I asked Brently last night: "Were you scared the first time you did the show?"

"Pamie," he said, "I'm not going to lie to you. It's the scariest thing you'll ever do."

I used to think that the time I had to sing "There are Worst Things I Could Do" as Rizzo in a spotlight was the scariest thing I've ever done.

Then there was the time I rode the Big Shot at the Stratosphere.

One time I narrowly missed a car accident with Eric, his brother and our friend Weldon all in the car. That was pretty scary.

But tonight, really, I think I will be the most terrified I've ever been right before I go on that stage.

What scary things have you done?

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Answers

OK, scare o'rama. I used to play in a band, and we did this show as a headliner in front of about 7000 people. Ok, yeah I know I have others there with me on stage, but at the last minute, we changed the set list. I thought it was cool at the time until I started thinking about it.

The first song we played had this really intricate intro that was all me. I am practically doing a solo right there as the opening peice. It may not seem like a big deal, but the thing is that when you're nervous, you have a tendancy to speed the tempo like 5 times faster than it really is. The tempo in this particular song is already extremely fast. Your hands are shaking, your mouth gets dry etc... so playing it was nightmare. I was scared to death when the MC announced us, and the stage was totally dark, and the spotlight hit me and I had to start playing. I just knew that I was going to start the song and we were going to be going 100mph, and my drummer would have a heart attack. I really had to concentrate, and the cool thing is that when you make it through the first song and you hear applause you start to loosen up a bit. Then you know you "got 'em". Really the fact that it was 7k people was no big deal. I always got nervous when we played the first song at any show. Until you get that feedback (pronounced- acceptance) from the audience, it will always be that way! At least for me anyway.

I would imagine for you that it's similiar to when you hit your joke, and wait for the audience to laugh. When you hear the laugh, it has got to start getting easier.

After reading all of your entries, (I read chronological Pamie in a week!) I have no doubt that your show will be a raging success. Obviously there are a lot of people who visit this site, and I would imagine it would be for the same reason that I do. You is damn funny! If you just got up and did menstrual girl, I know you'd bring down the hizzouse!

After your HBO special and the sitcom offers come pouring in, remember your friends here. We can say we knew you before.:)

Break some legs or something!:)

Captain Tal

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Pamie, you are going to be GREAT! I only wished I lived anywhere near you, I'd love to see your show. (I did actually think about going down there even, I saw a fare from Boston for $149 - but that would've been a pretty expensive night out :) Would ya hurry up and get famous so you can go on the road and I can see you up here? Course then I really won't be able to afford to hire you... Wishing I knew you in person... Jennifer at JuniorNet PS. you definitely should pursue the voiceover thing, you're really good! I checked out some of the City Hunter clips.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Looking back the scariest thing I've ever done was to eat pork meat with green chili sauce at a Greyhound bus station in Mexico City.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

I think for me, it was probably telling Elizabeth and Lisa that I liked them. Which is kinda sad, when I think about it. It was just that up until then, I had kept my fat mouth shut about my feelings towards girls that I liked, and it was a big step. A big step that I tripped off of, and almost broke my neck sliding down the rest of the stairs.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Just file this in the 'more than we needed to know' file okay? I had the pleasure of receiving my first and hopefully last colonoscopy today. I have never been so scared in my life.....I can't even find the humor yet.....maybe some other time.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

I had my first but I know now for certain, not my last colonoscopy in April the only good thing about that was the drugs they gave me nothing like a legal high! But I now have to have one every year and a half becuase I had some sort of polyp (which is fun to say) which I have started calling(affectionatly mind you) butt canceer but everyone rangeing from my mother to my doctor to my SO tells me in no uncertain terms that it is not funny! I on the other hand think it's hillarious considering I am so adamant about my hiney (sp) that I don't even like people to look at it let alone go in it, now was that to much information

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Well... first off, let me wish you good luck and success and laughter tonight... wishing you good fortune as induced by the fracturing of an appendage (isn't that the saying among theatre people?)

Anyway... two scariest things I've ever done... actually lots, but these two are prompted by your opening night tonight and by Lee's medical test posting...

