Jessica Ferris's Internetty Hub of Web-Based Content

we did performances for each other. Some of you wanted the recipe for the baked pasta dish I made. It’s here.

I’m a big Eddie Izzard fan. He came to Oracle Arena in January, and I went. I was one seventeen thousandth of his audience. Like, 5.88235294 × 10^-5 of his audience.

Okay? I’d never been in an audience that big.

I was able to see him thanks to the big screens flanking the stage, which meant that it was like popping in an Eddie Izzard DVD and viewing it with seventeen thousand of my closest strangers. All things considered, I was impressed with the way he was able to keep things feeling so almost-casual.

My audiences have maxed out at 100 historically, though there have been plenty of nights when I’ve played to significantly fewer. The night I met Jacques, for example, he was 20% of my audience.

I wondered what I’d do in front of an audience of seventeen thousand people, and I suspected that I’d spend most of the time just freaking the fuck out.

Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello. Boy, there sure are a lot of you, aren’t there? Heh. Wow. Couldn’t possibly learn all your names, even if I tried for a whole month, could I? Just imagine that endeavor! I don’t think I’m neurologically-optimized to relate to a group this big! You know, substitute teaching prepared me for a lot of things, but learning seventeen thousand names at a go was not one of them.

Of course, many of you probably have the same name! If you could just arrange yourselves alphabetically, by first name, I might be able to learn the names of entire sections of the audience! Could we do that? Would you play along? It would take HOURS, wouldn’t it? Even taking into account your clearly-above-average-intelligence! It’s just too bad, because I could track first-name-influence-on-sense-of-humor by noting which sections laughed the loudest at which bits! For science!

We should try that next time. I hope there’s a next time. Maybe I don’t. Wait. Yes I do. Wait. I take it back. The first part. Not the second part. Wait. I forgot what I said first. What was I saying?

Um. [awkward silence]

Listen, I’m sure I had something planned to say to you tonight, but fuck if I can remember. There are seventeen thousand of you. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw the Grand Canyon but couldn’t understand it because it was too big? That’s like you. I mean, you collectively.

You are much like a geological wonder. You go around in your lives, your individual lives, thinking about how the guy in front of you is walking too slow, or how your shoulder kind of hurts or whatever, but you never think, “I am part of a collection of humanity so big that if even a fraction of us were put in an arena, facing Jessica, she would not be able to comprehend us and would freak the fuck out.”

Wait. Try something for a sec. Just turn around and look behind you. Let’s just pretend I’m in the back row of an event meant to focus on someone else, but for some reason this one heckler in the back (who is me!) just happens to have a mic. Just – could you try it? Look, People In The Nosebleed Seats, you’re now in the FIRST ROW! Joke’s on all of you who paid the big bucks! Ha! HA! HA HA HA!

Wait. Nope. Still freaking the fuck out. Dang.

Listen, I imagine you came here to laugh and instead you’re looking slightly puzzled – at least, those of you I can see! At least you’re consistent. I mean, in my fantasies of standing in front of seventeen thousand people, the seventeen thousand people have always seemed slightly puzzled. And I want to thank you for being just like I dreamed you would be.

Thank you and good night.

Anyway, Eddie Izzard did not appear to freak the fuck out. He walked out onstage, greeted the crowd briefly, warmly, and with good humor, and then launched straight into a pro-atheism rant. And an aircraft-hangar’s worth of people shouted and hooted their approval! Thank you for giving voice to my most intimate feelings Eddie Izzard! I will now laugh in solidarity! I will laugh and grip the armrests of my chair, so that I don’t plumet to my death should I lean too far forward in this fit of hilarity I’m experiencing at 30,000 feet.

Really, I was amazed at how easily he was able to push all the right buttons, create a feeling of solidarity in a group that big.

Honestly, I’ll tell you, I have very little idea of what I could authentically say to a group that big and be well-received. The fact that he knew it made him seem almost Better Than Mere Mortal, almost Uber Artist.

But then you know what? Just recently, Roger Ebert (who tweets like no other), reported that Eddie Izzard “bombed” as the emcee for the Independent Spirit Awards:

This year’s emcee was Eddie Izzard, the British comedian, who opened by informing America that there is no God, and turned that into a running joke that failed time and again, along with an inexplicable joke about Werner von Braun.

Granted, I wasn’t in the room, I don’t know if everyone would have called it “bombing,” but I have to admit that I actually found this sort of cool, and not in the schadenfruede kind of way. It was like, “Wow. Maybe there is no super secret knowledge, maybe all artists are still just making guesses about how their work will be received, maybe it’s true that success just means you have the opportunity to fail bigger, and man, Eddie Izzard seems so much cooler to me now!” Why is that? I don’t know. Maybe something to do with risk-taking.

