Sheila Bryson

Things My Parents Say

Piano player at Lefty O'Douls: "We have a big crew in from Maine!" Father of AmeriCanadian stands up, Guiness in hand and yells: "People from Maine are a bunch of retards!!!"

The Parents of AmeriCanadian Are En Route to SF

It's true, they are on their way tomorrow.  We literally just saw each other in Kansas over Thanksgiving (remember me fake napping?). It's rare that our visits are timed so closely together. 

I am blessed ot have awesome friends that are letting my folks stay in their home while they are away, in return we are looking after their beautiful rhodesian ridgeback Lola. 

I think that it should be ok and I promise to keep you all updated, but here are some predictions.

1) My Dad will get kicked out of Lefty O'Douls.

2) My Mom will tell me how I should arrange the furniture in my apartment.

3) My Dad will mess up the home owners' where they are staying entertainment system to the point of no return.

OMG OMG OMG OMG!! I Didn't Bomb!

I just got home from my first open-mic ever, and I didn't bomb!  In three short minutes, I learned a lot about my strengths and what I need to work on to start improving.  Firstly, people seemed to WANT to laugh at stuff I said.  As though I have a funny disposition to start with.

My material definitely wasn't awesome, I think technically I really only told two jokes.  But I did talk to the crowd and engage with them, and I even had a blunder or two that seemed to make them like me more.

Now it's time to hunker down and get to writing.  My big takeaway though, is that there is no substitution for getting on stage- I rehearsed until I was blue in the face, and it couldn't hold a candle to three minutes on stage.

Thanks to my loyal AmeriCanadian readers for your support.  It really did help me have the balls to get up there!

I'm Losing My Virginity On Wednesday

Tonight is my second-last night to write and rehearse before I do my first ever stand-up open mic on Wednesday night.  I am getting pretty freaked out about it, but at the same time, I just want to get it over with.  The more and more I think about it, the more I think that a losing your virginity analogy applies.  Think about the advice given to girls who are going to have sex for the first time:

You must not be pressured into it.  It might hurt a little bit, but that's to be expected.  The more relaxed you are the less it will hurt.  It depends on how big the guy is (or crowd).  In most cases there isn't any bleeding.  It sometimes hurts at first, but can end up feeling kind of good.  You shouldn't feel embarrassed afterward.

Ahhh, this little exercise made me feel a lot better.  If I end up liking stand-up as much as I like...

Well, I should be ok is the key takeaway.

I'm Addicted To Facebook

It's official people, I'm addicted to Facebook.  Tonight I got home from stand-up class (which I crushed, btw) and sat down to log into Facebook on my laptop.  A nightly ritual I enjoy, but also recongnize that I spend too much time on it during my evenings.  So I get a message from Facebook that my account is temporarily unavailable.  WHAT!?  WHY ME FACEBOOK, WHY ME?! 

My need for social networking is so bad that I just signed onto, wait for it.... MYSPACE. Desparate times...  Anyways I was horrified to see one of the weight loss ads that are always targeted at me.  Check out how disturbing this is....  Is that someone's thigh?  Yick!

Things I Will Never Do

#5) Read a trilogy of books about vampires and teenagers

BRAVO: The Soup Clip of the Week

I can't stop giggling about this.

Comedy College Is Weird

I started taking stand-up classes at the San Francisco Comedy College. I have been wanting to do this for ages and am finally going to take my balls out of my purse and give it a try. Tonight was our second class and the thing that is really interesting is the posturing that is going on amongst my classmates. Now I am absolutely including myself in that observation. I think people are super tense because they feel some kind of pressure to be funny at every opportunity. Everyone in the room is used to being the funny one, so there is a lot of sniffing out happening amongst us all. I hope that we will all relax soon because it is exhausting!! I am going to do two open mics at the college next week, I'm pretty excited about it. Word has it that even if you don't have material you should start getting on stage as soon as possible.

Things I Will Never Do

#4) List my middle name as Hussein on a social networking platform