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Archive | chickens

Seasons of chickenhood

Earlier tonight I saw my age written down somewhere and thought, “I’m sure as hell no spring chicken,” because that’s how I talk to myself and then I started wondering why you never tell anyone they’re a spring chicken when they are in fact a spring chicken? You’re never like, “You’re just a spring chicken!” Instead you tell them they’re whippersnappers or young’uns or babies or annoying ambitious assholes who are too young to be acting so entitled. You know? And yet a whole season or more of spring chickenhood will pass by and the person will only discover that they never appreciated their state of young chickenhood until it’s too late, and they are no longer ripe and are instead mature and long in the beak, their feathers thinning and their comb flopping over and their chicken feet looking worse for the wear and no longer lucky. “Don’t tell Gladys, but she’s no longer laying eggs, she’s just sitting on rolled up socks,” they’ll cluck to eachother in the henhouse when your name is Gladys and you sit on socks waiting for them to hatch. Personally I never count my socks, but that’s because I put them all in one basket.

Anyway, just wanted to share some late night thoughts about chickens.

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I'd make a shitty chicken

A wise chicken doesn’t cackle until she lays an egg or something, but that’s not my style and plus if I were a chicken I’d much rather be the kind that plays piano. Probably something light, like Debussy. I know what you’re thinking: Do I take tips? Yes I do. I refer you to the tip jar on the side of my baby grand. They wanted to get me a concert grand since I’m performing at a pretty big concert hall however I explained that I wasn’t the biggest chicken (I actually said I wasn’t the biggest “cock on the walk” and we all had a good laugh at that) and therefore a concert grand would be using a hatchet to remove a fly from my friend’s beak.

I mean, I want the main thing you notice on that stage to be me and my amazing plumage first, then my romantic (and I mean that in the Platonic sense of the word) and moving playing, and then the light show and then you are free to notice the piano. And the tip jar. Please notice that. But I mean, I don’t want to be upstaged by my instrument.

But back to the tip jar. If you aren’t able to ascend the steps at Carnegie Hall (yes, that’s where I’m performing the works of Debussy) then we’re sending a collection plate out into the crowd.

What’s that? There aren’t any steps? I simply flap my wings and fly over the orchestra pit to get to the stage but I don’t really know how it would work for you. And I know what you’re thinking again: You’re wondering why I’m flying over the orchestra pit instead of entering the stage from backstage where I’ll be nibbling on various vittles kept warm on chafing dishes, as per my contract rider? Look, I’m a pretty down the earth chicken and I find that when I take the stage from the audience it really starts things off on the right foot. It’s my way of saying that I don’t OWN the music. I’m merely a vessel through which it speaks/lives/breathes.

Am I getting too lofty? I do that sometimes. In the coop where I periodically pass the time I’m kind of known as an intellectual. Some think I’m snobby but I’m really not. I just want to know what came before me, and what came after me, and how I fit in.

I read a lot of Nietzsche. I went through an Orwell phase but it hit a little close to home, as you can probably imagine.

1984. It was the year of my birth. Why, what did you think I was referring to?

Anyway, I have to go practice on my Casio keyboard which I keep in my mobile dressing room. A lot of people wonder how I practice and that’s how.

Oh and P.S. it looks as if I’ll be interviewing a certain Michael Showalter in a video/vlog soon. Happy Valentine’s Day!

NOTE: If you want to hear the old radio interviews I did with Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black go to my seldom-updated Myspace page and scroll down on the right side, after the videos, and there is a gray box with the interviews.

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