when I was a kid and we got to the portion of our curriculum about states, I would always get irrationally angry about living in maryland
because when you live in Maryland, you gotta draw Maryland
and, jesus, Maryland is a stupidly-shaped state
I mean, look at it:
I’ve been debating whether or not to post this for a while now but figured, hey, it’s not like anyone who knows me thought I was a regular normal person anyway.
So here’s a story.
I had an interesting thing happen to me the other day – and by “interesting” I mean “kind of horrible.”
I had a panic attack.
Note: I wrote this about 3 years ago when I was halfway through my time at the Second City training center in Chicago. My feelings have grown a bit more complex on the matter, but I like having this as a reminder of how I felt when I first started trying to be funny for realsies.
It was very tough, the first year at least, because they were fighting – particularly the woman writers for their material to get in, which only applied to women’s issues.
– Chevy Chase
I’d like to say that this sort of statement feels antiquated and like my experience thus far in Chicago has taught me that comedy has come a long way in regards to women.
And, in a sense, it has. Tina Fey has blazed a trail in recent years, as have people like Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig.
They’re hilarious. They’re women. Their uteruses don’t impede their ability to be funny and, sometimes, it even helps drive their point of view and makes them more hilarious.
There’s this bar we go to after class right outside of Second City called The Ale House. It’s an interesting dive bar – there are half-naked pictures of various (supposedly) famous people covering every surface of the walls, including one of Mitt Romney posing coyly in his “Mormon underwear” (note: I don’t believe this underwear is underwear that any actual Mormon would be caught dead in).
I’m not named after anyone. My parents decided upon the name randomly (apparently my mom had a student named Krista or something and she liked the name and it stuck). My sister was named after my grandfather and our great-grandma, so I always sort of resented the fact that her name had significance, while mine seemed to be pulled out of the destiny’s butthole of randomness*. Sure, it’s a nice enough name, but it’s always caused some problems for me.
