Knockout at the Fez, Part 1!

Will Woodruff
vs
Kyle Harbert

Cody Smith
vs
Richard Bain

Virginia Jones
vs
Andrew Dhulst

Holli Pappan
vs
Russell Parker

Nathan Brannon
vs
Casey Kendall

Chris Castles
vs
Tristian Spillman

Veronica Heath
vs
Cody Cooper

Gabe Dinger
vs
Dan Cossette

Above are the results (in bold) for the first heat of the Comedy Knockout at the Fez last night. It was a great night and I hope that some folks (especially people who like me and who are LOUD) will come out next Wednesday to watch us whittle 8 to 1! The sets are three minutes long and the competition is fierce. Fierce I tell you!

One feature of the show is that the comics don't know who they're against or even when they're going up until the emcee says their name, which has the refreshing effect of making me want to vomit until the moment I'm onstage.

Guest Headliners Auggie Smith and Lonnie Bruhn stopped in to recreate their head-to-head competition in Portland comedy in 1992, except drunker, but with the same results of Lonnie-dominance.

Ooh, looks like Gabe Dinger has a road gig next week and has to bow out- the plot thickens!

Many thanks to Brain Fluid at the Fez for hosting and Dylan K. for organizing this event, it's been fun so far and will continue to be so until I am eliminated, at which point it will suck and everyone involved is a jerkface.

Repost- Sympathy for the Haley

I'm reposting what I sent in to icouldkillher last week. So there!

Barbie portrait by Miss Aurora.

My name is Virginia. I’m in my thirties, because I screwed up my original plan, which was to OD in a nightclub bathroom at 25 with panties around my ankles and a wet cigarette in my mouth. I am constantly going to baby showers and being made to endure foul acts, such as sniffing and identifying various brands of chocolate melted into diapers, which is against the Godiva convention. Meanwhile, I can do a special dance and hear my lone, desiccated egg rolling around inside me like a burnt-out popcorn kernel. I have, on some level, become inured to it. But nothing hurts like your first time.

My first time was Alisa.

We met in Dallas, Texas. We took drugs and made out with rockstars together. We had matching candy-colored vibrators. I was thrilled when she joined me in Portland, and I started polishing my hooker boots and dreaming about us growing up to be Cougars together, injecting each other with Botox and having hair-streaking parties.



Then the day came that she told me she was expecting. Worst of all, SHE HAD DONE IT ON PURPOSE! I felt like I was punched in the stomach, and I offered to return the favor. I pointed out to her that a baby is like a wild animal that will shit anywhere they happen to be. Babies are terrorists, and their weapons are noise and tears. I tried to put on a brave face, but I don’t know how to do that, so I complained and felt sorry for myself.

One day, she gave birth to a mewling raspberry-colored thing that I had to pretend was awesome, and whose fontanel she expressly forbade me to touch. I continued to call to chat and pretend that times were still good, but if my many-layered, deeply funny stories were more than ten seconds long, or did not center on her little homunculus, she tended to drift off. I told her about meeting George Clinton, and she said what an honor to meet the President.

President Rainbow Dreadlock. She became obsessed with introducing people to the baby, as if she was not essentially asking them to look at what happens when she has sex. I mean, I don’t go around forcing others to look at my rash!

The breaking point came when her baby was approaching a year old. I will never forget baby’s birthday, because not only is it Cinco de Mayo, a day where I express my love for the Hispanic culture by drinking margaritas and Corona with lime, but also I have marked it in my calendar with pictures of knives and blood drops. That day, I stopped by the house to say hello and found a party in progress. A party I had not been invited to. A baby party.


The house was insanity. There were people putting food in their pants, smashing M&M’s into the floor, and talking about their babies. A woman asked how I knew Alisa, and I said, I’ve known her all my adult life, how do YOU know her? Oh, I see. Three months of play group. The words dripped from my mouth like toxin. I ran out of the house crying, tripped over something shaped like Snoopy and fell, sprawled on the grass in front of the picture window to the horror and amusement of the adults inside. I swore never to return.

