Oooooh – Teresa has asked us to try out comedy today. This comedy has ended up kind of dark I will warn you now! Not my typical style.
Your challenge today, should you accept it, is to find your funny bone and write your best comedy and see where it leads…or whatever/wherever the picture takes you.
https://maplesswanderer.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/daily-writing-prompt-24/
Well…I had a little idea this morning. As soon as I saw the photo, it said to me failing comedian. But when I started working on it, I found it ended up becoming kind of macabre! You’ll see what I mean! Just remember Jeff and his wife, and all the other characters are pure fiction. Don’t have nightmares!
“Sorry Jeff, but tonight is your last night on stage in The Coco Comedy Club. Your gig just isn’t going down well with audiences.”
“I don’t get it Frank, my jokes about Trump and Pence are awesome. People used to lap that stuff up. What’s changed?”
Frank scratched his head, “I can’t answer that Jeff. I think some of the audience might actually support him, and those who don’t, well, they are just beyond laughing anymore. They seem closer to despair.”
Jeff sat in his dressing room feeling depressed. Everything seemed to be going wrong in his life. In all honesty, he didn’t feel like standing on stage for half an hour to tell jokes about the POTUS. He had too much on his mind. Losing this gig was the last thing he needed. As he sulked, his feelings intensified.
At 8:55pm Mindy knocked on his door to remind him that he was on stage in five minutes. Jeff hauled himself up from the chair he had been glued to for the last couple of hours wallowing in his misery. For what he thought would be the last time, he walked out onto the tiny stage at The Coco Comedy Club and started his set…
Only tonight Jeff gave up on his normal stand-up routine. Something had snapped within him. Jeff started to bear his heart to the audience and voice all of his problems.
“So last week my wife came home and told me she wanted a divorce.”
Perceiving a murmur of laughter, Jeff stared out into the dimly lit seating where the audience sat. He wondered who on earth found what he had just announced as funny. “I asked her why she wanted a divorce after eight years of wedded bliss. She’s had the house all to herself for the past five years. When I’m on the comedy circuit, we don’t see each other for months, and when I am not working, I stay out late so she can have Netflix to herself and when I come home late I sleep on the sofa, so I don’t wake her up. I asked her what the hell was wrong?”
Jeff was taken aback when a ripple of laughter erupted and few people whooped. “It turns out she has been having an affair. With a lad half her age who comes to clean the pool. So she wanted a divorce so she could take half my earnings. She reckoned that without her, I would never have made a cent!” Jeff raised his eyebrows, “Well, she had a point there. Most of my sketches have been about her and the cretans she calls Mom and Dad.”
The audience laughed heartily as Jeff continued his outpouring, “Do you know what she said? She said I am selfish. Me! Selfish! She’s the one who has maxed out two of my credit cards paying for her botox injections, silicone implants and her pilates classes.”
A couple of men were heard guffawing while the rest of the audience cackled. Jeff was baffled by the reaction he was receiving. “Guys if any of you have annoying wives, take this advice from me – send her to pilates classes. It will pay off big time. After I strangled her it was so easy to fold her body up and stick her in a suitcase.”
There was a roar of laughter from the audience at this point. Jeff looked over at Frank who was grinning and had both of his thumbs up. Scratching his head, Jeff announced, “All that botox and silicone turned out to be an advantage too. I pushed the suitcase over the top step of the stairs and it bounced all the way to the bottom.”
Some of the audience were rocking backwards and forwards with laughter. Jeff looked out at them as if they were all insane, “So I’ve been driving around all week with the suitcase in the back of my car. Has anyone any suggestions about how to dispose of a body?”
People were crying with laughter and cheering Jeff. He didn’t know what to make of it. He put the microphone back onto the stand and backed away from the little stage.
As he headed back to his dressing room, Frank popped up in front of him, “Jeff, that was absolutely cracking! The audience loved your new content. Scrap the political satire. Just do exactly what you did tonight. That was flippin’ hilarious. If you do exactly that, I’ll book you in for the top spot at The Coco Comedy Club for another three months!!!”
However, not one to wallow in the dust, I have plans! Big plans! Bills to pay, rules to break, risks to take and things to say! I will be seeing a lot of friends in my free time (not that I have a lot of that at the moment) to keep me busy and lively while Jack is away.
Why do I have to come back to London the next morning? Paid work. I have bills to pay! South West Trains are a bit unreliable of late. I am taking a risk in leaving it until the morning to travel back for work. But you know what…it will be ok! We got love! I wonder what my supervisor would think if I said that after having to ring and late!
This post is about a subject that could be misinterpreted, or even misdiagnosed. I do not generally have low self-esteem. I am secure in myself. More than that I am happy with myself. I also have a lot of confidence in public, social and other settings. I don’t become shy or nervous without a very good reason.
However, this post is not about my strengths. It is about one of my weaknesses. I have more than one weakness. But this particular weakness is frustrating. It is a ridiculous irrational oddity. But it has a powerful effect on me.
Strangely, I don’t have those feelings when I look into a mirror. Mirrors are fine. Perhaps mirrors are kinder than cameras. But what I see in the mirror is pleasant, even attractive (lol – if I do say so myself!)
It all started when I mentioned to Goldfinch that Jack and I were heading to our first public event together. I told Goldfinch I was going to be wearing a lovely dress. Goldfinch asked me for a photo of me in the dress. Oh boy! A simple request, you might think. Not in my case.
The following night, we had an amazing time. All my confidence came back at the event, because I was focused on other people, both Jack and everyone else. I had no shyness, not low self-esteem. But people took photos. Some of those photos on now on their Instagram accounts. Jack says we look great, but I have begged him not to let me see them.
I don’t like that Jack saw me so upset about something that must seem so ridiculous. He has now seen a crippling weakness and how it makes me crumble. He wants to “cure” me. But he will have a battle. I have felt that way since I was a small girl. I have always hated to see photographs and video footage of myself. It hasn’t stopped me from being on stage, on television, and in fashion shows. Neither has it stopped me posing for cameras. But I can only do and enjoy any of that on the proviso that I don’t see the images the camera has captured afterwards.
Caramel 