Juliet lives like rednecks drive: mashing down the gas with the radio blasting and howling lusty swear words all over the open road. Her stories are full of love and rage, heartbreak and mayhem and sex and drugs and the kind of laughs that rattle the optic nerves. She’s far and away my most exciting new friend from the Moth, thrilling and kind and just a little dangerous — the kind of person who might throw your car keys into the river and then get you to laugh about it.

Having an enlarged heart is a dangerous medical condition: oversized hearts are tender and fragile and wear out easy. But an enlarged heart is also the biggest ball in the storyteller’s cannon. People with giant hearts fall in love with everything in the entire world and get their hearts broken every single time and brother, do they have some stories to tell.

Juliet’s heart is a massive flaming comet, flying all over the place and collecting all kinds of dirt and debris and you just can’t wait to hear where it’s been.

Here she is telling a story at The Moth a few months ago, on the theme of “Respect.”

I’m going to be appearing at a story show at her house in Philadelphia this weekend along with a couple other Moth regulars and a band called the Resin Ballz. It promises to be nothing short of awesome.

You can see a story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:

Jim O’Grady on “Respect”

And two of my stories here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band
Reverend Al Sharpton Hates Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

My friend Jim O’Grady is a Moth GrandSLAM contest winner — a great storyteller and a great guy. He’s been a reporter for the New York Times, and works for some mysterious think tank that he says is “physically located on Wall Street, but in no way associated with finance.”

The thing about these story shows is that they let anybody onstage, which gives the show its spirit and beauty. It keeps it from being the province of writers and actors and “who do you know” and lets the voice of the people come through. It also allows people to weep onstage and do some lame standup comedy from time to time. It’s always a crap shoot, and the surprises are the best part.

Jim’s reliably awesome — he has his nights when he kills, sure. But even when he’s not at his best, he’s still really really good, and whenever he gets picked to come to the stage the audience is in for a treat.

Here he is at a Moth StorySLAM this summer, on the theme of “Respect.”

You can see a story by The Moth’s Juliet Wayne here:

Juliet Respects ‘Mannequin Dan’

And two of my stories here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band
Reverend Al Sharpton Hates Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

Today is national fix-the-country day, and it’s gonna be a long one. No matter what side you’re on, you’re probably sick of the campaigning by now. As a little distraction from all the election-related news you’re sure to be drowning in, I thought I’d post a video of me telling the story of Royal Quiet Deluxe, (chicken band) at The Moth.

By way of comparison, you can read a written version of the story here.

The story links to one of our recordings, made with a primitive drum machine, delay/loop pedal, and my tireless prattling.

The following track, though, is a different sort of sound collage. We recorded it on the front porch of Tim’s parent’s place out in Botetourt County, VA, one hot summer evening. You can hear crickets and locusts in the background, something I think is pretty cool. I am playing the typewriter as percussion here, Tim is playing guitar, and the chickens are pecking and vocalizing. Tim mixed in a recording about Exotic Newcastle Disease in Southern California that was recorded over the telephone many years later, and presto — you have:

Exotic Newcastle Disease, by Royal Quiet Deluxe

There’s one more story in this saga. I’ve told it onstage at a Moth event recently, and I’m waiting to get ahold of the video so I can crunch it and post it here — and I’m working on the text version for those of you that want the full-on boxed-set experience. Suffice it to say that while the Internet has helped me find a whole new audience for this band that I never thought existed, I am 100 percent positive that the Reverend Al Sharpton still thinks the whole concept of Royal Quiet Deluxe is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.

You can see a story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:

Jim O’Grady on “Respect”

And a story by The Moth’s Juliet Wayne here:

Juliet Tells the Tale of ‘Mannequin Dan’

“Culture Shock” was the theme for last night’s Moth, and man, was I ever ready. I’d written, edited, rewritten, and I felt like I had a fairly solid story — unless someone else had also worked as a kangaroo shooter in Western Australia, I had the topic pretty well locked up. So yeah, I was psyched, that combination of anxiety and jittery and *pow* that usually makes something happen.

I was pretty tough to be around, I’d imagine, especially to a good friend who came out to support me. I couldn’t help myself, I was a rubber band ball made out of thrashing fire ants — couldn’t focus on sentences, couldn’t relax into his jokes or anything.

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I did my first storytelling show last Monday at a small venue called the Coraline Cafe, way out in Brooklyn. I’m not sure where, exactly, but at one point I was afraid that I was going to be asked for my passport. There were only five folks on the bill, and for once, one of those people was me! After a few months of writing, rewriting, and trying to get onstage at The Moth, I finally got a chance to get up and tell a tale.

I told a story about a drunk man and a drunker pit bull fighting over some cans of Old English in Richmond, VA a few years back — astute readers of this blog will remember that story from here. And I mean, I was nervous, don’t get me wrong — but once I got up there that nervousness just kinda turned into energy, and I went with it, just kinda pushing the parts that needed pushing.

Two and a half servings of bourbon didn’t hurt, either, but I had to cut myself off at a full stop by pouring the last half into a plant. There’s nothing worse than a slurred blatherer, apart from someone who used to be fat and/or geeky in high school and isn’t over that shit yet.

But yeah, it was awesome! People laughed at the parts I meant to be funny and laughed at the stuff I ad-libbed. So I’ll take that as a good sign. The compliments felt genuine. I mean, if someone was kissing my ass because of all the pull I have in showbiz, they’re just horribly misguided.

So now, just as soon as I click “post” on this post, I’m off to the train to try and get onstage at The Moth again. I’ll post the story tomorrow for you guys, but for now, I got to keep it bottled up. I’m nervous, but the good kind. The kind that means something crackly’s about to happen, one way or another. Like one story is about to turn into another. And man, I live for shit like that.

This is the story that I would have told last night at The Moth for the theme “Making Peace.” I don’t think I’ve run it here before. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

I’d been dating this girl who was confident and cool with beautiful tattoos, so gorgeous she’d make a whole room turn and feel ugly whenever she walked in the door. I’d just lost a pile of weight and was giddy with the sudden attention — giddy enough to miss the warning signs and get my newly narrowed ass dumped in about three weeks. I had no idea why, didn’t see it coming at all.

I lived in tired little termite buffet painted the color of dingy Band-Aids. A small community of grizzled vagrants in electric wheelchairs would commune around a trash fire in the alley behind my house most afternoons, drinking Thunderbird. Sometime around twilight most nights, one guy with a blurry swastika tattooed on his forehead would rev up out into the road, barreling upstream against one-way traffic. I had decorated the interior of the place myself — carpeted the entire house in Astroturf, green for the living room, the stairs, and upstairs hallway, my bedroom in neon blue with a giant American flag for a bedspread. Waking up each morning was like a Lego funeral at sea.

All the furniture in the downstairs was inflatable — a couch and two easy chairs. There was a sculpture on the front porch that I’d made myself out of several deer carcasses and a giant head covered in glowing white war paint.

In hindsight, I may have been dumped for aesthetic reasons.

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You’ve noticed a bit of a posting drought here lately, I’m sure. It happens to the best of us, and also to me, all the time. I get tired, or cranky, or things just don’t seem worth posting.

Or, I get involved in other projects. Projects like The Moth.

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