Surprise Christopher Titus show tonight!

So I'm awakened this morning by a phone call from frumple an old buddy from my theatre days in the Rude Mechanicals whom I haven't heard from in a non-LJ capacity for a long while. He asked, "Hey, Heffie! So, we have tickets to see Christopher Titus tonight, but can't go because we just had the baby. Wanna go?"

It didn't even occur to me to call back an hour later and ask if it was an April Fool's prank. Because for those who don't know, um, yeah, Titus is one of my heroes. NORMAN ROCKWELL IS BLEEDING is one of my primary inspirations and models for everything I set out to do with THE HEFNER MONOLOGUES (to the point where I'm embarrassed to see older versions of the show, lest I find all the places I'm cribbing Titus). Henchgirl worships that show too, and if you recall during that post-Christmas week of hell, it culminated in us rewatching the whole show, even though we pretty much knew it by heart between us.

So yeah, actually seeing Titus live out of the blue? A little suspicious, even though Frumple and K. are not the kind of people who'd do that to me. And so of course, it was the real deal. We're back in DC for less than a day, and we're getting to see one of our favorite solo performers ever, for free? Holy bejabbers!

The show itself was amazing on a number of levels. For one thing, it was way longer than I was expecting, because he essentially did two shows: one show of all-new material that he's still working on for a new Comedy Central special, followed by essentially all of LOVE IS EVOL.

Rule of thumb I've learned over the Fringe circuit: solo shows should almost never run over 60 minutes. That's just the nature of the art form, just as stand-up comedy sets shouldn't go beyond, like, 45 minutes to an hour. Titus is one of those guys who seems to prefer doing hour-and-a-half sets, which would be horrible if he weren't so great at what he does.

So it's to his credit that he did not one but TWO entire shows, clocking in at about two and a half hours (!!!), and he managed the sustain the energy and life throughout. Mostly.

But even the rough patches were great to see, because man, at this point in my career as a solo performer, I felt this amazing sense of kinship with what he was doing. I now know the feeling of trying out new material, particularly playing off the audience when a joke doesn't go as well (or when it goes *really* well in an unexpected way). It was humanizing and inspiring to see his process, and I'll be very interested to see how it shapes up when the special comes out.

I actually meant to buy a DVD to have him sign, since they finally finally finally released NORMAN ROCKWELL IS BLEEDING to DVD, but since they were twenty-five bucks a pop, ehhhhhhhh heh heh, yeah, no, I'm getting that shit on Amazon and getting it signed later, on the hope that I'll get another chance. Possibly with him actually seeing one of my shows in the future?

So yeah, super epic awesome thanks and congrats to frumple and K. This was an amazing experience.

Prelude to several posts of comic geekery

One reason I'm so poor after this trip is because Henchgirl and I tracked down a comic shop in pretty much every major city we went through, scouring through bargain and back issues for several things.

We have two personal crusades: mine is to find every single issue of the BATMAN ANIMATED SERIES comics, and hers is to get a complete run of the 90's CATWOMAN. But I found many more in the meantime. I'm gonna have to write multiple entries to showcase my acquisitions.

At a magnificent comic/used-book shop in Oklahoma City--it was called Second Chance Books, and really, how could a Two-Face fan like me resist?--they had a whole section dedicated to comic-themed novels. Very, very cool. But two stood out. One was this:





Henchgirl almost bought it, but held off to instead get more CATWOMAN back issues. Has anyone read this? Is it any good? It doesn't look that good, but hey, you never know where the gems turn up!

Me, I came away with this:





Okay, first of all, Richard Wenk? I'm wondering if that's the very same Richard Wenk who directed VAMP, the 80's-tastic original Vampire Strip Club movie starring Grace Jones, Gedde Watanabe, Dedee Pfeiffer, and Billy Drago? I don't know how many other Richard Wenks there are Wenking around.

But more importantly, this is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" Batman book! Did I mention how I'd love to write a "Choose Your Own Adventure" Two-Face story? It'd come with its own coin and everything.

I know, right? MUST NOT JEOPARDIZE EVERYTHING I'M WORKING ON RIGHT NOW TO WRITE THIS INSTEAD. When oh when will DC hire me so I can do this shit for actual money?!