The Check Spot

Michelle Dobrawsky and I are on The Check Spot this week, an awesome show about the New York City comedy scene brought to you by Dan Cartwright, Arthur Carlson and Dave Greek. Tune in to hear us tell all about SuperEgo Comedy, doing Conan, zombie eating plants, flaming balls, Ted Kennedy, and all the fun things that you can do with semen.

There are two ways to get there....

The Check Spot on the web.

The Check Spot on iTunes.

Queen!

Pinwheel!

Green!

Get Painted! Everyone's Doing It!

Stretch

Painted!

Body Art

Flags!

Kaleidoscope 2009 Parade Saturday Night 6 PM

The fabulous Kaleidoscope Parade is back. The location is secret until the day of the event. Sign up on the site if you'd like to join us.

After the parade there will be a party with fire performers. I'll be one of them.

We had such a fabulous time last year. Come play with us!

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos

Wildfire Spring 2009

I can hardly put into words what an exhilarating experience my weekend retreat was. Every minute of every day was filled with art and artists, learning and sharing, awe and beauty. I'm truly blessed and humbled to have the opportunity to have such wonderful experiences.

I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked because I was so busy learning, performing and enjoying the other performances that I just didn't have the time. Here are some highlights.

Darrel, the hoopin', spinnin' cowboy and Crystal, who got me into all this nonsense. You're both awesome.

Our fearless leader, Chad. What an great guy.

A new friendship is born.

Fabulousness abounds.

Hoopers are adorable. I'm glad poi fit in a bag.

The Incredible Poi Duo

Thanks so much to Marius Shanzer for his fabulous Dance Parade 2009 Album including this great shot of Masae and me.

Lovely!

Rawr!

What a great day! I'm exhasted, thirsty, covered in sweat, have to pee and I couldn't be happier.

Trixie!

Sent from my iPhone.

Boogie!

Yowza!

Shake It!

Glam!

Meow!

Dance Parade!

The weather forecast has improved and the Dance Parade is on! Circus performers come join House of YES, GROUP #70. Meet Saturday, May 16, 12:30pm on 27th Street between 6th avenue and Broadway.

Bring poi, hoops and/or juggling balls. Have water. Wear sunscreen. No storage so don't burden yourself with much else.

Bring your most flashy toys. I'm bringing kite poi.

If you wanna dress up the House of YES theme is "Spirit Animals", but it's not necessary.

Come play with us! More fun to follow in Tompkins Square Park.

Remember, find GROUP #70 in the set up area.

More info here.

Facebook group here.

The Physicality of Performance

This weekend I saw Desir, an erotic, adult circus of acrobats and gymnasts. It plays at Spiegel World, the wonderful German-style, performance-art circus tent at the South Street Seaport.



And I finally saw Naked Boys Singing, the all dancing, all singing, all naked musical that has run in New York City for 10 years.


The sex appeal of these shows is obvious. But after the titillation of fit bodies stripped bare waned I noticed something else entirely ... the physicality of performance.

Singing, dancing and even just speaking in a stage voice all require quite a lot of physical exertion. The signs of this exertion, however, are usually concealed by costumes and makeup. Watching the performers in these two shows and the athletes in the Olympics I've been fascinated by how the body moves and works to achieve these feats.

Singers' diaphragms rise and fall. Gymnasts' muscles become taught and ropey revealing the fibers. Dancers' and swimmers' expanding and contracting chests reveal their huge lung capacity and voracious need of oxygen.

But even the subtle signs are interesting, the tense of abdominals needed to project a voice in a theater, the sheen of sweat on a chest or a small of the back, and the little flourishes of movement used to maintain balance. By the end of his Naked Boy Singing solo song and dance number, one of the actor's whole body flushed the most adorable shade of pink.

From now on when I go to the theater, I'll be picturing the performers naked ... and not for my usual reasons.

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos

I had such a quandary deciding whether to go to Kaleidoscope as a performer or a photographer. In the end, I decided to spin poi and let my awesome friend Connor Hays man the equipment. I had a wonderful time and he did a fabulous job.

Kaleidoscope Celebration of Color 2008 Photos



(It seems some of you can't see some embedded photos in my blog. Please be patient. This will change when I upgrade my web server next month. )

A Night To Remember

Last night I had the privilege of seeing Eddie Izzard perform live at Radio City Music Hall. I say privilege because there's something very special about RC. Not only is it a fabulous hall, but if all goes well, you get to see what is very likely one of the greatest moments in the life of a performing artist. So shows at RC are infused with a special energy that few other venues can offer. It's pure magic.

