Originally published October, 2008
I hate to say it, but I’m running out of ideas. Under normal circumstances I would take a broad subject and be a smartass about it. But now, I am almost out of social commentary. So instead I am going have to regale my readers with an epic story, the story of my weekend. Now stay with me here, I swear to you it’ll be funny. As the title implies, it was a bizarre weekend.
On Thursday night I had plans to go have some drinks with friends, when I met them they decided to add an unexpected twist to the night.
“Hey there’s a bikini contest tonight at the red devil tonight. We’re going.” One of my friends declared. I was of course intrigued by the idea of a bikini contest. What was strange to me was that a bikini contest was happening in the land locked area of
By the time we got there the place was packed. We paid our five dollar cover fee and found a place among the crowd. I was surprised to see that a good percentage of the audience was female. I had always thought that the audience for such an event would be only male, but seeing that women were present made me feel less like a pervert. The event ended up starting forty five minutes later than scheduled. Despite this, the audience refused to leave until they had seen the show. It’s amazing the feats people will go to to see a scantily clad woman. Finally the show began. A man got on the microphone and called the winner of last year’s contest to say a few words. She basically said something about handing over her title, and than she called out the contestants. They consisted of three girls and one man. They paraded around to the hooting cheering of the audience. After all the contestants had come out, the highly sophisticated judging technique of applause was employed. A winner was crowned, and everyone cheered.
It occurred to me that I could have seen women in bikinis for free at a beach, it would be less crowded and I wouldn’t have had to be surrounded by horny guys. The next thing that happened was rather unexpected. The announcer got on the microphone and said, “Alright, we now have some professionals here, if you give them five dollars they’ll give you a lapdance.” Three women came out in bikinis, it was clear that they were strippers by trade because of their familiarity with giving a lap dance, and the appearance of their breasts. The women looked as if someone had taken two halves of a basketball and spot welded them their chests. My friends urged me to get a lap dance, but I declined. I didn’t feel it would be worth paying five dollars for the illusion of sex.
The other lees strange thing that happened to me this week was my performance at the tree house open-mic. I have recently been doing standup comedy and many friends who had missed my performance at the good life café back in September wanted to see my routine. The tree house open-mic seemed like a good place to show everyone my routine. When I arrived at the tree house I was a little bit surprised. Open-mic is not an accurate term for what was happening there. This is because there is no stage or microphone. It was mostly people lying around waiting for someone to get up and do something in front of them. In between performances there were long stretches of nothing happening because no one wanted to perform. This led to several impromptu poetry readings.
The nature of the performances made me feel out of place. It was a few musical acts and poetry readings. This did not seem like the right environment for standup comedy. I remembered at the good life café, the act before me was a folk music group. Most of the audience there had come to see that, when I went on I definitely got most of the audience there laughing, but a few people were clearly horrified by some of my material. Would the residents of the tree house take me too seriously? They clearly took their sustainability very seriously. They even had a sign that said, “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.” Would I be able to make fun of this or would it offend their system of values. When, I finally got up to do my act was when I felt the least comfortable. Not because of the audience, but because I was basically standing in the middle of a living room to do my performance. Fortunately, I ended up doing very well. No one was too stuck up to laugh at jokes about old people or dildos. This was a great relief.
So, now my strange weekend has ended, and now I have to return from the glory of stand up comedy, and the overrated experience of a bikini contest. It’s back to dull work and sobriety. However, I hope to have more strange weekends. They are always good to bring up for conversation and give me something to write about when I am out of ideas.
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