Week of February 19: Mortified

Teenage drama… we’ve all gone through it. Most of us survived those embarrassing moments of our yesteryears to become well functioning and valuable members of society. Those years were very awkward and clumsy for most of us and yet we hold these memories with warm fondness whenever a REO Speedwagon song triggers a flashback (how many remember The Jets?). The world used to suck so much back then. So many things could easily throw our world into chaos; everything from an unanswered crush to a grapefruit sized zit on your nose. Even I, yes the high school stud who lettered in two varsity sports, had good grades, was popular and was an all around nice guy (I just picked up my high school year books from my parents so I can prove all of the aforementioned claims… sure I was the 3rd string water captain for football but that counts!!!), had my fair share of angst. I think I dealt with my torments pretty much like how I deal with them now… alcohol. But a lot of my friends and people in general, found therapy by documenting their feelings. Journals, poems, songs, diaries, letters, etc. Countless tragedies and drama unfolded in the diaries of many “why me?” youths, each candidly recording their pure emotions, confident that their journal would never be read by anyone else.

Mortified is a show that started a couple of years ago in New York and Los Angeles. Mortified invites every day people to expose their innermost emotional horror stories on stage. Not sure if it’s considered therapy when people actually laugh AT you. Andrea and I first heard about this show a few months ago on NPR. So when Mortified came to San Francisco, we gathered a few of our friends and checked out the show. So on Saturday, we met up with our friends, Monica, Patty and Walter in the Mission. We met at Andalu for an early dinner and drinks before heading off to the Make-Out Room to catch Mortified.

At Andalu we also celebrated Monica's (in black) birthday. Monica is a leap year baby (2/29) so she's only about 9 years old!!! Since Monica's birthday fell close to Mardi Gras, Andrea thought it was a good idea to pick up a King Cake (picture on right) from Bread Garden Bakery in Berkeley. After stuffing ourselves with lots of tapas, we still managed to split the whole King Cake into 5 equal pieces and washed it down with a couple of pitchers of white sangria. Delicious!!!

The show was excellent and lived up to it's billing. I highly recommend it if you have a chance to see it. There were 8 performers who shared their hilarious secrets. I must say however, that some of the performers were definately putting on a show. I expected all of the performers to be every day Joes getting up on the stage and just letting their stories do the performing. But unfortunately, some found the need to reherse, refine and script their act, which took away from conveying the authentisity of the angst they originally felt. To me the best performers were the ones that just casually read their mortifying stories and simply reacted to the crowd's reactions. None the less, we all had a really good time. Andrea has been inspired and has promised to go digging into her stash of boxed-up past for some of her own mortifying tales. I will let you know what dark forgotten mystries we uncover.