Have I No Shame?

Back in the day, I used to be a regular attendee at a monthly event called No Shame Theater. No Shame participants get five minutes on stage to do whatever the hell they want, shame-free. And they do. And I did. As you can imagine, you end up sitting through some total crap and some mediocre garbage, but in return you get to see some most likely never to be repeated bits of true badassery. I like to think I produced some of all three at various points.

Lately, my homie Brandon's been sending out Facebook invites to come check out the No Shame madness once again. So this last time around, I thought I'd drop in, check it out, see what the current crop of no shame-having motherfuckers have to offer. I had nothing prepared, so I would just be there as an audience member. It was a good plan on my part, if I do say so myself.

Then I went and got my post-vasectomy sperm count done, and the whole experience was just too weird not to share with a room full of mostly strangers. Honestly, the bits I find the funniest are the spontaneous and unexpected bursts of applause. Enjoy.


No Shame 0310 - Travis Holmes from Naughty Troll on Vimeo.

How To Ruin A Perfectly Good Blog Post Before Typing A Single Word

My wife has been talking about chickens for I don’t even remember how long. And I don’t mean “Damn, I could sure go for some of that Top Notch fried chicken action about now.” No, I’m talking more like “Oh dear sweet husband, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have our very own chickens bok-bok-bokking about our back yard? Don’t you want to build me a chicken coop in which our chickens may live? What should our chicken coop look like? What kind of chickens should we get? Don’t you love the idea of a fridge full of freshly laid eggs? Aren’t chickens the best? Can we get them this weekend? Do you like this chicken coop design? What about this one? Yes, I’ll have the chicken enchiladas with verde sauce, please.”

Actually, that last one was just her order at Chuy’s a while back.

I don’t mean to make my wife sound like she was nagging me about it, except, reading that first paragraph up there, it seems like I sorta did. Sorry babe. I mean yeah, there was a lot of chicken chatter going on around our place (oooo baby, speak hen to me), but that was just a result of her excitement. I did offer up one design for a chicken coop, but in my zeal to provide privacy for up to four hens, it kind of ended up looking like a swastika. Ultimately, I left all the research and design up to her, as I simply was not as into it as she was. This was her project, but I would be available for any grunt work that needed doing.

Nice typo, loser

Finally this past weekend, we commenced with coop construction. I had not exactly been looking forward to it, but there really was no reason to put it off any longer. Things got off to a fantastic start. The day brought us gorgeous working weather, and before too long, we had the walls of the henhouse constructed. Now chickens are not what you would call high-needs creatures when it comes to their habitat. They need an outdoor area, an indoor area, a roost, a place to lay eggs, and protection from predators. They don’t necessarily need every corner to fit together perfectly or for every angle to be a perfect 90.0 degrees. And it’s a good thing too since most of my education in the art of construction occurred in a theatrical scene shop where it’s common to hear exchanges such as:

“These ends aren’t square at all.”
“That’s cool, that part doesn’t face the audience.”

Or

“This board’s a little weak, should we reenforce it?”
“Nah, the only person that stands on it is that anorexic chick in the first act.”

So while my work wasn’t 100% perfect, I still strove to do a halfway decent job. I was enjoying the work of bringing wood and hardware together to create a recognizable and functional form. Plus, you know, power tools. Fuckin’ A. 
 
I’m going to write about this, I thought. How I wasn’t all that excited to build this damn coop, but then I got started and I began enjoying myself and getting into the satisfaction of a job done well or at least mostly pretty much okay and what a great day it was and how nice the boys played together while I worked and look how badass I am and here’s a picture of me with a circular saw. It’s gonna be positive and wonderful and I bet five whole people will read it.

All this wonderfulness? It did not last. 

This is where we get to the part about blog post ruination, because you see, the key to ruining a post like this lies in your ability to ruin your day. Somewhere in the afternoon, stuff started going wrong. We figured out that, surprise surprise, we didn’t have everything we needed and that a trip to Home Depot was inevitable. The boys stopped playing so nicely. Frustrations mounted. Alone, these things are not enough to ruin your day. In order to do that, you have to respond to them by losing your patience in the grass. You have to toss your sense of humor over the fence into the neighbor's yard like a toy dumptruck. You have to take every little setback far too seriously so you can get yourself good and pissed off. You have to yell at your kids. You have to let your entire mood go sour, and then you have to carry that shit with you on into the evening. That’s how you do it.

Guess I won’t be writing that happy chicken coop post after all, I thought.

All is not lost, however. The coop stands in the yard unfinished, not due to abandonment but simply because we ran out of weekend. We got as far as painting it with a color that I like to call taco stand yellow. We’ll finish the coop soon and we’ll name it something clever like the Henhouse de la Holmes or the Coop de Ville or Jurassic BOK! We’ll stand back and admire our work and hope that it’s up to the task. We will acquire our hens and bring them home to live in the lovely new home that we’ve built for them, and they will show us their gratitude by bokking out fresh eggs for us.

And it will all be okay.

Slap-happy

A coffee shop. Linda and Winston sit alone at a table, each of them with their drinks in front of them. They sit quietly, looking into one another’s eyes. All around them, the rest of the shop bustles with the usual coffee shop activity. 

After staring at each other and saying nothing for a long moment, Linda slowly lifts her hand, draws back, then slaps Winston across the face. Her hand makes contact with his cheek and follows all the way through its arc, causing his head to snap sharply to the side in response. They remain frozen in this finished position for a moment. Then, as if they are both controlled by the same puppetry mechanism, they move as one back into their original positions and sit quietly once again, staring into each other’s eyes.
 
