A new writer's magazine called the Lazywriter did a piece on selling work in various different mediums, among which comics were included.  One of the editors wandered into the Hairy Tarantula, and explained the article he was trying to put together, and Leon gave him my number.  (Dave Sim, and my roommate, Tara Jenkins wound up sharing equal space in the article as well.)  Anyway, several weeks after the ensuing interview, another of their editors gave me a call and asked if I'd like to come to a reading which the magazine would be hosting at a local pub.  How chic, I thought.  How Bohemian.  How the heck do you do a reading from a comic book?

Whatever.  I was in.  Beneath this  hardened artist's exterior lies a guy who has seen very little of the art world as lived by the Andy Warhol set.  (Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily.  That whole scene has always struck me as rather pretentious, over-cool and artificial.  But I was curious).

Well, either way, I didn't find it.  But I'm off track here. . .

The most significant thing about doing a reading, for me, was the fact that I hadn't done anything like that since, I don't know, grade 5?  It's been a while.

But here's the trick: you have to loosen up first.  You have to break the societal frost from your nerves so that you can be relaxed on stage.  Being relaxed is the key.  —If any of you have ever taken a drama class, you'll be familiar with the goofy exercises they put you through in the first half hour.  Stuff like lurching around pretending to be zoo animals, making loud zoo animal noises; ridiculous stuff you'd feel like a fool for doing in public.  The incredible, and from what I've seen, universal effect of it all is that once you start smashing the rules and regulations of societal behavior, you realize just how constrained you've been up till that moment; just how much your behavior has been dictated to you.  Well, maybe you don't actually realize it in those terms.  But whatever the case, you find yourself filled up with this AWESOME sense of power and freedom.  Like you can do ANYTHING and get away with it.

In my old highschool, there was a huge special arts program catering to young painters and actors and dancers.  I wasn't a part of it.  You had to apply and qualify and grow up in the program.   They had their own school buildings and everything.  —Until highschool, where everybody was mixed together.  (From two other programs, if I recall.  There was also an elite sports program and the ‘gifted' program).  It was an odd school with students commuting from far and wide.  Anyway, you could always tell the drama students from everybody else, because they were constantly wandering around riding on that ‘acting' high, totally disregarding social pressures.  (It drove the rest of the student population a little nuts, if I recall. . .  It was an interesting school.)

Anyway, I'm no actor.  So I sat there in the pub waiting for my turn to go up on stage and counted butterflies.  I sat with a copy of the first trade paperback with sections of text outlined which I felt I could get away with reading without people needing to see the pictures.  And I watched the writers go before me, some of whom were old pros on the circuit.  (—Good lord, did you know there was actually a circuit?  I didn't).  And the closer it got to my turn, the more I wondered how the heck I was going to get in a little elephant and hippopotamus social de-conditioning.

But get this. . .

The writer just before me was this part time actor, and she decided that rather than read out any of her stuff, she would instead tell a fairy tale.  —The kind with sound effects which the audience is invited to make along with her.  (If you ever want to see something funny, watch a bunch of hip writers and literary types writhe nervously when invited to blow their cool making dumb sound effects.)  I don't think the poor woman knew what she was setting herself up for.  Everybody was too darn anal to participate.  (Writers, for crying out loud!  —You know?   Sensitive types who learned to deal with life by escaping difficult social situations and express themselves instead through controllable, pre-refined words generated in the time frozen safety of the writing pad?  Them?  Hooting dumb sounds?  The lady didn't stand a chance.)

Anyway, you were supposed to say along with her, "Rum Pa-Ta-Tum!  Rum Pa-Ta-Tum!  Rum Pa-Ta-Tum-Ta-Ta!"  (That's the sound a magical fairy pot filled with gold makes when rolling down cobblestones.)  And people were so not into it.  But then it struck me about halfway through the performance. . .  I half stood and bellowed out the lines nice and loud, making people jump and look at me and laugh nervously.  —Did you know that a magic pot filled with gold can pass for an elephant in a pinch?  The lady tossed a relieved ‘thank-you' at me, and carried on.  (Actually she would have managed to save her bacon on her own despite the tough audience.  She carried enough presence to fill a whole room).

Anyway, after that, the butterflies were dead —it doesn't take much.  I even got some really good laughs with my pre-amble.  (Telling stories from the top of your head, I found, is much easier than reading stuff from paper.  Reading out loud takes practice, but everybody knows how to talk).  —It's strange.  You're up there, blinded by stage lights, and you're just sort of holding a one sided conversation, and then you hear from beyond those lights the audience laughing at your jokes and you remember that, yeah, right, I'm not just talking to myself up here.  Wow.  They're laughing at my stuff?  Geez.  I wonder if stand-up comedians feel like this.  I better get on with the reading portion of the show before something bad happens!  (I've died trying to do stand-up before, and I can tell you in full honesty that I've never experienced anything more horrible in my entire life; worse even than being young and screwing up when asking out a girl.  —Though, if you could screw up in front of an audience, then perhaps. . .  Ho ho!  Now that would suck!).