Andrew J. Lederer

Boy, last night in Kingston was so much fun. I sat down in front of the crowd and brought them to me -- slowly, but effectively.

It was kind of like reeling in a fish -- I'd tighten the line, then the fish would fight back and I'd have to loosen it again, then I'd regain dominance and so on until, finally, I pulled from the ocean a beautiful proud specimen -- something worthy of admiring, which I had conquered.

A number of people thanked me on the way out and today I got an e-mail from someone telling me how much they loved the show and Subs wrote something nice about me here on Chortle. That's how it's been going for me since I got to London from Edinburgh.

Or perhaps I should say that's how it had been going. 'cause tonight wasn't so good. There were some exculpatory factors but the truth is, I just didn't hold them.

A number of segments took off but rather than being satisfying in and of themselves, they seemed merely to whet the audience's appetite for a continuation of those moments and, sadly, this was not in my game plan. The question is, do I even have it in my bag of tricks? Or have I become such a creature of "the moment" that when the moment is less than momentous I have nothing on which I can rely?

I think the truth is that I do have things in my kit bag (packed up with all my troubles) that would serve me well but it's been so long since I've used them regularly that I don't easily remember them when I need to. That is, it's just as hard (or harder) for me to remember seldom-used "material" as it is to generate things from scratch.

I've been fighting to reclaim preparedness lately (see Edinburgh post about "Political Animal" ) and even had my thrice-effective rejected "Onion" headlines in my pocket but -- you see? -- I didn't even remember that.

Interestingly, when I stumbled across an interesting story in the audience -- a woman who met her husband -- who was present -- when she was enticingly wearing a rubber dress in a show in which she once toured with Pete Townsend -- there was a demand that -- rather than asking about her -- I talk about my life. This made me decide to tell them the opening segment of my show from Edinburgh this summer -- the first time I'd done any of it since the Fringe.

At first, there was some murmuring in the back of the room as the intensely non-stand-up nature of the piece made me seem incomprehensible and boring. But by the time I got into the description of my crack-addict friend driving me cross-country after a multi-hour crack binge, you could hear a pin drop and all (or most) were on the edge of their seats, waiting to learn out what happened next.

But now my time was up. And it just ended weird.

Oh, well. At least, I now have more indications that the show I fought so hard to create this summer really does work. Be nice if I could get another chance to do the whole thing.

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