The show, "Stripped" was great. I'll buy the DVD whenever it comes out.

What Would Jesus Pierce?

Just seconds after I snapped this picture the tatooist and his assistant both started yelling at me that photos are not allowed.

Um, what?

Here's a tip, if you're doing something you don't want people to photography, maybe don't do it ... IN A GIANT FREAKIN' BAY WINDOW!

Theater Recommendation

I hope the knowledge that I've never used my blog to recommend a show will help emphasize just how freaking awesome I think How the Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey is. He's an incredible story teller, the likes of which we've not seen since Spalding Gray.

Go! Go now! Go often. Take your friends.

Would you like a flower?

It's such a simple question. But as I learned one night in New York City, the answer is more complicated than you might think.

At SuperEgo's second anniversary show the lovely and talented John Morrison gave Michelle and I both bouquets of flowers.

He's such a charmer.

Instead of taking them home to watch them slowly die I decided to spread some joy by giving them away to strangers. This turned out to be much harder than I expected.

In fact, the first seven or so people I tried to give them to on the way to dinner turned me down flat.

Had I been able to give a few away I might have kept the rest and not thought much about it. But faced with a challenge I decided to give them all away.

As I embarked on my little experiment in acts of random kindness I created impromptu rules and goals. I vowed I would not go home until I'd given them all away. I wanted to create little moments of human connection and to leave people with an emotion, any emotion, happy, curious, puzzled, whatever. So I avoided people on phones, fiddling with gadgets or listening to iPods. I wanted to be able to engage them, even if only for a few seconds.

It's striking how suspicious people are on the streets of New York City. And to be fair, I know I'm quite wary of anyone who comes up and starts talking to me. Unless they're asking for directions I usually bail before I find out what kind of a scam they're running. So it took a lot of trying.

I always started with the same question, "Would you like a flower?" A number of times I had to follow it up with either, "I'm not selling anything," or "It's not a trick, I just want to give you a flower." But even these didn't always work.

You might think it'd be easier to give flowers to girls, but I found the opposite to be the case. Perhaps women are more used to deflecting offers from men, no matter the offer.

When friends suggested I might get beat up for offering a flower to the wrong guy I thought, how absurd! It's a flower, who doesn't like flowers? Liking flowers doesn't make you a fag. Accepting a flower doesn't make you a fag. I'd even go so far as to posit that accepting a flower from a fag doesn't make you a fag.

So I went out of my way to give flowers to straight guys smoking in front of bars and even a mechanic in an auto shop. Most of them accepted. One with a very simple "yes," indicating he would, indeed, like a flower.

I did encounter one instance of homophobia. I use the word dilberately, homo-phobia, fear of gays ... not hostility or violence or hate ... just fear.

A car load of handsome, young black men all burst into a fit of the giggles when I offered the driver a flower. He was visibly embarrassed and started rolling up his window. The shotgun passenger was so mortified, was laughing so hard and seemed to want to avoid eye contact so desperately that he shielded his face behind a magazine. But I persisted, suggesting he could give the flower to a lady. He picked a young woman on the street and said I could give it to her. I might have, but she was out of ear shot of the exchange. In the end he wouldn't take it. He seemed quite relieved as the light changed and he drove away with his friends ribbing him.

People in motion were harder than people at rest. People sitting are easier to engage than people walking. Even if they were wary, they'd usually accept. I extended a flower between a straight couple sitting on a stoop and asked my question. Surprise and slight suspicion. The man said no. So I turned to the woman and said, "Would the lady like a flower?" This broke through and with a smile she took it.

Some people probably accepted as the quickest way to get rid of me. But as I'd walk away and they'd realize that I'd really only just wanted to give them a flower I could see caution melt into something pleasant.

There were many lovely moments ... flirtatious compliments exchanged, people smelling flowers and a cute gay man taking the flower from me using his teeth as a flourish. An exuberant European woman said, "of course!" with a tone that said, "who wouldn't?"

The most satisfying were the downtrodden, beaten, blank faces of people trudging home from work converted to smiles by a surprise. Maybe I made their day. Maybe I'm not that important. But it didn't matter. I'd accomplished my goal. I gave away a flower, and two strangers shared a moment and an emotion.

I had to keep walking past my first subway stop and then another because I still had flowers. And it became harder as it got later.

Finally I was just standing on a corner trying to give away my last flower. It was late. I was tired and now just wanted to go home. A flower, a thing of beauty, life and joy had now become a burden.

