Getting Booed Off-Stage At The Apollo, Revisited

There is a rolling energy that starts in the back, and wells up through the increasingly boisterous crowd. I look to my side, where the other performers are standing the wings shaking their heads and yelling for me to just stop it. The clown is there now with his broom and you’re being swept offstage--literally. You’ve been booed off the stage at the Apollo. Your one-man show, “Scott on Scott: A Night of Comedy, Song and Pizazz,” a labor of love, written over a two-year span--your magnum opus, you’d thought--will be labeled a monumental failure.
    You go home. You look at yourself in the mirror. You drink some. Back to the mirror. Crying. Drinking. Self-abuse, or masturbation. Crying. Sleep.
    Then you wake up the next morning and ask yourself, “Where did it all go wrong?”
    In my case, I’ve narrowed the list to eight possible explanations for my being booed off the stage at the Apollo:

1.) Too much glitter. This one is self-explanatory, but it’s worth noting that even I, in my more anxious moments leading up to the show, thought to myself, “This is a fucking lot of glitter.” Anyway, I opted to go heavy on the glitter--glitter on my face, glitter on my bare inner thighs, a cannon full of glitter that was, itself, covered in glitter and so forth.

2.) The 15 minute long interpretive dance. The dance was based on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, only with a lot of pantomimed sex acts and no English people.

3.) The “Feats of Strength” portion of my show, in which I did a disappointing seven push-ups before collapsing to the ground, where I remained panting for around ten minutes. As I told to anyone who would listen that night, the only reason I didn’t do more was because I did a lot the day before, and I assure you that had I been rested, that number would have grown to 11 or 12.

4.) Not enough glitter.

5.) My unicycle act. I should’ve realized that including it was a mistake, as I can’t ride the unicycle. I just kind of assumed I could, and unfortunately, I was wrong.

6.) The saw-the-lady-in-half trick. I’ve seen this trick performed a million times, just the way I did it, only without all the screaming and blood. The only logical conclusion, albeit a dismaying one for me, is that I don’t possess magic powers. I now know that, and though I can’t un-saw Ms. Campbell’s torso, I wish her a speedy recovery.

7.) My burlesque-style strip show to the tune of “The Andy Griffith Show.”

8.) The duet with Michael Richards.