Not bad for halfway through my first cup of coffee this morning… this is a “how's it sound?” track as a warm-up to a little concert I'm giving at Teacher Appreciation Day this Wednesday. It helps me a lot to hear a recording of an in-progress song: completely revolutionized my rendition of “Fields of Gold,” though that's not what this song is.

Motormouth fans will be excited to learn that this is my first “New Music” post to feature Mr. Koa (my new tenor uke) as well as my alter-ego, Auntie Haole Badass. Enjoy!

And I know this because a jury of people 10+ years younger than I, with whom I was in no way personally acquainted, laughed their asses off at the stand-up comedy routine I performed at Bishop's Lounge last night. Twelve hours later and I'm still buzzing from the high of it all.

I'm particularly happy because boy oh boy did they set me up to fail. I got there late so I was #11 on the list. Number 10 was a guy who was obviously a crowd favorite, who started his set with the announcement that this would be his last night at Bishop's because he was moving to NYC, and then he went on to do a hilarious set that included jokes about how his grandma buys his clothes and how everyone in the room had measured their own penis at one time or another. Trust me, it was funny.

Then the M.C. took the mic and introduced me with, “I think this is this person's first time here, and I don't know anything about her, so don't feel like you have to react, just do what you'd normally do, it's cool. Please welcome Lynn B. Johnson.” Thanks dude. No blowies for you.

So I changed my opening line to “I'm Lynn B. Johnson and I have never measured my penis, that last guy is full of shit.” And the whole crowd laughed. Then I talked some more and they kept laughing. I couldn't even tell you about 25% of what I said, it just flowed from my hastily scribbled set-list outline. I talked about my Michelle Obama arms (yeah, OK, you got me, I'm not black), about childbirth, about Baby Safe Havens, about diaper changes, about allergies and married sex and snoring. Some girls in the front row had been eating pork paninis, and the M.C. had made much of this, so I referred to Monstro's tool as a pork panini and I thought those girls were going to fall down laughing. My final joke is a thinker, so people were laughing hard and then harder as I left the stage and went back to my corner in the back of the room.

A young woman at the bar got my attention and we went to the lounge area, where she told me that a guy she works with puts together comedy nights in Holyoke and she had to get him in touch with me because I'm “fucking hilarious.” It was about then that my friend Dana showed up (“Lynn, I was on the sidewalk three stories down and heard people laughing and clapping for whom I can only assume was you.”), and after the comedy was over and we were outside on the balcony, she was there to witness all the other comedians coming up to me and saying wow, how great I was, and how they hoped I'd come back next week, awesome set.

I feel like Cinderella. Well, Cinderella with a filthy mouth and no pumpkin.

When 9/11 happened, I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains with no TV. I read the news but didn't see it. While out the next night for Shannon's birthday at Original Joe's, I sat with my back to the news. Even now, I can honestly say I've seen a mere handful of video captures from that horrible day.

And now, today, Britain's Prince William married Catherine Middleton and she was so beautiful and his uniform was Irish and Westminster Abbey, hard to find a place holier, and the entire event choreographed to high pomp and… eyepiercingly lovely and right, a London fairytale.

And MFM's a total anglophile and would have loved to have watched it with me, and she started watching at 6:00, but I didn't set my alarm and I didn't end up coming downstairs until the young marrieds were happily-ever-after-ing to Buckingham Palace in the convertible coach.

And yeah, of course I DVRd it on the TV in the family room and maybe we'll watch it tomorrow, or this weekend, but I feel guilty. I never manned up to watch any 9/11 videos, the most violent images to be filmed on U.S. soil. What's my worthiness factor for commemorating the happiest and fanciest day of this new millennium?

(Linking my thoughts of the Royal Wedding with NYC mass murder. These connections will be a real boon to the stand-up I'm writing.)

I'd never clicked “slideshow” before, but then TA said she'd just done it and enjoyed it, so I clicked to the Lex in the Snow photo and right above the comments line where it says Posted to: you click the (View as slideshow) link. Some of the connections are funny-creepy but all the photos are safe for work yes, I promise and I have a BA in photojournalism so they mostly don't suck, and it goes pretty quick if you set it for two seconds a picture, and that's all I have to say about that.

This motormouth blog is Not Safe For Work (NSFW): not because of photos or movies or whatever the Internet has nowadays, but for rather the words I use to convey my master's-in-fine-arts-in-creative-writing thoughts. You can be assured that I am well-trained and mostly know what I'm doing when I sit before a keyboard (though sometimes when I don't, it's fun to see what happens, like the post directly below this, which uses a dirty word for a different context that has actually to pertain to the Free Market), and you'll probably find that 60-percent of the time you'll enjoy me here, mostly.

