Have you ever been mortified by something you did or said, past or present? I’m guessing everyone has. The bigger question is, have you ever gotten on stage and revealed in front of an audience some of the most mortifying thoughts and words you ever wrote? Well, I have.
A number of years ago, I unearthed an absolute treasure trove of my writing—diaries, notes passed in class, letters—all things I’d written as a surly teenage girl. And boy, was I surly!
There are cute pictures of me at the time—pleasant, smiling, well-dressed, perfectly coifed.
I had two particularly fabulous hairdos in my teens. One was rendered by Mama’s beauty operator from a picture of Twiggy, the first supermodel. I copied her short haircut and her eye makeup. I loaded down my lashes with as much black mascara as they would hold and got what Mama called spider eyes. Meaning the lashes—top and bottom ones—were just too much. I mean that in a good way—Mama not so much.
I wore dresses so short even Daddy, who rarely questioned anything I did, would ask through clenched jaws, “Billy Jo, are you going to let her wear that?” And Mama would matter-of-factly answer that she was, it was the style.
The second fabulous ‘do I had was again rendered to perfection by the same beauty operator from a picture I had of a Vidal Sassoon asymmetrical cut. She cut my hair in three lengths—short in back, longer on one side and even longer on the other side. That side of my hair I wore close to my eye, almost obliterating it and looking, in my mind, like I belonged on the streets of London or at least New York and not zipping down small-town Main Street in my white Corvair drinking a Dr Pepper.
Anyway, cute as those pictures are, underneath the images is a teenage demon from Hell. My diaries are proof of it.
Coincidentally, around the time I rediscovered the diaries, I also came across an article about a stage show in L.A. and New York called Get Mortified. It was the brainchild of David Nadelberg, who had found a letter he’d written as a teenager. It was mortifying and hilarious. He read it to a group of friends one night, and it soon became his sort of party trick. All his friends clamored for it, and so the show was born. Get Mortified is now done in almost every major city in the U.S. and many international cities, too. Look it up and if there’s a show near you, run, don’t walk. You’ll love it.
So I called the producers, got an appointment and they jumped on my angsty teenage diaries. Together, we put together the absolutely most mortifying of all my diary entries, and I became a staple of Get Mortified shows for several years.
During the show, they project pictures of the performers as they looked as the teenage shit-asses we all were. Some of the pictures are all teeth and braces. Some show pitiful fashion victims from the ‘80s. Mine was a portrait I had done in my rodeo attire. I use the term rodeo loosely because I grew up around real cowgirls and cowboys, and although I had horses and participated in rodeos, I was mostly a dilettante. I joke sometimes that my best event was the Grand Entry. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the big parade-like entrance into the rodeo arena when everyone is dressed in great-looking outfits, galloping around and around the perimeter on horseback. It’s thrilling. And I definitely had the outfits. So the picture I gave the Mortified producers is a portrait of me in a white western suit, long dark hair under a red felt Stetson hat and red cowboy boots.
And I do look pretty great in the picture. But the somewhat deceptive image of me is not even close to as mortifying as what I was about to read from that sweet-looking pink leather diary. Of course, this hipster bunch in L.A. loved the exotic cowgirl look, along with my Texas accent, and a star was born.
The Get Mortified shows aren’t presented at a theatre but at a rock-and-roll club on Hollywood Boulevard. Most of the time, I was easily 30 years older than some of the other performers in the show, and that just means I was 30 years more hip and the music on my playlists is a lot better.
The shows are well attended, in part because celebrities get involved, too. One night, Elijah Wood read from an awkward screenplay written by some teenage boy. I don’t know how David convinced him and the other actors to do it, but they played it to the hilt with mortifying, hilarious seriousness. Another night, I shared the stage with Alison Brie of “Mad Men,” “Community” and “GLOW.” She and some friends read some raunchy stuff they’d written as angsty teenagers. David Nadelberg told me later that Alison and her girlfriends loved my story about my breakup with my boyfriend Dale, and to this day, every time he sees Alison Brie, she greets him with my teenage Texas twang wailing, “Oh, Dale!”
How humiliating! How mortifying! How fun! To stand up in front of a crowd of L.A. hipsters and get cheers and laughs—What’s not to love? My friends loved it, too. And most of all, Mama loved it. I can see her hip little face sitting there front and center. She was hip as hell, 80-something among 20- and 30-somethings, eatin’ it up when I read all the horrible things my demonic self had written about her in that pink diary. I called her Fossil in the diary, and after the shows, if she was there, audience members looked for Fossil and wanted to meet her. I would always point to her from the stage at the end of my piece, and they would shine a spot on her. She’d get applause. Thank you, Mama, for forgiving me for being such a little shit.
I became a real part of the Mortified machine. My diary entries were featured in their first book, and I read them for the first season of their podcast. I also got a national commercial out of the deal. Ancestry.com reached out to Mortified when they wanted to advertise their new offering of high school yearbooks. They ran a spot featuring my Vidal Sassoon picture —10th grade, I think. The producers of the commercial asked me—Present-Day Lucinda—on camera—what most embarrassed me about my picture. I said, “Nothing! My hair’s cute and my dress is precious!”
So pour yourself a double shot of anything, turn the lights way down in your own Hollywood club, and enjoy this slice of my teenage life.
Click PLAY at the top of the page. Go to the 7:20 mark to hear me read the mortifying entries from my diary!
The prom with Dale
Corvairs and Horny Toads is going on hiatus for a few weeks while we put together the next batch of stories for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you enjoy Corvairs and Horny Toads, please click Subscribe below or let your friends know by clicking Share at the top of the page.
Episode 11: High School Diary Mini-Episode