"What's a Cooch?": RECAPPING JUKEBOX STORIES WEEK 1 AND 2

Having to explain what a "cooch" is to an audience full of adults is a difficult task, especially for someone as pure and innocent as me. I mean, the prude that I am, I still blush at the mention of "anal fisting"—even though I hear that phrase rolling off people's tongues easily and effortlessly all the time, in public places as innocuous as the supermarket ("Wow! These green beans are as cheap as anal fisting!"), the DMV ("That driving test administrator is as stern as anal fisting!"), and church ("Hallelujah! Anal fisitng!").

So imagine my deep discomfort when—upon seeing the title of one of Brandon Patton's songs, namely "Munching the Cooch"—an audience member at our very first performance (11/09/06) of Jukebox Stories at Impact Theatre asked, "What's a cooch?" My initial impulse was to scream, "Pusseeeeeeeeee!" But, instead, Brandon and I feigned deafness.

Now if you don't know the context in which a question like "What's a cooch?" can be yelled out in the middle of a show, then you should read the rave reviews for Jukebox Stories in the East Bay Express ("political, personal, funny, biting, sad, raunchy, and above all honest"), The Daily Californian ("delightfully flippant"), and The Oakland Tribune ("fun, fresh, and decidedly untheatrical"). There, you'll find descriptions of the show's staunch informality, crazy randomness, and extremely involving bingo game. Since each performance is different and determined by a number of factors and since something surprising is bound to happen at every show, I have come out of my blogging hiatus to document the madness and glory that is Jukebox Stories.

Fortunately for the 11/09/06 crowd, "Munching the Cooch" was randomly selected as a song that was to be performed that night, thereby answering all "cooch"-related inquiries in graphic detail.

For the pudding cup-slinging and onstage clothes-changing on opening night, refer to the East Bay Express and The Oakland Tribune. For the chips-and-salsa run at the 11/11/06 intermission, refer to The Daily Cal.

During Week Two, we played Fortune Cookie Charades (11/16/06), in which we tried to get audience members to guess esoteric fortunes; on 11/17/06, I dragged onto stage—unwittingly—a girl that Brandon had gone out on a blind date with earlier in the week and grilled her about the experience; and on 11/18/06, we had a minister in the audience who wouldn't reveal his occupation (Brandon beat it out of him during intermission), for fear that we would spend the entire evening making fun of him. But we don't make fun of ministers. Whenever someone says he's a minister, we feign deafness.

—Reporting From Glendale, California