 The other coffee shop patrons take little notice of this event. The only response of any kind comes from a man in glasses and a hooded sweatshirt who is sitting nearby, working away at his laptop with headphones in his ears. He peers over his glasses at them for just a moment, then takes a quick break from his work to tweet “Sitting in a coffeeshop, and this chick just totally smacked a dude. Nobody seemed to notice. Kinda hot.” His tweets appear overhead.
 
Linda and Winston are again staring each other in the face. Winston slowly lifts his hand from the table and draws it back. He holds it there for a moment. Then, as if it’s on a spring release, his arm swings his hand around, slapping Linda in the cheek, knocking her head to the side. They freeze in this finished position for a moment.
 
The man sitting nearby pulls his headphones off and looks around to see if anyone else saw what just happened, but he appears to have been the only one to notice. He tweets, “Whoa! Dude just smacked her back! HARD! And nobody esle noticed!” 
 
As they did before, Linda and Winston slowly return to their starting position, moving as one. They each take a sip of their drink.

Linda lifts her hand once again. The man sitting nearby is now watching them intently. Winston reaches across the table and gently brings Linda’s raised hand back down to the table, shaking his head at her. She’s confused for a moment, then realizes, and lifts her other hand. Winston resumes his position. 

Linda slaps him with the same fluid motions as before, once again knocking his head to the side. 

Again, they freeze for a moment in their post-slap positions, and they once again slip together back into their starting positions.
 
The nearby man tweets “And she slapped him again. Total PDSMA: Public Display of Sado-Masochistic Affection #pdsma”
 
Then he tweets, “My ex slapped me like that once. Right before the best sex we ever had. Which was right before we broke up.”
 
Then he tweets, “I can still feel the sting of her palm striking my cheek. Except not really since I cant remember which side it was.”
 
Then he tweets, “Now that I think about it, she might have just punched me. Can’t quite remember. God, I wonder what she’s doing right now.”
 
He rests his face in his hands like he’s going to cry.
 
Winston raises his hand, the opposite one from what he used before, and readies to slap Linda again. Just as he’s about to swing, Tyler approaches their table. Winston drops his hand quickly.

TYLER

Hey guys!

WINSTON

Oh hey!

TYLER

What’s up?

WINSTON

Not much.

LINDA

Nothing at all. 

WINSTON

Not a damn thing.

LINDA

Just hanging out. Coffee.

WINSTON

Coffee!

TYLER

Coffee. Right.

LINDA

You should get some.

TYLER

I did.

LINDA

Oh cool.

Tyler notices something on Winston’s face. At some point in the next few lines, he grabs his face to look at it closer.

TYLER

What’s that--?

WINSTON

What?

TYLER

On your face.

WINSTON

Nothing. Stop it.

TYLER

Is that a rash?

WINSTON

Stop it!

TYLER

What is that?

WINSTON

It’s nothing.

LINDA

Tyler--

TYLER

It looks like...

He realizes what it is, realizes what is going on, then grabs Linda’s face and examines it. He now has both of their heads in his hands. He looks back and forth at each of them in shock. 

TYLER

I can’t believe this.

WINSTON

Tyler--

TYLER

Both of you?

LINDA

Tyler--

TYLER

How could you?

WINSTON

It’s not like that.

TYLER

Oh no? The two of you aren’t here? With handprints on your faces?

The man nearby has been watching. He tweets, “I am witness to a bizarre love triangle.”

WINSTON

We were just--

TYLER

Just...?

LINDA

Sweetie, don’t be mad.

TYLER

Wouldn’t you be? 

LINDA

Well, sure, but--

WINSTON

We should’ve told you.

LINDA

Yes.

WINSTON

We were just scared.

LINDA

We didn’t know how you’d react.

TYLER

So you kept it secret.

LINDA

We didn’t mean to, really

WINSTON

We just came here for coffee. This--

LINDA

Just sorta happened. 

TYLER

I’m sorry, this is too much.

He turns to go.

LINDA

Tyler, don’t.

WINSTON

Yeah, stay.

LINDA

Would you? We could...

TYLER

All three of us?

LINDA

Sure. Right?

WINSTON

Yes! Totally!

He hesitates, then sits with them. The man nearby is watching intently. He is heavily invested in the outcome. Tyler slowly raises a hand, but then hesitates, looking back and forth from Linda to Winston.

TYLER

I don’t know which--

WINSTON

I don’t think there’s an established protocol.

Tyler faces Winston and slaps him. They all laugh happily. The man sitting nearby is very touched.

TYLER

So now whose?

WINSTON

Take another.

TYLER

Another?

LINDA

Sure.

Tyler turns and slaps Linda. They laugh again.

LINDA

Okay, my turn.

Linda slaps Tyler. Again, they all laugh, very happy. The man nearby chokes up. He starts to tweet, “I just witnessed the most incredible” then deletes it. He tries several more times to compose a tweet, but deletes each one. 

“I just watched love manifest”

“I’m so choked up, I can’t”

“You would not believe what I just”

“My faith in love was just resto”

Finally he gives up on his tweeting and slams his computer shut. He gathers up his things, and with tears in his eyes, approaches the slap-happy trio.

NEARBY MAN

I just wanted....

He breaks into full-fledged crying and flees the scene. They all watch him go.

Blackout, except for the tweet screen, upon which appears, “I just saw something beautiful.”

SCENE