Julia Sweeney

I think I might have heard that joke somewhere.

But I remembered it, or maybe it wasn't a bugle, something else.

Anyway, I got a huge laugh, and it was like somebody shot me with something, heroin or something.

It was absolutely... I could feel it in my bloodstream.

Like, oh, God, oh, that felt good.

And I guess I was good at seeing ironic things and hypocritical things, and I was good at...

Saying them not in a way that made people so upset, that got most of the room to laugh with me.

I don't know why that is, actually.

I don't think it was thought out.

I just did that.

At the same time, I believe you were also competing in debates.

You were writing and delivering monologues.

What were you writing about back then?

I remember Walcott Gibb had a thing where you memorized like a paragraph that was about a funny, it's very early David Sedaris kind of stuff, you know, like a play gone wrong.

You know, somebody, I remember Ring Out Wild Bells was a Walcott Gibb short story that I memorized and performed over and over again.

And it was just all about a guy who doesn't sew all the bells onto his costume before the play ends.

until he's on stage during the play.

And every time he moves, the bells ring so loud, so loud, no one can hear anything.

And it's just, it just beautifully written and hilarious.

So I liked that.