{"id":1145,"date":"2018-10-22T09:00:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2018-10-22T09:00:11","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T13:00:11","slug":"open-mike-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1145","title":{"rendered":"Open Mike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"open-mike-63\"<\/a>\u00a0Mike stood on stage in the spotlight\u2026..terrified. But, something about it seemed to be working for him.\u00a0 They probably found his trembling voice charming as he spoke sincerely about his life\u2026his completely bizarre, absolutely strange, totally unlikely life\u2026and the cynical way it came across.\u00a0 The crowd laughed at the tragic death of his wife in a mundane laundry incident.\u00a0 They howled at how the wind blew her ashes into everybody\u2019s mouth at the funeral.\u00a0\u00a0 And the five-day-old lasagna in a broken fridge, causing a vivid conversation with Lucifer, left them in stitches.\u00a0 Every word he spoke, every glib anecdote, felt like a hole being ripped open in his soul, allowing his demons to spill out \u2013 only to be consumed and obliterated in the laughter of the audience\u2026and when it was over\u2026Mike stood open and bloody and spent and\u2026..completely relieved.\u00a0 It was better than therapy, better than liquor or sex or CHOCOLATE.\u00a0 And he walked off stage to a standing ovation feeling light as a feather.<\/p>\n

***This post is an illustration from our \u2018Body-Oddies\u2019 book project and is available as an original art\u00a0print at the Conventions and Book Fests we attend.\u00a0 The book is not scheduled for publication until 2019.\u00a0 You can, however, find our 3 current books at www.sallemander.com or search \u2018EEW Books\u2019 at Etsy.com and Amazon.com.\u00a0 The holidays are coming.\u00a0 They make a great gift.\u00a0 -Marsha\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Mike stood on stage in the spotlight\u2026..terrified. But, something about it seemed to be working for him.\u00a0 They probably found his trembling voice charming as he spoke sincerely about his life\u2026his completely bizarre, absolutely strange, totally unlikely life\u2026and the cynical way it came across.\u00a0 The crowd laughed at the tragic death of his wife in … Continue reading Open Mike<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[118,150],"tags":[250,210,105,128,248,38,176,99,41,10,19,96,102,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1155,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}