I participated in 60 sec max at the Annex Theater last Friday. It was extremely overwhelming because they had 42 performers and a sold out house. The performers crowded the stage while we were called one by one for our 60 seconds of glory. From sock puppet Shakespeare to modern dance it’s really hard to botch 60 seconds. In fact, even the not-so-hot acts were executed just fine because they were only one minute…which is like canceling a show at the height of its popularity (i.e. Arrested Development), better to quit while you’re ahead.

I had had this whole interpretive dance idea that I was going to do, complete with a little cassette player that I was going to shove down my shirt so that music emanated from my bosom while I danced. I had great success with asking the audience for a suggestion of a body part and an emotion during Thalia, and I was going to do this with the 60 sec max crowd. In hindsight I’m very very glad I didn’t. Some of the biggest names in modern dance were at the show and I immediately felt competitive. While they were frolicking around in their striped tights and acrobatics I would have been doing an interpretive dance to Suspicious Navel…and flunking. The cosmos must have known this because after attending (and back up singing) for Mark’s one man show at The Jewel Box Theater I found this on my car:

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I really thought for a second that someone and bestowed a million dollar bill under my windshield wiper before realizing that a) million dollar bills probably don’t exist and b) the first line on the bill was :”The million dollar question: Will you go to Heaven?” I immediately decided that this was what I was going to present for my 60 seconds.

I was shaking when I approached the stage (following the 1 minute performance by my fabulous friend Rachel), and I turned to the audience and said, “I was totally going to do something different tonight but then I found this on my car…” I pulled out the fake bill, pressed the tape recorder nestled in my bosom, and read the terrible, offensive, religious propaganda to the sweet sounds of Spoon Harps and Bellowphones. And believe me it was bad: “Have you looked with lust? God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer-at-heart.” The audience listened in breathless silence as I condemned them and I actually thought, ‘I hope they don’t think I actually BELIEVE in any of this mean bible talk.’ The lights came down as I yelled, “Read your Bible daily and obey it!” The timing was perfect and the audience rewarded me with thunderous applause.