ok i’m officially tired of using the shift key. slows me down so fuck it.
if you’ve poked around here, you know by now that i did a lot of performance art in los angeles and orange county in the ’90s. testical puppet shows, screaming, running into walls, eating trash, sitting down on tacks, throwing up, getting doused in wine and blood, shaving my head, pulling fish out of my pants, rolling around on concrete, drawing on myself, licking honey off a wall, chopping off prosthetic fingers….
my performance art aesthetic is messy and imperfect. i like dirt, randomness, surreal flights, flying objects, chaos, chop, static, schmutz, and freudian slips because i like discovery in the moment. like my manifesto says, if you can’t repeat it, it’s probably performance art.
so when my comedy god-mentor recently told me that my stand-up would never be perfect, i was thrilled. by “perfect” i know he meant a stand-up set with all right angles, with perfect timing, with a clean delivery of no spit flying, no dancing around the stage, no hiccups, no ripping a fart in the middle just because it’s there.
i don’t want perfect. or rather, imperfection is my perfect. there’s nothing like taking some crazy-ass gamble for the first time in your life, then looking up at the audience and going, “shit, did you just see that?? oh my god!” and the audience knows they just witnessed a moment nobody else is going to get. ever.