."

"Look at the pics of our Luau! I wuvs my Spidey."

"Damn, I got a speeding ticket on my way home from Tallahassee."

The three-piece band--drum, sax and bass--strikes up an introductory ditty, but they barely notice the nervous looking comic approaching the microphone at center stage. He's in formal attire: black tie and seaweed.

"Good evening, Ladies and Germs." The drummer strikes his drum to signal the punch line. ba-da-boom.

"I just flew in from Virginia, and man! Are my arms tired!?!" ba-rum-pum

The audience stops chatting and stares at the stage in silence. Not even the tinkle of an ice cube.

"But seriously folks, where I'm from, the news is that there are going to be a lot of bugs comin' out of the ground for the first time in 17 years. All the women are worried about cicadas flying into their hair. Take my wife... PLEASE!" ba-rum-pum

In the back of the room, a man carrying a painting of his dog coughs once... twice.

"Ahem." The guy in the seaweed suit clears his throat and loosens his collar, beads of sweat shine on his forehead. He squints his eyes and looks over the foot lights. "Is everyone sitting on their hands? You guys remind me of an old Zen koan. Sound rike one hand krapping." He says in a phony Japanese accent.

The crowd buzzes at this pathetic attempt at humor.

"Excuse me? Did you say somthing? You there, lady. Wanna share what you just said?"

bane_vixen: this is all fine and dandy, but i'm waiting for a REAL update. ahem...... (Posted 5/2/2004)

Whew, what a tough crowd! I shoulda practiced my routine in the Catskills before taking it on "The Road to Xanga". You know, the movie where Bob Hope and Bing Crosby meet Dorothy Lamour? No wait, that was Zanzibar. Anyway, with my luck, the Vixen would have made the trip to whatever lonely club I was at in the Catskills--only a couple of hours away from the Badda-Bing--to razz me there, as well. Sheesh! Okay, Vixen, just for you, I'll put a little more effort into these updates...

Hehehehe. But she's kinda right. Posting Q & A can be boring to some. I suppose many just skim through them and if they recognize his/her name they read that part, then move on. Besides, I've been giving her a hard time on her recent entries, so I guess I deserve a little razzing from her. And her quotes can be so sarcastic--I love that, y'know--that it becomes fodder for my own entries. Thanks, girl. But really, is there actually a standard for a "REAL" update? Speaking of which, Ms. Vixen, how's your yoga-stalking eye-candy dude? Has he approached you yet? Have you approached him? Or are you still warming up your lips?

Anyway, I'll try to keep up to your standards, but I will continue with the occasional Q & A cuz I like the format of having a dialog--albeit it an artificial one--to respond to questions that I think more than the inquirer might be interested in...

So what constitutes a REAL update to you?