One of the scariest things I've done: acted in a play. This was something that surprised me... I've always tended to be rather mouthy and outgoing, and at that time I had just finished a year of teaching 8th grade... I was taking a grad course in theatrical production (all about lighting and set construction, etc.) and our "final exam" was to put on a one act play ("The Apollo of Bellac") with the students in a directing class. They were short of male actors so we were asked to provide fill in a couple minor roles. I said no problem, I'll take a part. It was not much more than a walk-on part, a member of the board of directors of a bank, had maybe four or five sentences of dialog. I expected it to be fun. It was terrifying. I was so frickin' scared. Afterward family members who had attended the performance were unanimous in asserting that I had looked and sounded absolutely terrified. Since then I have spoken in public, once appearing in front of more than six hundred people, have taught high school and college classes and right now I am involved in software training and often teach classes or do technical presentations before potential customers without any stagefright. I enjoy this kind of work. But the thought of ever appearing on stage again as an actor still fills me with cold fear. I don't think I could ever bring myself to attempt it again.

The other scariest thing I've done... get a vasectomy... I mean I was a little nervous about it but had decided it was the right thing to do and it was a relatively safe procedure. That's what I thought until a nurse shaved me... and then the nurses helped me onto an operating table and wrapped a sheet around my upper body so that I was unable to move and then my lower body was exposed and the doctor had a knife and I was very very very scared. It was overwhelmingly terrifying to realize that he was about to start slicing and cutting in an area that males have learned to protect at all costs... I felt panic... terror... and I could feel tugging... was the novacaine (or whatever) wearing off? I couldn't take this... I was about to scream "Stop!" and demand to be set free when I realized that the doctor was talking, reminding me about post-operative care, he was all finished. Whew! Oh, but seriously, for any guys out there contemplating this procedure, don't worry, go ahead, there's nothing to it, no problem, piece of cake... yeah sure, but I honestly had been just seconds away from screaming. *grin*

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

I've had a lot of scary things happen to me, but I try to avoid deliberately doing very scary things. Let's see... I've been shot at (twice), I've almost fallen to my death from a big tall [cliff, tree, building, etc] many times, I've walked through Harlem at 3am (with Brently, I might add), I've stared down two javelina boars, I've narrowly avoided having my testicles pierced by a diamondback rattlesnake, I've been arrested...

One of the scariest things I've ever done was create a huge improv comedy festival with no money and no experience.

Break a leg Pamie.

Jon... ... ...

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

The scariest thing I ever did was get up in a room full of lawyers (a hundred or so of them) to talk about the internet. But I'm a chicken and I don't do scary things very often.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

PAMIE YOU ARE INVINCIBLE GO BABY GO!!!!!

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

i went parasailing in mazatlan on my high school senior class trip. i wasn't really listening when the guy was explaining to me the signals. why? because i was ass-drunk (that's what happens to teenagers in mexico).

the boat took off and i went flying over the ocean, which was pleasant. i sort of just floated around, grinning like a total idiot. when it circled back towards the beach, i saw the guy with the red flag so i started pulling the line on my left, like he had told me. he didn't stop waving the flag, so i didn't let go. (this wasn't the proper procedure, as i understood pretty soon). the next thing i knew, i was sailing just above the hotel i was staying in, about five feet from the hard concrete roof, an additional hundred feet off of the beach floor. i saw the boat take off into the ocean again and i sailed, safely, down to the beach.

the guy with the flag called me a "pendejo" and told me he was going to kick my ass if he saw me again (my education in spanish paid off), so i stayed at the other end of the beach the rest of my time there. incidentally, i remained ass-drunk for the rest of the week.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

pamie, I know it's probably too late for you to see this before you go on, but on the off chance you do --

*************** BREAK A LEG TONIGHT, GIRLFRIEND! ***************

If I knew how to do that HTML stuff that'd be in big ol' multicolor poster-size letters.

Acting was the scariest thing I ever did -- so scary that even my face was trembling -- and that's why I don't do it anymore! So more power to those who can, because I know how hard it is!

Good luck, pamie. If I hadn't already had plans since May for this weekend, I'd have come down from Dallas for this. Maybe next weekend!

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

At one point when I was going through the whole college binge-drinking phase that I unfortunately got caught up in, I decided to go running like a mad woman down my best friend's street.

