Talking to Chairs.

Fabulous Friday, Fellow Fertility-Challenged!

I have slight suspicions that what I'm about to say may offend people, but since on the weekend the blogosphere seems like a carnival that everyone's abandoned and I am more than likely talking to myself, I'll say it anyways.

Did anyone watch the Republican National Convention last night?  The Clint Eastwood part, specifically?

What was that?

Okay so I've already admitted that I'm an evil bleeding-heart liberal (if you're a conservative bloggy friend I dig you, and respect you, and I will make you dig me - come put your head to my breasts) so it's at times a smidge uncomfortable for me to watch.  I also must admit that long before last night, I've seen what I perceived to be old white men having arguments with a completely hallucinated version of President Obama - it aint new.

But I saw Clint and got excited about him talking.

I like it, on either side, when people get up and address all Americans, merrily refrain from accusing me of being un-American because I'm not exactly like them, and just state what the damn platform is. Admittedly watching some of the other speeches I locked my doors in fear that a large group of white men from parts of the country I've only visited by-way-of-layover would come storming up my driveway with torches and drag me into the streets for a hangin'.

So when good ole Clint got up on stage (who I find to be a lovely & talented director) I thought 'well looky that - a reasonable old school republican who will explain it to me in a way that I can understand without immediately describing me as a 'them' that must be stopped'.

You understand I don't want to take your gun away from you - don't you Clint?  And I understand that you're probably not going to hold me under baptismal water in a church somewhere until I accept your religion or my inevitable drowning.  We have an understanding, you and me.

For the first two minutes.  Then you had a hallucinatory conversation with a chair.

For those of you who missed it - he pretended an empty chair was President Obama, and that the invisible President was telling him and Mr. Romney to go fuck themselves. To watch, click here.

I've also already admitted that I dig weird.  I DIG WEIRD.  I do think that he was, even with this, the least offensive speaker in regards to people who disagree with him, and that labeling this whole chair thing  a super big deal is blowing it a bit out of proportion (and it's actually kind of funny).  I SO wanted to get it because it was as though someone had hurled my Grandpa up on stage two minutes after he learned he was going to give a speech - which was sad and uncomfortable.

But it was that all-too-rare form of weird that leaves, even Stork, Queen of Weird, just going... "What... was that?"

I am an improviser.

If you were to invite me to speak at your wedding, I would write down a couple of bullet points that I want to make sure to get to, but I'd still go into it thinking "nah, I'll just wing it".

I am way better at improvising words then I am at planning.  Same thing goes for my style of writing.

Don't get me wrong - occasionally I think things out.  A lot.  And some of my favorite writers/comedians are the ones that really think things through.  They're beautifully written, sometimes serious, and they do an excellent well-thought out job of making you feel like you're IN the place/time/situation they're talking about.

With my personality, often when times/situations call for that sort of thing out of me, it's forced and a little dishonest and after many years o' writing I've noticed that the things people seem to respond to the most are the stuff I just kind of crap out.

Writing, to me, is like taking a poo in a public bathroom.  If you worry about the kind of splash you're going to make or whether people are going to be offended by what kind of stink you leave, you're not going to get any real relief.  (And in the end, it all just tends to be crap, anyways, so might as well save yourself some constipation).

I'm a little choosier when it comes to speaking-speaking, but in my opinion the best, funniest things come out when people are a little out of their head.

For example - Billy Eichner.  Yes, yes, I have a sick and annoying love for him and nothing that man has ever said didn't make me laugh, but he's the most recent example of something someone said that didn't really make sense and therefor made me pee.

He was talking about how he detests Rachael Ray, and just made a face and said "that woman is like a demon... trapped inside a goat!"

I die.  Makes no sense whatsoever, and yet somehow it makes perfect sense and I die.  I laugh now just thinking about it.

My roundabout point:  I'm a devout improviser and I totally think improvisation works for funny.  But mayhaps when it comes to things like political speeches people should find a happy medium between robotically reading off a teleprompter with no feeling and just fucking winging it.

I think with some degree of thought-out, on both sides, they would further give themselves a chance of not demonizing the other group or the undecided, and with a little wiggle room for some improv there'd be space for some passion to rile up the already devout.

I'm just sayin'.... Maybe that way we could avoid borderline disrespectful conversations with chairs and exploiting the bewildered while still allowing both sides to see that you're passionate.

Sidenote:  Do you think when Mr. Romney said "Mr. Chairman", he was in fact talking to the invisible man in a chair?  Just a thought.

As my friend said on his Facebook page, "Not since Morty Guffman has an empty chair had so many eyes on it".

Send me Secrets!  We may be on a Secrets hiatus for a week should I not get a couple more - and as previously promised, I shall punish you by filling up your newsfeed with sad Sarah McLachlan's animals.