I tried and I tried. Giving away perhaps 15 flowers had taken over an hour. And now that I was stationary, suspicion that the flower was the opening hook of some scam increased.

I offered it to two pretty college girls who giggled and said no. They past me and merged with some more boys and girls their age. I offered it to the whole group. More giggles.

No.

I offered it to an exceptionally beautiful young man in the group.

No.

I assured him it wasn't a trick and suggested he could give it to a lady.

No.

"It's my last one," I pleaded.

A girl in the group finally took it and stuffed it into his shirt with the bulb right under his chin. He recoiled and fell back a few steps but would not touch it with his hands. Perhaps doing so would be some kind of acceptance of the flower.

The girl persisted that he should take it and asked why he wouldn't want it. He just shook his head no. So she took it back out of his shirt and continued to taunt him with it.

As I walked away, the girl was beating the boy over the head with my last flower.

SuperEgo Slash -- Comica Erotica

For our second anniversary Michelle and I decided to try our hand at slash fiction as comedy. The first video is my intro and Michelle's story. The second video is my story.

Dale's Night by Michelle Dobrawsky

Girl Talk by Dale Sorenson

SuperEgo Slash -- Behind the Scenes

For three months leading up to our second anniversary show neither Michelle nor I had any idea what we were going to do. We kept having the same conversation.

"You got anything?"

"No. You got anything?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"No."

"Now?"

We talked about doing another roast, but I felt like after my huge-boobed performance last year as Michelle I really had no where to go. Then this happened....

The Making of SuperEgo Slash
I was reading The Absolutely True Ball Story by Evan Jacobs. It's a charming and romantic tale of a boy who gets stoned, accidentally ties his balls in a knot and goes to the emergency room for this first homosexual experience and an anal probe.

Since we both know Evan I sent the link to Michelle as a laugh. My interest in the story inspired her to write a single line parody in an email....

"I felt his knit tie, soft but scratchy, rubbing against my bare heaving chest...."

This had me on the floor laughing. So I dared Michelle to write a slash fiction story about me and quickly decided to write my own about her.

And so, only 30 hours before the show, we finally found our theme.

We decided to coordinate our performances in a deadpan Masterpiece Theater style. But we did not share drafts.

So the whole time I was writing about her, I wondered what she was writing about me. Specifically I was worried about whether I was going to be the top or the bottom in Michelle's story. I could just see myself ending up at the bottom of some bitch pile.

---

The Show
We opened the show with our readings and as you can see in the videos it went well. I really liked the quick/slow rhythms and rising/falling tones of Michelle performance.

In his biography, Steve Martin relates how some years ago he changed the fundamental structure of his comedy. Instead of using obvious punch lines to tell the audience when to laugh, he left it to the audience to decide for themselves when to laugh.

A little nervous about how this whole thing would play, I decided to follow Martin's example and not telegraph any attempts at jokes. As far as I was concerned this was fine literature. This allowed me to relax and give exactly the performance I'd wanted to give. Although it wasn't easy getting there.

I had a lot of trouble with my rehearsals right up until the very last one. I was unable to resist my usual urge to ham it up, which is a form of begging for laughs. But when I put on the suit, everything just clicked right into place. Interesting how the clothes allowed me to finally get to where I wanted and knew I needed to be.

After our stories we put up 18 comics. There were a variety of themes to the reactions.

Several girls said they felt slighted at having been left out of the "lesbian montage".

Straight men and lesbians alike agree that I don't know a damn thing about lesbian sex. This is true.

I'd wanted to include female ejaculation in the story but didn't for two reasons. First, I wanted to keep it classy. Second, I had absolutely no idea how to get there.

The erotic parts of Girl Talk read like a 14-year-old straight, virgin male's first attempt at a letter to Hustler. This was intentional. But I still don't know anything about girl parts.

In my defense, Girl Talk is not actually a lesbian story. Slash fiction was invented by straight women and it's almost always about straight male characters, Kirk/Spock, Han/Luke, Frodo/Sam. It's called slash fiction because of the slash in the pairings. The top is always first. So in an Aragorn/Legolas story, Aragorn fucks Legolas. (That little blond bitch wanted it.)

But I digress.

So Girl Talk is not a lesbian story. Knowing I hadn't the foggiest clue about how to get a vagina into a narrative I consciously wrote it as a straight girl on straight girl boob domination scene. This subtle distinction may not matter to the casual listener, but it's the basis for the narrative.

Several phrases captured people's imaginations. Michelle's "Take those off, you're way sexier without them," was a favorite, as were her inspired lines about stubble and pleats in pants.

