stand up comedy

Stand-Up Comedy

So, Women's Health does this column called Are You Game? where they

have different female writers attempt things that terrify them and

write about the experience. An editor there asked me if I'd be willing

to pose nude for an art class but by the time I emailed her back about

it, another writer had snagged the assignment. (Who knew writers were

so psyched to be in the buff? Maybe it's a symbolic sign of the

emotional nudity we experience on a day-to-day basis. Or maybe we're

all just exhibitionists.)

Anyway, the editor and I went back and forth about a few different

ideas -- I pitched her one about lying in this weird tank in the lobby

of the Standard for a few hours, some other things, and then stuck in

the middle of all the ideas a line about how I could possibly try

being a stand-up comic for the night.

Of course that was the one she jumped all over. And you can read the

results of my experience here. A lot was changed from the version I

turned in and it definitely makes me sound like I was far more of a

disaster than I really was but, hey, every story needs a little drama.

Meanwhile, I saw real stand-up comedians perform last night, which

makes my foray even more retrospectively cringe-inducing.

But an assignment's an assignment. Even though I could have gotten the

Would You Dare on going on a raw food diet or taking a tap dancing

class. When they were handing out scary, I think I got the, um, raw