Emily Heller

Thanks to the new Facebook feature where, when someone messages you, it shows you every message you’ve ever sent them, I end up skipping down memory lane a lot. Just kidding. It barely ever happens. HOWEVER, today I did happen to find this conversation from… oh, five years ago, between me and my friend Donny. At the time, he was a competitive college tennis player whose career as a student was about to end. He had one tournament left. for which there would be a number of spectators. Apparently, I was trying to get him to do some fun TENNIS PRANKS during his last game and I sent him some ideas:

EMILY: ok, one round you should yell “fore” after every time you hit it. like golf.

another round you should say “yes” after each time.

another round you should just shout random words every time. examples/suggestions: “tomato. potato. pepper. popper. pickle. tingle. rascal. thing. thong. cisco.” word association.

ok that’s all i got. what do you think.

His response:

DONNY: I think these are very funny ideas. If I yelled “fore” everytime after i hit a ball, that means I would yell “fore” at least a thousand times throughout one match. If I said tomato, potato, pepper or pickle, the coach would have a talk with me after the match, and suggest counseling. He’d think my mind is not on the match, but on a grocery list. 

I also want to scotchtape a couple of batteries to my arm. Eventually my opponent will notice batteries taped to my body, because when I am losing, I’ll change the batteries, look him in the eye and say “just charging up”.

I also want spurs on the back of my tennis shoes. A flask to drink my water from. And put speakers in my tennis racquet, so every time I hit the ball, the sound of a shotgun is heard.

And my final response:

EMILY: ok i was with you until the speaker thing and now i think that you are just not considering any of these as plausible. that is disappointing to me, donny. you don’t have to be strict about the fores… you could just do it ten times in a row and that would be enough. and i don’t think it would be thousands.

what do you really want to yell, donny? what’s inside of you?

HE NEVER DID ANY OF THEM!!!!

It’s a little late for a top ten of 2011 list, but this is one that nobody will even care about, so who cares!

Like most people who do stand up comedy, I perform a lot. I tried counting on my calendar how many times I performed last year; it said 168, though that number doesn’t include open mics or last minute shows. Granted, I’m no Sammy Obeid (who performed for 365 days in a row, probably somewhere around 1000 sets. I don’t know the exact number but he’ll tell you, if you give him some stage time). But still, I spent more nights onstage than off, and it’s easy to forget individual shows. But I had such a fun year, and I’m so grateful for all the opportunities I had, that I felt compelled to publicly and self-indulgently count my blessings here and review some of my favorite shows of the year. My top ten comedy moments of 2011, after the jump.

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