On Saturday night, I did another storytelling performance, although I was the next to the last one again. I am kind of wondering how more experienced everyone else is, or if they just know somebody...might be that last one, come to think of it.

The featured teller was Gay Dusey, a former librarian who told stories about her granddaughter running around naked at the library and then insisting on reading with an elderly patron, finishing with something like "you're never too early to get exposed to reading." She did another one about how she (of all people) didn't return a library book for what I'm guessing was several decades, and her mother kept nagging her about it. After her mother died, Gay returned to the library again to replace the book and found that someone had replaced it. Presumably that was her mother because there was a dedicated book plate naming her as a book thief! The third story she did was about a guy who handed
out flowers on Valentine's Day--just call me "Black Cupid."

Ed (our local guy) was there again, talking about when he moved as a high school senior and got kicked out. He dressed as a 50's greaser, which was amusing. Another guy talked about trying to find out the secret to good chili, which the lady wouldn't tell unless he guessed her favorite song--which he did.

A teenage(?) guy told a story about someone pooping in a urinal at his job and when he got sent in to clean it up, another guy saw it and was all, "Want some help?" Sure. So the guy literally broke the urinal off the wall. Gay's response to this was, "When you work at a public library you see everything. Shit in the urinal? My life story."

Another guy told a story about smallpox, but in all honesty I started rehearsing mine in my brain at the time and ah, heck if I know what was going on there after a while.

One guy toward the end really was kind of spectacular in a certain way: apparently in high school at least one of his teachers would sign him up for say, making a speech or acting out a script and then not mention it to him until either a few days or a few hours beforehand! He said that doing the speech, he had to come up with it during the four hour bus ride to the conference, he did the speech and figured he was done...well, he wasn't done, they kept having him do it again and again and he came in second! As for the script acting, a teacher gave him a comedic speech called "The Legislature," by James M. Cain, which was missing the back page so he had to make it up. He tried to find the entire script back in the day, but nobody could find it. First he spontaneously acted out the entire old script he still had and said his family didn't know he was going to do this with no preparation (I guess that's his thing, he said he decided to do this 2 weeks ago). But now with the power of the Internet, he could find it...so he ordered it online and then opened the package right then and there, a 45 year old mystery! Yes, that was it. So good job there, guy!

As for me, I did the story of my old roommate's cat that didn't get spayed and how she sexually harassed me out the wazoo. Only about ... I dunno, half the room was left by the time I went around ten, but the twenty or so left seemed to enjoy it, so that's a yay.

The next event is being held during a time when I may not be around here, so I dunno if I can do it, or if I should postpone my usual plans (Renaissance faire) or what. I probably should, if I can.

On Sunday I went to the Pirate Festival, which was fun. I went in my mermaid costume and people LOVED it, really loved it. I got called an idol and a masterpiece :) I had a lot of fun conversations with people (including one young girl wanting to know about selling stuff, I said only if it doesn't take you too long to make) and posing for pictures. I'm on Instagram now somewhere... So that is really gratifying to have happen :)

I bought myself a ruffled mermaid-style fabric bustle and then she had a prizewinning wheel that I spun and I won the grand prize--another bustle, I got one with space cats on it. Now I want to wear them but even I don't feel like I can wear a bustle to work, darn it.

I watched the guy who does the parrot show--he has a new girlfriend, Princess Keiko, and a rescue dog. Mostly I hung around watching the mermaid shows since I was already dressed for it. These are the people who work in the Dive Bar, so, y'know, professionals. They went back and forth between having three mermaids in the lagoon splashing you, borrowing your stuff, and either flirting or trying to steal men down into the briny deep ("they like fathers"), or the "tank" show, which featured one mermaid out of the tank talking or posing for pictures and another one in a clear tank goofing off. One show was really good when the two ladies were riffing off each other, teasing, splashing, etc. There was also Merman Tommy, who is quite cute and also apparently knows ASL and could talk to a pack of deaf kids there, which impressed me no end.

Other fun moments:
* I was talking to an older lady with some cool buttons and a dog and she mentioned that she has literally gotten "bite me" tattooed on her ass.
* I walked by a guy dressed as Waldo and muttered, "Found him!"
* Quote I overheard: "Make way! Pregnant man coming through!"

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