The Thunder From Down Under
What I learned from sharing a dressing room with male dancers
Years ago in Las Vegas,
I walked into the green room to get ready for my show at the Excalibur casino hotel and was confronted by about a dozen guys in various stages of undress—from thongs to short shorts and outright no clothes! What?! My comedy show was in the same show room as a very popular Australian men’s “dancing” group: the Thunder from Down Under.
To say these guys were (and still are) popular is an understatement.
I caught the last ten minutes of their show, and it was out. Of. Control. About a thousand screaming women in the audience were losing their minds over them! You had to be there to hear the shrieks and see the total chaos. From women dancing on the tables, to trying to rush the stage: it was a zoo! Luckily, they turned the showroom over for my show, so I had a different audience (or I think I would’ve quit comedy on the spot).
But I still had to get ready for my show, which meant I had to go into the green room. The door to the green room was right next to the stage, unlocked. So when the Thunder show was over, I just walked inside. All the guys looked up, froze, and one of ‘em said, “Who are YOU?” (Like I was some random woman who had wandered in.) I said, “I’m the comedian for the next show.” “Oh, okay,” some of them muttered, and then they all turned around to continue getting dressed or undressed, or whatever. They didn’t care. I was just another entertainer.
I had to laugh: there were a thousand women in the show room, and not one of them thought, “Hey, maybe if I try this door, it’ll be unlocked, and I’ll actually meet these guys.” Nope. Not a one. To these women, I’m guessing it looked impossible to meet the Thunder guys (aside from rushing the stage in a frenzy!).Tell your readers why you are launching this space. What brought you here and what inspired you to do it now. Think of it as a mini personal manifesto.
Sometimes things LOOK
tough (like meeting our favorite entertainers), but they’re really pretty easy. And when they seem difficult, we tend not to give any effort, which means we may miss out.
I see examples of this in my own life all the time. For the past few years, I kept getting these emails from the parking garage that I park at at LAX. It said I was a member of some “rewards program.” Really? How exciting can parking garage rewards be? Maybe I’ll get a free can of motor oil or a set of wiper blades. I tried checking the website a few times to see what it was, but the site was confusing. I had to keep re-setting my password and username that I didn’t ever remember setting up in the first place and clicking on pictures that had bridges (apparently, I’m not good at bridge matching). This took place over a few years: I’d get an email, spend sixty seconds trying to figure out the site, then give up. That is, until this holiday season when I had a whole week at home, and I was determined to unlock my rewards or unsubscribe from this ridiculous site.
Turns out the site wasn’t ridiculous—it was me!
Once I got in, I found out I had rewards totaling hundreds of dollars that could be redeemed for gift cards from legitimate businesses—anywhere from Starbucks to Amazon and Target. It was a gold mine of gift cards! I was still skeptical that a parking garage would give gift cards that actually worked, so I ordered one as a test, then went to Starbucks totally ready to pull out my credit card when this gift card turned out to be a dud. . . but it worked! I raced back to the site and ordered more gift cards. I am at this moment literally surrounded by Starbucks Iced Passion Tango Tea!
In my keynote I mention
a phrase that an attendee once told me. I don’t know where she got it from, but I try to remember it when things look daunting: “Consider the unknown to be friendly.” It’s a great line.
Sure, some things in life are WAY harder than getting backstage at a show, or figuring out your website password, but there are some things that look hard but are ridiculously easy if we stop thinking they’re going to be daunting.
As we roll through this year, we’ll probably have one or two opportunities to utter the words “This is going to be tough” and “I don’t think I’ll be able to do this.” But let’s also remember to mix in the phrase “Consider the unknown to be friendly.” Because it might just be.
I may steal that "Consider the unknown to be friendly" line. But you will be credited 😁.