Danny O'Day is Back in Wonderland

I haven't had anything really extraordinary to write about in this blog for many a moon. But today something occurred which is worth scribbling about. I have been going through one of my down periods. Months of dullness despite teaching a college class and producing a weekly two hour radio show on the best public radio station in town. This month alone I hosted "Wonderland" a new variety show at the Vernon Club and appeared on WHAS television's "Great Day Live."

But the last two weeks have been amazing. I'm on fire, my creative energy is flowing without cease. Everyone I talk is in the opposite mood, sick with flu or winter depression. On the phone last week I told  my friend, writer Ed Mcclanahan, "I'm flying." He said , "I'm dying." Sick with the flu he wasn't all that eager to hear about my ecstasy.

Maybe it's the recent return of my alter-ego Danny O'Day, the saucy burlesque comic and singer I created and lived as for nearly ten years during the 1970s.

At the time, I was working my way through college with my sights on a "straight job," thinking at the time I could possibly do such a thing, foolish me.

You see, O'Day is back and just like old times will be singing, telling jokes and hosting Ray Smerlin's brand new variety show at the Vernon Club for the second time March 14.

I will be introducing a huge variety of magicians, ventriloquists, dancers, circus acts and artists of all kinds.

But back to my extraordinary experience. I was cleaning out my office loft this morning when I unearthed one of my old journals. I've kept daily journals for years. There is a stack five feet high in one corner of my loft. But this one was by itself, covered by a bag of old Mardi Gras Beads, that's another amazing fact I'll tell you about later.

As I said the journal was by itself on the floor open to the first page, the first entry February 23, 1994. I yelled down to my wife, "What day is it?" She says, "I think it's the 23rd."

I nearly had a stroke. "Something, somebody, somewhere is trying to tell me something!" Then I realized it was still January. I always get mixed up this time a year. But still that's pretty cool. My journal was talking to me, from 21 years ago.

Let's see, I wasn't having a bad time back then. I was acting in a "short silly" play written by a local playwright and had recently attended a benefit for "Kentuckians for the Commonwealth" at writer/teacher Gurney Norman's home in Lexington.

When you keep a journal it's always nice to go back and read what you were doing decades ago.

On a another note, I spent yesterday arranging new furniture in my studio, singing and getting ready for the party I will be giving on Sunday, February 10.

Entitled "Mardi Gras at Wonderland," it will feature many of the musicians, poets, magicians, performers and artists that will be part of Ray Smerlin's "Wonderland," a large variety show that will be held next, we did the first one in January, on March 14.

Stay tuned for more in the mean time "I'm flying."