Punchlining

First, please know that I am not professionally trained in the art of mime. Though I have done much research about the origins and history of the celebrated form, I am the first to admit that I barely know what I'm doing out here. The makeup and leotard probably have you believing otherwise, but really it's just an illusion. And we all know what the Greeks said about illusions, right? Listen. I have consulted with some masters, via email, done a little limbering up, and now it's time to hit the streets. Let's make it happen, people. As a performance artist and truth machine, the time is now.

So, who can pinpoint when mimes became a big joke? My inner barometer places it sometime in the early '80s, but it's a question I've come back to over and again while studying at the Art Institute and preparing for this day. I walk out of my house, fully suited up, and stop at a sidewalk vendor in front of Radio Shack to buy a bacon-wrapped hot dog (Tijuana style). As the young girl rotates the double-meat treat on the greasy plank of sheet metal, I close my eyes and meditate on the answer. A low tremulous hum fills my ears and as the hum evolves into crashes of rumbling surf, there are flashes in my mind that help me. I see Vaudeville. Olde tyme skits. Prohibition. A family gathered 'round a radio. Plastic popsicle molds. A sock hop. Teenage porn stars. People begin dressing more comfortably, especially for air travel. Rainbow suspenders. Video games. Wolfgang Puck. And I think we've arrived: Death of the Mime/Mime as Punchline.

At first, I thought maybe the solution was staging a workshop in la mime at my warehouse space. I hold openings and performances on the weekends and we usually get a pretty good crowd of students, neighborhood people and even some downtown gallery owners who are trying to stay on top of the avant garde and freak scenes. If people actually tried learning the craft for a few hours and could see how difficult it was, maybe they wouldn't laugh so easily the next time someone on a late night talk show joked about being chased by "angry mimes" or a character in a movie said, "Dude, things could be worse. She could have left you for a mime." Making fun of mimes has become as easy as making fun of erectile dysfunction or mullets, neither which are laughing matters when it really comes down to it.

Last year I cut my hair into a mullet and wore a mustache for my final performance piece. In one day I went from a shaggy bedhead and van dyke to total buttrock hesher. When I walked out to start my show - and a big raspberry to the art critic at the weekly paper who praised the physical transformation thinking it was my performance - I could hardly concentrate on executing the real thing. The crowd just wouldn't stop laughing because I, Jack Armstrong, semi-art star/provocateur looked ridiculous to them. They couldn't even quiet down enough for me to get to my folk song, the real crux of the piece. The song was about the Salvadoran family who got evicted from my building the week before.

Does that sound terrible to you? Imagine it. Seeing a white art school graduate singing a folk song about evicted Salvadorans? Does it make you cringe to think about it? And does your uneasy feeling become worse when I speak of the pupusas gordas and sabor delicado in las comidas que ella me ha preparado. Just wondering, just checking.

So, I had just written the song that morning, and coupled with the fact that I don't know how to play the guitar and my singing is much like that of a ten year old girl wearing headphones and rollerblading down the sidewalk as she prepares for her musical theater audition by belting out "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, MO" from Damn Yankees, well, I think we all know what I was trying to get at with that performance. Obviously, the next logical step was mimes.

As I head up the street, people are beginning to stare at me pretty hard. Like they've never seen a mime eating a hot dog before. Whatever. I've borrowed these stretchy black pants from my roommate and they're starting to chafe already, but as we say, On With The Show. I turn a corner and schink! something hits me in the head. I turn around to find a dirty teenage couple slumped down in a doorway, laughing at me in slo-mo. Throwing their heads back and letting their mouths hang open.

Mental note: Ridicule of mimes has reached all social and economic echelons. I almost yell out to them, but respecting my role, I keep mum and decide to saunter over in kind of a Chaplin-like walk. More specifically, like Robert Downey Jr. playing Chaplin, which was extremely close, but full of its own distinct signifiers.

"Oh, shit," the girl says, thumping the back of her hand into her boyfriend's chest. "The clown is coming to get us."

Aha! They assume I'm a clown. Duly noted.

I hover over the couple, darkening them with my shadow and begin my first attempt at a routine.

"Listen, chief," the boy says, his head poking out of a navy blue hoodie. "Don't. Just don't."

I turn my pockets inside out and frown deeply, pushing my lips into an exaggerated pout. Admittedly, it's a cliche move, but I needed to establish communication and, as I said, I don't pretend to be a professional. I hold up my index finger as if to say, "One moment."

The girl sighs loudly, turning her cheek to me and says, "Shit, nigga."

I refuse to be deterred so quickly. Plus, they don't seem to be in a rush to get anywhere soon and I need practice before I hook up with Jerry at the corner.

I spring into action, becoming a child at play. Skipping an imaginary rope and "whistling" being careful not to make a sound. I mime sitting at a school desk, raising my hand as if to eagerly say "Pick me! I have the answer!"

The couple keeps their gaze fixed, and the girl even stops scratching for second.

Ever so slowly, I lower my arm. Glacially, deliberately, lower and lower. My expression changes from bright-eyed wonder to an inaccessbile blank stare.

Passersby have stopped. Off to the right, I hear an old man's voice say, "What's the occasion? Is it somebody's birthday?" Somebody else yells, "Go back to the wharf! We don't want you in our neighborhood!"

The couple seems rapt with my performance. What would I do next?

