Below is a article my cousin Chuck who went with me wrote about the event and my participation with the Moth. He is crazy good with the written word, I can't wait for him to tell a story at a Moth event.
When I saw Courtney a month before the GrandSLAM, she was trying to
figure out what to put in her bio. The producers had asked for a
paragraph or so to print in the playbill and she seemed frustrated to
have only come up with “wife and mother of three”. It sounded like
something carved on a marble headstone, but I’ll admit I couldn’t
think of anything either. The titles of wife and mother describe her
well, even if they gloss over things a bit.
I wasn’t surprised to hear she’d won. She’s damned funny, after all,
and we’re a storytelling family. We spend so much time retelling our
favorites that knowing what sparks amusement and what douses it with
cold water is second nature to her.
I was, however, surprised she’d gotten on stage at all. Of the people
in our family, she’s probably the least interested in drawing
attention to herself. When I found out she came up with her 1st story an
hour before going onstage, I was even more impressed. I’m just glad
she did it.
I finally saw her in Detroit and her nervousness about it seems funny
now. The audience was with her, right from the start. It was the kind
of story you can’t help but react to with your entire body. You could
practically hear the jaws dropping and hands covering mouths. Still,
she flew through the story, barely pausing between sentences to soak
up the laughter. She might have to work on enjoying the prestige a
little more next time.
But for now I’m happy, at least, that we’ve solved the problem of her
bio. The next time she decides to be uproariously candid in front of a
few hundred strangers, she can say she’s a wife, mother of three and
GrandSLAM champion.
