{"id":1408,"date":"2019-12-30T09:01:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T14:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2019-12-30T09:01:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T14:01:21","slug":"open-mike-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1408","title":{"rendered":"Open Mike"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Mike stood on stage in the spotlight…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, leading to 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, Mike 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

***We’ve posted this one before.\u00a0 It’s one of our favorites (well, the writing is good, the bloody mess that John, the illustrator did still makes me queasy), and is an excellent final post with which to end the year 2019.\u00a0 It was a great year for us at EEW Books.\u00a0 We got to do a lot of travelling, saw a lot of old friends and did more book shows than expected.\u00a0 We published our fourth book, “A Short Burst,” with our fifth book, “Body-Oddies,” close on it’s heels (to be published early in 2020).\u00a0 As always, find our stuff and buy it at www.sallemander.com or go to Etsy.com and search EEWbooks.\u00a0 \u00a0-Marsha<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike stood on stage in the spotlight…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":[210,105,248,38,99,96,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408"}],"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=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}