I roll up my pant leg and madly slap at my calf for a vein.

This was either a flash of genius, or perhaps a callow, embarassing attempt at public service that made me glad I was in disguise. A voice in the back wonders aloud if I shave my legs, but I ignore them, busying myself with "cooking" my "tar" and "loading" my "works". I fear I've drawn the syringe too big in proportion to the imaginary spoon on my canvas of air, but I keep going, releasing the sweet serum into my bloodstream. I nod a few times and lay back on the sidewalk. I shut my eyes in the last dance of death. Applause.

Suddenly, I realize that my head is wet. I've o.d.'ed in a sticky puddle of some sort.
I jump to my feet and without bothering to take a bow, sprint away, adrenaline surging through my body. Someone throws a beer can.

At the corner I find Jerry standing in front of the crepe place with the video camera like we planned. If only he had captured my maiden voyage.

"You look amazing!" he says, doing a lap around me. And then, "What's all this shit in your hair?"

"It was incredible!" I say, but then start to see stars, so I squat down for a second.

"Shhh!" Jerry hisses. "You're a mime, remember? No talking."

I stand back up and run my palm down the back of my head. It's all gooey and there's a couple hard things stuck in there. I didn't even know they sold candy corns in April. A lady eating brunch on the patio behind us stands up and starts tapping Jerry on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, gentlemen? You're blocking our view of the sidewalk?"

Jerry needed little provoking. "Oh, god, lady. Sorry!" he goes. "You're trying to people watch and there are people in your way! I guess we're ruining your al fresco dining experience." His gigantic blue eyes were going like searchlights. "Hey! What else is on the agenda after your crepe? A little window shopping and then back to the rank hell cage of your terrifying existence because you're an empty souless vacuum who just wants to be accepted?"

"Whoa, Jerry. Back off." I say.

The lady goes back to her seat, and I lean over towards her making an exaggerated whoopsie face and say, "Sorry about that."

A guy at her table wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat advertising the latest Steven Soderburgh film leans back in his chair and snorts, "Shut up, mime." The table gets a big laugh out of this. Of course.

I pull two fingers across my lips like I was sealing a Ziploc bag and bow my head. I do love the way mimes are playful, but have dignity. Unfortunately, Jerry hadn't caught this interaction on tape either.

"Let's head across the street and catch people going into the theater," he says. "It's an Eisenstein film. Probably pretty ripe."

I ham it up while dodging traffic and a couple people honk. The way Jerry keeps yelling, "Watch out: Mime crossing!" and "You don't want mime blood on your hands!" I can tell he's not really in tune with my vision. He gets the camera ready as I spot a senior citizen lesbian couple at the box office buying tickets for the next show. While the cashier counts their change, I watch them kiss and then walk away holding hands. Here was my window. I pounce in front of them and draw the outline of a big heart on my chest. They seem mildly amused and, surprisingly, wait for more. I make the heart begin to pulse, beating strongly and growing bigger. My motions get quicker. The heart becomes the size of my armspan, it can't get any bigger. I raise my eyebrows in what I hope they interpret as an expression of sheer delight and then, I blank. I can't figure out what else to do, so I leap in the air and come down on one knee, throw in some jazz hands and pray they will take this as Curtain. But they just stand there staring at me and nodding. I clear my throat until the short one says, "Hey, guy. You got a hat or anything? I'll give you a buck."

"Don't give him a dollar," the other one says. "You owe me a dollar. You got a dollar, you give it to me!" They laugh and walk inside the theater.

Jerry is bored already. He wants me to offend people or at least bite it once or twice, but I've already explained to him that this isn't America's Funniest Home Videos (Though I do have a great concept for something called America's Funniest Homeless Videos where homeless people do relay type races.)

"Let's get a beer," he says. "This got lame a lot faster than I thought it would."

I don't argue. I'm not like a lot of artists who won't admit when their concept stinks. Plus, my balls were getting really mismanaged in those pantaloons anyway. We're at the corner and while we're waiting for the light to change, I look down and there's this woman slumped on the curb with her head shoved into her knees. Brown hair with some pink and white stripes. Neopolitan. The light changes and everybody starts moving except me. I tell Jerry I'll catch up with him in a second.

The girl's got her one of her arms extended, a swarm of bumblebees tattooed on her bicep, and between her fingers is an unlit cigarette. I reach for my lighter, a real, physical lighter not a pretend lighter, and squat down beside her, flicking it a few times until she finally lifts her head up and just says, "How?" Not What, but How. She's pretty trashed, all bloated and raw like she's been crying for a few days. Maybe crashing from speed. I motion to the cigarette in her hand and flick some more, but she doesn't move. I even do little puffing gestures and blow some imaginary smoke rings. Nothing. She just stares, blinking away like she doesn't understand English.

"Do you need a light?" I ask her.

Her lower lip trembling, she whispers. "I thought mimes weren't supposed to talk."

"I'm not a real mime," I say. "It's an experiment. A performance piece."

She looks at me for a second and then her face just falls. She lets out this huge moan, "Oh, god," she says, covering her mouth. "Oh, god. Oh, god! No!"

Her stringy hair flies back as she bolts up and starts running toward a limousine parked in the median. The cigarette rolls into the gutter and is immediately retrieved by a pigeon. I lean over and offer it a light.