Kight Fright.

Have you ever been completely paralyzed with nervous fear and nonetheless had to act as though you were "normal?"

This was me last Saturday night.

I don’t get out enough. I like my little one room studio apartment world with the bay window looking out on the busy central LA street. I almost never talk to women. It’s helpful that most of them, even the beautiful ones, don’t seem that interesting.

Laura Kightlinger isn’t one of them.

If you read the "Marie" story, then you know that I have a natural thing for intelligent, somewhat sad women. To take it even further, I’m particularly attracted to women with wickedly black senses of humor. I don’t know why. I’m not even trying to figure it out. I just AM.So on Saturday night I went to the Uncabaret show at The Mbar. The Uncabaret is different than other comedy groups in that they teach and encourage folks to talk about the everyday, real things that happen to them. Not to do stand-up per say, but to just find the humor in your own life and let it out on a stage. So their shows are more interesting to me because they aren’t a set of pre-rehearsed bits that have been overly massaged into monastic tripe. They are the actual people telling things that really did happen- maybe just yesterday. Their line-up is generally of semi-famous folks, many of whom are familiar either by their faces or their written works, gabbing about things in a conversational, person to person manner.

Their insights into the entertainment business and family events makes them human and narrows the gap between celebs and the "rest of us." Not only that but the Mbar venue is a perfect place for it. Dark even during the day, it’s red flocked wallpaper, curved ribbed upholstered booths and intimate size give it a beatnik feel.

Laura Kightlinger with her martini glass and "fuck us all" attitude seems at home there. I had first seen her two years ago at a hole-in-the-wall venue near the downtown end of Santa Monica. I frequent the "chicks only" comedy nights because I’m pathetic. (Fuck you! It gets me out!) Since then I’ve paid attention to her career and taken in a couple more shows. I didn’t think I was a groupie cause I’ve met many a famous person in my radio years and have been pursuing comedy here in LA in many forms. I haven’t met many people who make me nervous. Saturday was different.

The bar at the Mbar is very small with only about 8 seats. You have to arrive early to catch one. I got there just after the doors opened at 7p. No one was there so I staked out my seat with a drink and a mention to the bartender and killed the next 45 minutes outside. I had come to see Kightlinger because she’s luke warm now. She has a half hour sitcom that she writes on IFC. It’s pretty good but not yet the venue that will throw her into the limelight. I figured she may talk about that and/or her performance or frustration about her work with Brian De Palma in Black Dahlia that ended up on the cutting room floor.

At the bar, it took me 10 minutes to get up the nerve to strike up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She was a pretty, very accessible, confident redhead in her 30's. We exchanged pleasantries and she told me she was an actress and independent film producer. I admitted to her my interest in Laura Kightlinger saying,

"I know it’s weird. But I’m kind of a groupie, a fan."

Not two minutes later Kightlinger arrived, noticed the same woman and they had a big reunion hug. After, she said to me,

"I hadn’t seen her in a year."

I replied , "Boy, now I feel dumb."
Kightlinger was going to be the final act. As I was at the end of the bar, toward the stage, next to the waitress station, there was an empty space next to me where the performers would hang before they went on. Having seen her in the hallway just outside of the bar working on her bits with a friend, I thought I had acclimated myself to her presence such that "it was cool." It wasn’t.

For the entire act before her she stood right next to me at the bar, about a half hour. Checking her notes, mouthing her bits to herself and responding to the person on stage with her "gasping for breath" hacking laugh.

I focused on the performers every word as a distraction. Almost over-responding in compensation. Kightlinger would turn toward the stage with her back to me then turn back facing me. I was kicking my own ass not to give away my infatuation. It was both fun and frustrating. I knew I wasn’t going to come close to being able to pull off talking to her. So when the show ended I didn’t join the folks who gathered around her. The Mbar is that way. You have access to the performers. It’s friendly. Wonderfully casual.

I know I should be embarrassed by all this but I’m not. I know where my fear comes from and it’s not too difficult to remedy. Get out more. Be amongst people more. Stop holing myself up. Besides, it actually felt great to be nervous. Not many people can do that to me. Only the folks who are my age, brunette, intelligent, lukewarm, doing what I aspire to do and who don’t have a penis.

Laura Kightlinger is one of them.