My "Hot Ones" Nightmare
When I first heard the premise – celebrities eating increasingly spicy wings – I was like, well that sure sounds fucking dumb. But now that I’ve watched a few episodes, I think it may be the best TV show in history. Celebrities in excruciating pain. What’s not to love?
But Hot Ones also stresses me out. Because, while I’m not a celeb, I will often imagine myself as a guest on the show, breaking into a sweat, my tongue pulsating as I’m fed hotter and hotter chicken flesh. Losing control. On camera.
See, I do have a high tolerance for humiliation– I trace it back to the time when I was at Peter’s birthday party in Kindergarten and my overweight father sat on a folding chair and broke it, falling on the ground and causing all my classmates to laugh. Or the other time I was at Lindsay’s birthday party and we were all sitting around in the circle and I puked up the Happy Meal I’d had for lunch.
But what I do not have a high tolerance for is pain. If I’m sitting next to someone and they accidentally kick me, I will say ow, even if I barely felt anything at all. I can’t help it, the ow just kinda COMES out of me. Sort of like a Happy Meal at a classmate’s birthday party.
So when I imagine myself on Hot Ones, I often have a nightmare where, when I get to a spicy enough wing, I shout a racial slur. I don’t consider myself a racist, but it’s hard to predict what will come out of you when you hit a million Scoville units. Who knows, maybe I’d look into the camera and call my mom the c-word. (Author’s Note: I love my mom and I do not think she’s a c-word.) And of course, in this nightmare my episode would be aired live with my mom watching. With her friends.
“Did your son just call you the c-word?” Jackie would ask.
“Yes,” my mom would say, a single tear falling down her cheek.
“I thought he loved you,” Jackie would say.
“I thought so too,” she’d respond.
I’m doing my work-in-progress solo show, “Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dog,” tomorrow 3/21 at QED Astoria. My friends (and brilliantly funny standups) Brendan McLaughlin and Claudia Cogan are also on the bill. If you have the misfortune of living in or near Queens, come on by. I promise not to say something racist, and will do my very very best not to vomit a Happy Meal.