Maria Bamford

For Book Club tonight, the ladies and I went to see comedian Maria Bamford do a show at St. Scholastica.  It was great.  She is the one who does the Target ads at Christmas time.

She's really strong.

I have been a fan of hers since my aunt sent me a home-made cassette tape out of the blue and told me to listen to it.  It was one of Maria's albums and I loved it so much that I wrote her (Maria) an email and told her that I thought she was so funny that from now on I would buy her albums myself and not rely on my relatives for bootlegs.  She wrote back and said she was glad I liked it.  Nice!  So I have bought her albums since then and I have kept up with what she has been doing.  She had a web show for a while that I loved.  I'm not a huge fan of stand up comedians but for some reason I really love Maria.  She does a bit about "Christy the Christian Teen" that just about kills me, and she also does impressions of her family members that are hilarious.  One of my favorite bits she does is about leaving her mom voicemail messages from the baby Jesus.

Tonight Maria did some material about mental illness that I thought was great.  She said people still don't think of mental illness as a "real" ailment because you never hear someone say they should treat their nearsightedness or cancer with an "attitude adjustment."  I loved that.

After the show we hung around and got to chat with Maria for a few minutes because my friend Dana went to high school with her.  Dana took a picture of the two of us.

But by far the most bizarre thing that happened all night was that I was sitting in the front row of the second section and a lady in an enormous motorized barcalounger came rolling up and everyone in the row had to scooch their chairs down so she could back into her spot right next to me.  The lady was on oxygen so she had a big tank and she also had bags and bags of stuff hanging all over within arms reach.  She took out a big bottle of water and a cup and had a little drink at one point. But that's not the bizarre part.  She also had a  wiener dog on her lap who was wearing a silver necklace and a pink, gingham, halter dress. I couldn't stop looking at that stupid dog.  And the dog couldn't stop looking at me.  It was unnerving.  Other people were looking at the dog too and I think the lady was getting self conscious about it because she put a pink vest on it that said, "My name is Rosie and I'm a service animal.  Please don't pet me."  I couldn't really pinpoint what service Rosie was providing, unless having a dog indefatigably lick your nasal cannulas is a service.  If it is, Rosie was doing a great job.