As I neared the end of it I turned and saw a friend of mine, Moe, desperately trying to catch up with me. I was blitzed out of my mind so of course the logical thing for me to have done was to keep running.

Well, at the end of this particular street that I was running down, was a cement ditch that sent all of the rain water on the streets out into this huge field. Well, the field doesn't matter because that's not where I landed.

I remember running and just at the edge of the ditch I lost my balance (figures) and plunged towards the bottom of the three or four foot deep ditch. I landed on my shoulder and very near my head.

I got up almost immediately and Moe held me while I cried. It was scary because it was that night that I realized how incredibly immature and fucked up I was acting.

This was when I learned moderation (and not to run while intoxicated).

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

The scariest thing I've ever done was during my day-long tenure at the only job I've ever quit.

It was in university, and I got hired by one of those student-painter outfits. When I did my interview, they asked if I was scared of heights. Nope, nope, nope. They had me climb up this big extension ladder set up against the parking garage of the apartment the one guy lived in. No problem. I wasn't scared of heights.

Flash forward two days, to a bright sunny morning. I get picked up in the Student Painter truck, and we drive to this monstrous old Victorian house (student rooms, natch) surrounded by pavement where the spacious lawns used to be. Three stories including attic.

The head guy sets up a ladder next to this window on the third storey. It is not a long enough ladder. It barely reaches the bottom sill of the window.

"There you go," he says.

"There's nothing to hold onto," I said.

"Hold on to the side of the window of course," he said.

Bastard wouldn't even steady the ladder for me. I told him I wasn't afraid of heights, after all. What was my problem?

Well, I am a quiet, don't rock the boat type at heart. I want to make a good impression. First day on the job and all. I should have told him where to get off and reported his ass to the Workplace Safety Board...

I climb the ladder. Bucket, squeegee, and me, clinging to a window frame three stories up over asphalt. Cleaned the window, spotless. Climbed down, walked over to the guy, and told him I quit. Walked home.

I am still terrified of heights. Painting a ceiling on a six-foot stepladder, I get chills. What an idiot I am.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 1999

Hey, guys.

I'm okay.

The show went well. It was packed with friends, which always makes for a great opening night.

I think tonight will be the real test, as there will be more people out there that I don't know than do.

But I had a lot of fun. I thought I was going to die beforehand, but I didn't.

Don't worry, I'll tell all on Monday.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 1999

Cat, I had almost the same thing...in college I worked for a painter whose policy was "if you fall, you're fired before you hit the ground." Ha. Great. I had no problem with ladders, but once I was up on the roof of a three-floor victorian house with a hip-roof (like a four-sided pyramid). Slates started breaking off as I crawled along...I actually did an almost-slide toward the gutter and immediate (gulp) unemployment...somehow I stopped myself with the friction from the palms of my hands. I quit as soon as I was back on terra firma.

To this day, I'll be driftng off at night and suddenly I'm having a half-dream that I'm standing on a roof and feeling myself start to fall. It's just terrifying.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 1999

Heard the show went well, Pamie! I'll be seeing it next weekend.

Although I thought skydiving was pretty scary, nothing beats the 2 minutes before you go full Monty in front of 1,000 or so people in a theater. It seemed like such a good idea until my little friend got a bad case of stage fright. "Where's the turtle?" (inside BS4 joke) What's worse is that half the cast of Mad TV were sitting in a box seat and could see my backstage attempts to rejuvenate my manhood while my fellow troupe-members did their best to stifle their giggles. But hey, anything for a laugh.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 1999

I upped sticks and moved to the other side of the world, with #1000 to my name, no job waiting for me, and nowhere to stay. I sat on the first flight of my journey absolutely terrified.

Actually, the most scared I've ever been was when I went to boarding school. I can remember feeling physically sick with fear the night before I left home.

Mind you, I'm known as a bit of a chicken.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 1999

dear Jackie,

I just did the same thing, except it was only half way across the states and I know my brother, who lives here. here being LA, There being Texas. I've never moved around alot and picking up roots like that is terrifying. Actually, the trip was incredible and i've been really lucky since i got here.

actually,right now the scariest thing i think I've ever been through was a simple scene last week in front of my new acting class. God i was all nerves. its kind of invigorrating but afterwards I'm never sure how the scene went which drives me mad.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 1999