Alright, time for the weekly quickety-blickety blog so I can work on my upcoming book and you can read about that below, along with a photo and a quick story and a video about frozen pizza.
Here we go!
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Every Picture In The MBIP Headquarters Tells A Story: The First Marty Monologues
Back on September 30, 2018 I performed a show at The Apollo Theatre on Main Street in downtown Peoria. It was a show where I told three monologues and in between the monologues I made a sandwich for a lucky winner in the audience. Sarah Marie Dillard and Brandon Mooberry performed a live song at the start of the show and at the end of the show. DJ JuanGoblin played music before the show and during the sandwich intermissions.
I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared in my life. A friend of mine suggested to the idea to me years before and after toying with the idea and seeing a show at The Apollo Theatre, I decided to do it and the stories I told were: Confessions of a Complete and Unmitigated Asshole, The Weird Day When The Sky Turned Brown and A Cold and Bitter Observation from David Johansen.
When I first had the idea, I thought I would print up tickets and if no one bought them, I wouldn’t do the show. My friend Chelsie Tamms came up with some great art to brand the show with and we printed up tickets and some posters. Some stores agreed to sell them and I made an announcement on the blog about the show. I also appeared on Good Day Central Illinois and I was a guest on The Greg and Dan Show.
Then I sold over 100 tickets to the show. I couldn’t believe it, people were actually going to come to this show. I’m not trying to be humble here, but I really had trouble wondering why anyone would pay money to listen to me tell stories and make sandwiches. But one thing was certain, now I had to do this fucking show!
Luckily I had about six weeks and I rehearsed for it every day by telling the stories in my apartment to an imaginary audience. On the weekends my friends Amber and Joe came over and watched me perform the show and gave critiques and helped me edit the stories. They were a huge help and the show was so much tighter and better because of their input and guidance.
The day of the show came and I was so nervous all I wanted to do was start drinking, but I knew if I got bombed, the show would bomb, so I didn’t drink. I just paced around all day until Amber and Joe came and picked me up. I remember just pacing around backstage and feeling like I was going to throw up. I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach, I had poisonous hornets.
People were coming in and the theatre was almost sold out. DJ juanGoblin was spinning tunes on stage and Sarah and Brandon were backstage with me. None of us were talking and I was just hoping that maybe I’d have a heart attack and die. I remember thinking that might be kind of cool because it would probably make the front page of the PJ Star.
Sadly, my dreams didn’t come true and I lived. Soon DJ juanGoblin introduced Sarah and Brandon and they performed wonderfully. Then Sarah introduced me and right before I went on stage I looked down at the ground and said the following two words: “Oh fuck!”
Then I walked out on stage and I really don’t remember doing the show. I was so fucking nervous, I really have hardly any recollection of it. The whole thing is a blur in my memory banks and the only thing I remember clearly is sitting with DJ juanGoblin while Sarah and Brandon played the closing song. I remember turning to him and whispering to him: “Did people like this?”
He looked at me like I was fucking nuts and said, “Are you kidding me? They loved it!”
Since then I’ve done about six Marty Monologues shows in Peoria, one in Chicago and two in New York City. But as they say, there’s nothing like your first time. I just wish I could remember it!
Here’s a link to the blog post about the very first blog post about Marty Monologues.
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Update On Confessions Of A Spiteful Writer
Not much of an update this week because I didn’t really get anything done. I have decided to go to New York for a week in May and this is good because it gives me a firm deadline. I want to have the book totally written by May 1st. That’s the deadline and I know I can make it. Hopefully I can report some progress next week.
Till then, here’s three random paragraphs from the upcoming book.
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I got home around four in the afternoon and the phone light on my message machine was blinking. I hit the machine and a woman’s voice came on sounding like she was sobbing: “Marty, this is Christina Kelly at Sassy magazine, why do you keep making fun of us?” Then she broke into laughter and said, “Hey Marty, we love what you’re doing with fishwrap! Can you give me a call, we’d like to make fishwrap the “Zine of the Month” in a future issue.” She rattled a phone number off and told me to call her back when I could.
Of course I had plenty of time right then and there and so I called her up. She was really nice on the phone and I told her about my freelance writing and that I was working a night job to pay the rent and fishwrap was born out of me not getting a staff writing job in New York City. I told her that I thought writers and editors would either think it was funny or it might piss them off, but all I wanted was a reaction. She told me that at first it made her and some of the other people kind of mad, but she said with the second everyone was giggling about me taking barbed shots at Sassy and she said with this issue everyone was laughing and loving fishwrap.
She explained that they worked a few months ahead and fishwrap would probably Zine of the Month in the September or October issue. Christina asked if they could use the cover of this issue for the art and I told her that would be great. She said she’d probably call me in a few weeks when she was ready to write the copy.
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This Week’s Frozen Pizza Video
This week I reviewed a Digriorno Cheese Stuffed Crust Pepperoni Personal Size Pizza. I learned something during the making of this video…I’m never eating a personal size pizza again in my life! I also got a comment from someone who thinks I’m being too grumpy in the videos, so I told him maybe he just shouldn’t watch them anymore! You can watch the video and read the comments by clicking right here, right now!
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I didn’t do a Spiteful Stories video because I kind of forgot to do it and by the time I remembered it was too late! Hopefully we’ll have one next week!
Till then, I’m off to go work on the book! I have a May deadline to meet after all! See you all tomorrow for another fun Friday Bites episode!
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Related Post: The Thursday Blog Buffet from last week.