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be him? To make a tour of aircraft hangars across the world and have your material just slay, and then to emcee an awards show and just be you – the same old you – and have your material be recieved so unenthusiastically? I mean, the scale of that? Lesson learned about the importance of self-selecting audiences, Eddie Izzard. Thank you, and I still think you’re awesome.

Just remembered that the people in my dream this morning were all speaking Portuguese, so I only understood a little of what was going on. I was able to tentatively decipher that someone was telling the story of a monkey in a red dress.

Brain, thank you for creating (and then remembering!) all that. Good show! It’s true that sometimes I wish I could trade you in for a different model, but this morning I want to take it all back. Let’s be BFFs, okay? You’re awesome. I think I just need to be nicer to you, is all.

that I’m working on this other new show while I’m getting Missing ready to tour. But my productivity on this new project has been CRAP as long as I’ve been within twenty feet of the Internet. I have to get over the guilt of leaving the house to enjoy myself on a daily basis, because that’s actually my most fruitful time, in terms of this newer new show.

The Internet kills my daydreaming capacity.

Today I met with my director/collaborator. As of yesterday morning I had nothing new to show him, so I gave myself a far-away errand to run, hoping that I might daydream while driving. It worked! Totally unsafe! But artsy!

Of course, as soon as I got home, I wrote none of it down. I was right back on Facebook within ten minutes. Total addict behavior.

So I put myself in the bath and mindlessly blew bubbles for the next hour, and when I got out I was finally able to write stuff down. Twenty minutes of solid new material! Hey!

Internet, you’re my favorite, and I hate you.

Put in a request to rent CounterPULSE the night of Saturday July 10th, to put show on its feet for a specially invited audience, which probably includes you.

There will be many new things, the most exciting of which for you will probably be the new music.

Right now I’m busying myself with prototyping new set pieces; I need a free-standing clothesline which does all sorts of surprising things that normal clotheslines don’t actually do. A few weeks ago I put out the e-mail feelers for welders/makers/tinkerers who might like to design such a thing for me, but I got no bites! Maybe it was the long and intimidating list:

• I need it to function as a clothesline – it will be supporting long pieces of cloth. (I’m envisioning something evocative of this but if you have a design concept that would work better, I’m interested in hearing it.)

• I need it to be free-standing. I’ll be performing in a variety of venues, and I can’t rely on being able to use any wall space or ceiling support.

• I need it to be something I can take on an airplane. If I could fit it in a large suitcase, I would be ecstatic.

• If it disassembles, I’ll need it to be something I can assemble or disassemble in five minutes or less – some of my gigs are fringe festivals, which don’t allow me much set-up or strike time.

• I would like it to rotate.

• I would like for the sheets to stay vertical – not fly up and away – while the apparatus rotates.

• I would like to re-create the floating feeling that being suspended in a sling allowed me. To that end, I would love the apparatus to be able to support my weight while I rotate it.

• I would also like to be partially visible as I’m supported by and rotating the apparatus. If you’re interested, I have a video reference for the effect I’m looking for here.

So anyway, after getting no bites, I went down to the office supply store and the hardware store and got myself some prototyping supplies. I’ll futz around with them a bit, and then I’ll try round two of soliciting welders/makers/tinkerers, in which I simply ask “CAN YOU PLEASE SHOVE THIS THING INTO THAT THING AND MAKE IT STABLE?”

We’ll see how it goes.

Ever since discovering my atheism, I’ve been on a “THIS IS ALL I GET SO I’D BETTER NOT MISS ANYTHING!” kick. Clearly, “MUST NOT DIE WITHOUT EXPERIENCING MY ARMPIT HAIR” is a logical extension of the axiom.

This is how you get all those scary hairy atheist feminists. Just in case you were wondering.

Oddly enough, the urgent contemplation of my mortality has not motivated me to decrease my consumption of crappy reality-based media programs. Funny that.

I’m endeavoring to move my internet home-base to this blog. Things may be wonky for a bit, as I try to get everything working.

Lots of performer’s anxiety dreams lately. This morning I dreamed I was auditioning for America’s Got Talent. The stage was a dirty carpet, my music wouldn’t play, and my folding chair turned into a rubber band half-way through the routine.

Later, waiting for my friends to finish their auditions, I transformed an old lounge chair into a fetching cocktail ensemble. Simon Cowell complimented the look.

Written by Malachai, age 5, and illustrated by his brother Ethan, age 29.

Jacques filmed this one. I was too busy watching the actual whales to film stuff.