Theo: The Rubber Horseshoe.  Softer Shoes for Softer Horses.  Available now at Desbrisay’s Drugeroceria and Confectionarium.

Cameron’s Annekenstein Sketch

One of the challenging, and exciting, aspects of putting on a live sketch comedy show is managing your quick-changes.  Sometimes you have scant little time to change from, say, a punk-cowboy into, say, an old nun.  Often, you barely make it, and are literally are running from the dressing room to get on stage, pulling up pants and adjusting a wig and grabbing the necessary hand-prop even as your cue-line to enter onto the stage is being said.

At the beginning of a run, especially during dress rehearsal, you are positive that at least one of your quick-changes cannot possibly be done – there simply isn’t enough time to make that change.  Rather than alter the running order or rewrite something to give you the necessary time, you simply have to find a way to make it work.  You figure it out.  “If I already wear my nun’s leggings underneath my cowboy denims and chaps, then that’ll save a few seconds” – that sort of thing.  And by the end of the run of shows, usually, you are so adept at making those seemingly-impossible changes that you probably fit a pee break in there too.

After performing 7 years in Annekenstein sketch shows and 7 years in Sketch-22 sketch shows, I have a pretty good grasp of what is possible and not possible when it comes to quick-changes.  In the last few years, I’ve taken to writing up a list – explaining out exactly how my costume changes need to happen, and where my various costume pieces and my props are supposed to be back stage.

I just found the list I used for the latest sketch show I was involved in, A Very Sketch Christmas. There were a few very quick changes for me (for all of us), but all were manageable.  In the second act, in order to make it work, I had to wear pajama pants under a heavy pair of donkey leggings underneath a shepherd’s robe. It got pretty warm up in there.

Anyway, I get a kick out of a couple of items on this list and so that’s the main reason for this post.

I am a man who does not know a lot about a lot of things.
One of those things I do not know a lot about is Comics.
When I was young, I read the Archie comics, some war comics (Sgt. Somethingorother?), and the odd Weird Tales comic here and there.  I never had a collection, nor wanted one, and I was never one to wait eagerly, impatiently, excitedly, for the next issue of WhateverMan to come out.  Comics were a casual part of my childhood, and when my childhood ran its course, so too, did my desire to read them.

I think I am a month too old (really, though: years too old) to have been part of the PEI resurgence of the Comic Book as art form or literature (or was it simply a surgence?) in, I’m guessing, the late-’80s, early-’90s.  Could have been earlier, could have been later, I’m not good with dates.
So, when friends who were younger than me, or contemporary-aged friends who were hipper than me, began to read comics and graphic novels, I was aware but not interested.  As the popularity, and culture-significance of this Comic Book World grew, I remained ignorant.  And, at times, as it is with my personality, willfully-ignorant.
I read The Watchmen series sometime around 1990, probably. I enjoyed it.  I am, and have been, aware of, and have read, a scant few other series and publications since then, but am woefully ignorant.  When I am in the proximity of conversations about comic books, I generally zone out, due to my immense lack of knowledge of the topic(s) at hand.

All that to say: I am not in my comfort zone when I walk into a comic book shop.

I have a friend, Dylan Miller, who owns a comic book shop: Lightning Bolt Comics  I’ve always felt the desire to support him and his small-business enterprise (and feel guilty for not doing so), but a couple of things have kept me from doing so.

The first is (was) the fact that for so long, I was consumed by credit card debt.  The first 20 years of my adult life, credit card debt owned me.  A number of years ago, my wife and I decided to eradicate that debt from our lives, and so we went on a serious spending freeze.  Not that we were spending much on what I’ll call frivolous things, but we put a halt on practically all non-essential purchasing, and put all our money towards paying off the debt.  And finally, a year or two ago, we succeeded.  We are debt-free.
However, one of the side-effects of such a purchase-purge, is that now I am very much the type of person who hardly spends any money.  Like, I spend practically nothing.  I find it difficult to justify spending money on new underwear, that type of level of miserliness.  I have become a living example of the Scottish SkinFlint cliche.

The second thing is, when I go into Dylan’s store, I feel a bit (a lot) like an illiterate in a library. Imposter!! Looking at the items offered is a bit like looking at things that don’t make sense in my world.  It’s all a jumble of “I have no idea what I’m looking at, or for”, and it’s a bit overwhelming and uncomforting.  This, I realize and admit, is a problem of mine.  I should be “who fucking cares”, but I’m not.

So, for a long time, I wasn’t purchasing anything, and Dylan’s store was one of the many that didn’t see support from me. Yet, now I am beginning to see a light, and, with a bit of a pleasant balance showing in our bank accounts, I am tentatively putting my toe in the Superfluous Purchase Waters.