Elaine, please keep in mind that Baby G is beautiful and is probably awesome. I just can never meet her, because of my allergy to baby spit and formula smells. Just thinking about it makes my throat close up and I have visions of a tiny, pudgy-kneed Hitler.

You Say You Want A Revolution-

Every Summer, there is a visible increase in bike ridership in Portland. Every year when the Tour de France starts, there are more bikes. This year, with gas topping four-bucks-fifty, there are still even more bikes. I'm not going to dwell on the recent incidents where bikes have been used to pummel drivers, and cars have been used to pummel bikers, because I like to be more positive than that.

In general, this is a good thing- for one, for the first time since the Carter-era gas shortage, car fatalities have gone down nationally.

On the other hand, I read that bike commuters are bad for the planet, because we live longer and use more resources, and if we really loved the earth, we’d all ride scooters and smoke, like those environmental superheroes, the French, who even stopped bathing to save water. And nobody asked them to.

Despite this, I like when there are more bikes, except when it inconveniences me- like when helpful wags wave at me manically as they approach in the wrong direction in the bike lane, or when the Portland police take it upon themselves to set up "sting" operations, like the one at the traffic circle in Ladd's Addition on Monday. (In Little Rascals style, a bike who had been stopped at the Stop Sign Which Seems Superfluous circled back to the entrance of the Addition to warn the morning bike traffic that we'd better stop for once, which was very nice.)

This morning, a new commuter pulled up and we had the following conversation:

Nice Lady: Hey, I saw that you tripped the signal at 21st and Division! I thought we had to wait for a car!

Me: Oh, no, if you see a tar circle on the ground, pull into the outer third and it should trip the signal.

Nice Lady: That's great! How long have you been bike commuting?

Me: (Bashfully) Well, several years anyway- I just hit 9000 miles on my odometer!

Nice Lady: Oh my gosh! Well, thanks so much!

Me: Um...Excuse me, but isn't your helmet on backwards?

Crossover Hits

Apologies to anyone who got here from icouldkillher- but I met the author last weekend and she asked me to submit something for her hilarious blog, basically because my friend told her I was funny and I had to back it up. I won't bother reposting right now, but you can look at my baby-hating rant here, and here's some delightful props from decorno:

"I don't even know what to say. This is pretty much the funniest thing I have ever read, and I know some seriously funny bitches."

blush blush blush!

How Am I Like A Naughty Nun? I've Got A Bad Habit.

Since I lean in on my left, and not centered over the seat, over the last 9000 miles of riding I have worn this pattern on the left side of my top tube. This is how the Grand Canyon was formed, but in primer and paint. My bad habit leaves a mark.

Hardcore Metal!

I love capsule toys, and really any purchase that makes you stack up quarters together, except laundry, because cleanliness is for goobers. This machine at Fry's electronics caught my eye- not just because I could buy such "metal" accessories as a pair of brass knuckles sized for a three-year old, or a "punk" dog collar, but also because apparently Robert Smith (visible in the upper right hand corner) is now the king of Hard Core Metal. There is also a nice reflection of B.S.*, wearing The World's Most Decrepit Smiths shirt. Young people, I didn't mean to confuse you- Robert Smith is the lead singer of the Cure, not the Smiths. Morrissey, the lead singer of the Smiths, is the only person in the world who would be a more hilarious representative of Hard Core Metal.


* Beloved Spouse

Holiday Road

Spot the fake!

At this point, I have to admit that some of these posts are just for my mother.

Because I am a married caucasian and didn't need to go to Costco this weekend, we went to Ikea, where they have FINALLY mass-produced an English bulldog. Our real bulldogs can't tell the difference, except for he's less farty.

If I had told anyone that I was doing a showcase at Glo Loca on Friday, that has been cancelled due to the ridiculously small setback that the bar no longer exists.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable fourth of July (also Hazel Jones' birthday!) and did not blow off any fingers.