I particularly liked Michelle's poetic, "Male confusion of belts and buttons and underwear."

My utterly laughable, "moist erotic love knobs" seemed to be a memorable phrase repeated a few times in the show. Like so many lines, I wrote it to be as cliché and ridiculous as possible. Which was the point of the whole thing. Porn out of the context of arousal is ludicrous.

But the phrase that really took on a life of it's own was, "Boob Slave". Several comics, including Michelle, straight boys and a real, live lesbian said they'd all like their own boob slaves.

A new service industry is born.

---

Epilogue
Having watched the videos a few times now what sticks with me most is how flattering Michelle's story is. Not because I ended up on top (I did) or because it casts me in a positive light (it does). Rather, the effort itself is quite a compliment.

What better way to star in your own porno without the awkwardness of having to take your clothes off for the camera?

"Girl Talk" by Dale Sorenson

“Sometimes I’m sorry I didn’t get the double Ds,” Stacy said.

She washed down her Zanex with a wine cooler and more whiskey.

“Oh don’t say that,” said Michelle. “Proportion is so much more important than sheer size.”

“Really?!” Stacy gushed. “God! That makes me feel just so much better. I’ve always been so jealous of your bodacious Ta Tas.”

Michelle nodded coolly as she sipped her vodka. “I’ve got this little tramp right where I want her,” she thought. "Time for a power play.”

“Here, let me show you,” said Michelle

In one rough, swift motion she ripped open Stacy’s blouse.

Stacy gave out a helpless little cry, but Michelle knew the little slut wanted it.

No bra? Hardly surprising. But no resistance? Intriguing.

Stacy’s round breasts curved up, each nipple pert and eager reaching skyward for attention.

Michelle caressed Stacy’s waist with one hand and bounced a playful tit with the other.

Continuing the facade of innocent girl talk Michelle asked, “See how the proportions go so well together?”

“Why yes. Yes I do,” said Stacy. She leaned forward and arched her back to offer better access to her taut supple features.

Michelle fingered Stacy’s moist erotic love knobs and they hardened. Soft moans filled the air.

“Now compare to mine,” said Michelle

“What?”

“Go on.”

Stacy fell into a trace, barely aware of her actions, yet conscious that each button opened brought her closer to those mountainous orbs of wonder. Slowly they came into view. She felt an almost divine presence. She’s dreamed of this moment for so long. She worshipped Michelle’s heaving, undulating melons with her eyes and felt pulsating envy and desire.

“They’re perfect,” Stacey said.

“Yes. I know. Feel them,” Michelle commanded.

Stacy did as she was told, like the good little girl she was raised to be. “My god!” she exclaimed. “They’re so pink. Your areolas are so dark and lovely. And just one of these weighs more than my last abortion.”

“You know it baby!” Michelle said with the confidence of a goddess.

Stacy’s willpower finally crumbled. She was sick of being the good girl. She wanted to be a dirty tramp. She plunged her face into Michelle’s heaving bazooms. She lapped, licked, slurped and squeezed like a mad jungle woman.”

“You’re good at that,” said Michelle with a faint sigh.

Stacy lifted her sloppy, wet glistening face and said, “Oh it’s the Botox. Keeps everything soft and relaxed.” Stacy went back to work, enjoying the role of boob slave.

Suddenly the door opened and a perky little face appeared. It was Emily.

“Is this the room for hip-hop Pilates?”

Stacy tried to look but Michelle’s hand kept her face firmly planted in Michelle’s magnificent womanhood.

Emily cocked an eyebrow at the muffled sounds of delight and submission coming from between Michelle’s ample cleavage. But she knew better than to say anything.

“It’s next door,” Michelle said.

“Ok thanks,” said Emily. “You girls have fun and try not to get anything on the carpets.”

She bounced off in her usual way with a little grin that said, “I’m a Jew with a secret.”

Michelle muttered to herself. “That little vixen knew we were in here. That’s it. She’s next. I’ll bet her asshole tastes like strawberries.”

The Mad Haircutter

Suppose you get a bad haircut.



No shame in that ... happens to everyone.



So you ask your friend with the hair clippers to fix it for you.



Unfortunately you fail to consider that your friend is a lunatic who considers even banal events to be opportunities for performance art.



You also fail to fully appreciate the implications of this event occurring in the presence of friends with cell-phone cameras.



Nor does it occur to you that your lunatic friend might get off on the idea.



What would happen then?



Well ... you'll get your haircut fixed, to be sure.



But be prepared for an unexpected turn of events.



And, of course, it goes without saying that the whole thing is bound to end up on the Internet.