So if you can't hack it, go here, directly to one of my top-three favorite Web sites that IS ALWAYS safe for work, unless your job has some sort of cute sanction at play (at work).

Thanks and love, (hi Katherine!)

MM

If you are a company and your company is on Facebook and you don't let people send you messages –let alone write on your wall– then you are a coward and don't deserve to participate in the market. Period. Because for the market to work in a way that everyone achieves fulfillment, each leader must lead at least as strongly as someone who puts a face to it, someone who is willing to double-team information (you know what I mean by double-team. read: not porny).

Capitalism works better when the market can respond in not merely singluar but also via binary and quadindary* and dodechahedronary (hi Brandon🙂 channels, etc. Facebook is the same way; the only way to really work to maximumly satiate the world it is to push it to its limits. It's certainly the new SEO.

(These many-within-one channel bundle might also have something to do with why so many people die from addiction to World of Warcraft, but that's for another time, because Biggest Loser has been DVRing for the past hour and I can probably fast forward through all the ads and the boring drama stuff and get to how the person who gets kicked out looks today.)

* Funny, spell check wants to change this to quandry

Things around Casa de Motormouth are settling down to bearable chaos. Still getting up w/ MFM in the night but last night I was actually able to return to sleep: victory! The home-care agency has been very helpful and it's been great to rely on them 10 hours/week to watch out for mom while also doing her laundry / cleaning. Such a blessing.

The children are getting a little wild and I'm chalking that up to too much TV — really, if winter would ever end, I would be thrilled to frickin' death. Even when it's sunny the wind bites right through you.

I applied for a part-time job a few weeks ago and though I haven't heard about an interview yet, I have insider information that states it takes a long time for them to get to the interview process, so in the meanwhile I'm chugging away on client work and keeping the house clean and the family fed and the cats, well, cats.

I'm nearly done with our 2010 taxes and that's a huge load off my mind. Not quite ready to hit the submit button, but I'll get there soon.

And, tonight, a friend is coming in to MFM-sit and I'm going out to a lovely salon to get my hair cut for the first time since I had my portrait taken in December. Can't wait to feel like a woman again.

NOTE: This is the corrected-first-draft of what happened yesterday after church, when Monstro and Lex stayed behind for Lex's music-and-activities program, and I drove to Southampton to the Big Y supermarket. I'm going to send the final draft to the presiding judge.

MFM has Parkinson's disease. She uses a four-wheeled “rollater” walker. Yesterday after we'd all been to church, I decided to run to the store and asked Mom (MFM) if she'd like to come with me and BK (her two-year-old grandson).

“I might as well go with you,” MFM said. “That way, you can use the placard.”

“The Placard” is her blue handicapped-parking placard. It hangs from the rear-view mirror. It expires on June 2011 and was issued in California, though legal precedent has been established to support validity in all 50 states.

We parked in front in a blue spot so the van was immediately at the crosswalk. MFM and BK (carseated, middle row) stayed in the vehicle. I raced through Big Y in like 20 minutes because I knew already what I was going to buy cheap and freeze this week.

When I returned to the van and remotely popped the tailgate, MFM turned around from her front-row passenger seat and said, “The placard failed us.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a police officer came by,” she said.

“Did he give us a ticket?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“A hundred bucks?” I asked.

“Yup,” she said.

Now, her placard isn't expired. She doesn't drive (never has in MA) so 999 times out of 1,000, she's in one of our cars. We've used this system for two years and nobody's ever had a problem with it or us or whatever.

If handicapped placards exist to keep safe those with challenged mobility, then doesn't it make sense to keep these frailer members of society front-and-center, rather than tucked away between two other cars, where it's easier for the malfeasants to take advantage of the vulnerable?

Incidentally, I am furious that a police officer felt compelled to pester and UPSET a woman with obvious medical difficulties, a woman who's only been home from two months of hospital/rehab hospital/skilled-nursing rehab for a WEEK, and is facing enough re-integration anxiety as it is, who's just sitting with her two-year-old grandson (“one of the only things” she says she can do to “contribute to the family”), while her primary-care, 24/7, in-residence daughter runs her ass off through a grocery store after church in New England, in order to feed her family over the next week, all the while praying that everyone in the car will be all right in her 20-minute absence.

Judge, please see reason and revoke this ticket; I don't have an extra hundred bucks for frivolity. If I did, I'd get a sitter and take a nap. Thank you for your clear reason and consideration.