I made the decision to buy something!  This may seem like a minor thing to you and your lifestyle, but to me it was a bit more epic.  Furthermore, I decided that the first place I’d go is to Lightning Bolt and support my fellow Popalopalot.  Trouble is, I didn’t know what I wanted, didn’t know how to go about finding out what I might want.
Then I hit upon an idea:  why not ask an expert what I might enjoy.  Dylan knows me a little (I’m a hard fellow for anyone to know, I know), definitely knows his stuff, and it might be a fun little adventure.  So I asked Dylan to pick out something from his store, around $30 (I know, big spender right!), that he thinks I might like, and I’d buy it, no questions asked.  Dabbling my toe in the water, you know.
Dylan agreed.

And this is what Dylan picked out for me.  This is what I bought.

I had seen the movie Ghost World, based on Daniel Clowes comic, but had to be reminded of the connection.
So, I read it and really liked it.

Yeah, that’s a long way to go just to say “I bought a book”.

Once there was a cat – a lady cat – who would spend her nights wandering the back alleys of her little town. She had a home to go back to – a loving home with plenty of food and a place to do her private business.  It was an okay life, but she was getting bored of it all – the same alleys, the same characters, the same everything night after night.  And so, on this particular night, she made the sudden and rash decision to leave it all behind.
“It totally goes against what I expect from myself, but what the hey!” she said, and started on her way.
By the time she made her way to the outskirts of town, it was almost dawn.
At the town limits sign, the lady cat was observed by a bird who was sitting on a telephone pole.
“Now this,” said the bird, “goes totally against what is ingrained in my psyche, but I think I’m gonna go talk to that cat.”  The bird flew down and landed in front of the cat, who was momentarily stopped to clean her face.
“Do I need to be afraid of you?” asked the bird.
“Not unless you plan on doing me harm,” replied the cat.
Mutually deciding all was good, the two took the rest of the day getting to know each other, as they wandered beyond the town and into the woods.  After hearing about the cat’s previous cozy living arrangements, the bird stated he couldn’t understand why she would ever give up such comforts.
“Comfort doesn’t equate to interesting,” she answered.

The two spent the next few days exploring the world together.  They came upon a beautiful lake, and decided to rest there for a while.
“I’d flown over this lake a couple of times,” said the bird, “on my down down south or back from down south, but I never thought to stop here.  It’s really quite lovely!”
The cat didn’t understand the concept of “down south” but didn’t let on, and just nodded in agreement about the loveliness of the lake.
The bird decided a fun thing to do would be to pick up stones in his beak – as big as he could carry – and then fly over the lake and drop them.  He loved to watch the stones splash and break the calmness of the lake water.  While he was doing this, the cat was attempting to catch fish by the lakeside, but just wasn’t fast enough.
“It’s your middle-class upbringing,” said the bird, landing beside the cat. “You can’t catch a fish because you never needed to catch a fish.”

“Maybe we could catch a fish together,” suggested the cat.  “You pick up the biggest stone you can, hover over the side of the lake, here where it’s shallow, and when you see a fish drop the stone on the deeper side of the lake. The surprise will force the fish to swim closer to the shore, and I’ll be there waiting to pounce.”
“Sounds like a plan!”

It took them several attempts, and even more hours, to accomplish their task, but finally, the plan worked perfectly.  They caught a fish and sat themselves down to enjoy the spoils of their efforts.
“This is the best meal I ever had”, said the cat.
“Because you caught it yourself. That’s why.  Maybe, for the first time ever in your life, you earned it. That’s why it tastes so good.”
“Well, I did have help!”
“We do make a pretty good team!  Who’d have thunk a bird and a cat could work together to achieve such greatness!”

As they continued to feast on the fresh fish – the fish they caught together – they began to make plans on other ways they could work together to make their lives infinitely better and full of purpose.  They got very excited about the prospect of finding a barn somewhere, because such a barn would no doubt be filled with mice and rats, for the cat, and also grains and bugs, which better suited the bird.
So engrossed were they in their discussion that they had let their guards down to the environment around them.

Suddenly, an owl who thought she was a bear, swooped down on the pair and with the expertise and speed and conviction of the wild animal she was, killed the bird and the cat, even before they knew what was happening.
“Because that’s what bears do,” said the owl.

I’ve been wondering why the phrase “Akki Akki” might’ve been in my head, causing me to blurt it out in the middle of a sketch (see previous post), and maybe this provides an answer.
This must’ve been rattling around up there, even though I’d not heard it for probably years and years.  Great song, awesome band.