Shelter in Place Standup

Do you like my shelter in place mullet? I cut it myself. I actually have a secret about my mullet. I started cutting my hair myself seven months before the shelter in place. Everyone’s posting pictures of their terrible quarantine haircuts and I’m posting mine like “OMG you guys isn’t it horrible how we can’t go to the salon?” I fit in for once. But no, what really happened was that last August my hairdresser moved away at the same time I happened to lose some income and I decided that no sane hairdresser would give me the mullet I’d wanted for a while and so I decided to do it myself. I’d had a really nice pixie cut. And it was just getting to mullet status when the salons all had to close. My friends on social media all knew about my mullet. I was proud of it. I posted pics asking whether it was long enough to be called a mullet yet. And finally, finally my friends declared it a mullet, and the coronavirus hit. Mere coincidence? Anyway, now I fit in, in this world of bad haircuts. Miley Cyrus got a mullet a couple months ago and she got an article about her calling her a trendsetter. I beg your pardon. I saw it coming two years ago. You can search my Facebook memories. I called it, and I started growing it out. I didn’t get an article.
There are some nice things about not feeling like you’re pretty. You can grow a mullet and not feel like you might be ruining anything. You can not shave your legs. I mean what the hell. I say it’s because I think it’s a part of infantalizing women, and it is,  but if I thought I were pretty, would I really choose that hill to die on? One good thing about knowing you’re not pretty is that you will never be catfished. The other day I got a comment on a post by a guy whose last name, according to his page, is Phish. P H I S H. And I’m ready for him. If he starts in telling me I’m pretty, I will see right through it. If he says “Hey I noticed your profile pic,” I’ll say “Sure you did.” It’s right in his name.  I mean, his first name wasn’t  cat-related or anything. Like Tom, or mean little a-hole. I have a pretty friend who fell for one of these fakers. They started an online “relationship,” and after a while, he asked for nudes. The next day he was blackmailing her. Since she’s a badass she told him to go to hell. See, it never would have gone that far with me because the guy would have given me a line about how I was beautiful and I would have laughed him all the way back to MySpace. Anyway this guy’s last name is supposedly phish, and I’m ready for him.
I never had a MySpace. I’m so behind on technology that by the time I joined the social media world MySpace was a thing of the past. I’m still on Facebook. I figure I might as well ride it all the way down and join whatever is happening then instead of jumping from newest thing to newest thing. Facebook is my jam. There are some great, innovative shelter in place videos out there. I don’t know how to do any of that. People are playing multiple characters and splicing the videos together somehow. They LOOK like regular people, but it seems like they must be some sort of geniuses to me. I’m writing a standup routine in a free version of a WordPress blog with no pictures because I can never get them where I want them, to be performed in my living room in one spot. One take. One outfit. No magical wardrobe changes. I was thinking of wearing a powder blue tux. Or shoulder pads. They’d go with my mullet.
My mullet which may or may not have brought about the whole Covid19 debacle. Actually, if I did start the pandemic, it wasn’t because of the mullet, it was because of a wish I made. Last August i got kicked out of a band, and I was mad, and I wished that no one would ever hire them again. I expected the whole Bay Area to be mad on my behalf. I mean is that too much to ask? A couple million people can’t hold a simple grudge for someone they barely know? What is the world coming to? Anyway, I got kicked out and lost that income and started cutting my own hair, and I wished for them to never get hired, and I started putting together my own band. And it was going to be better than my old band. I took my time assembling it like a bunch of superheroes. It wasn’t easy because I wanted all women. I was done with being the only woman in bands. I found the singer based on the recommendation of a trusted guru of a voice teacher. Hired her voice unheard. I called one old friend from college and one old friend from teaching. I asked around about a woman drummer and the woman I knew as a woodwind teacher at the music school I teach at turned out to be primarily a percussionist. She was like that one member of the superhero team who’s trying to hide the fact that she has a superpower. It took me a couple months,  but finally we started trying to nail down a date for our first rehearsal, and the coronavirus hit and the county closed down. I moped for a long time before realizing with horror that my wish had come true. My old band wouldn’t be getting hired, and neither would I. It’s like that old episode of Fantasy Island when some dipshit wishes to be Marie Antoinette without realizing what happens to her in the end. Those who don’t know their history are doomed if they ever visit Fantasy Island.
So yes I’m writing this in an antiquated blog while random families of five in the outskirts of some Kansas town I’ve never heard of are recreating Hamilton, with the baby playing King George or some shit. I’ll be lucky if I remember to hit record.
Thank you, I hope you’ve enjoyed the mullet in all its homegrown glory. You’ve  been a great audience!