Thursday night, a near-packed crowd bought tickets, paid for parking, and fought claustrophobia-inducing LA traffic to watch six people tell stories. And it was worth it. Meet The Moth: a non-profit New York City storytelling collective that meets every other week to compete for the honor of ‘best story’. A select group of mostly high-profile Moth storytellers stopped in LA on a noncompetitive national tour. 
The premise is as simple as it sounds: each member has ten minutes to tell a real-life narrative from his or her past. When the storyteller approaches her time limit, the ever-present violinist/time keeper strikes a foreboding note. Each night, the stories share a common theme, such as ?Scary Wedding Stories? and ?American Myths?. Thursday night?s theme, ?Out on a Limb,? proved quite open for interpretation.
Host Andy Borowitz kicked off the night with a brief story of coming to terms with his inner wimp, starting out as a producer?s assistant in Hollywood. ?I come from a long line of wimps,? he said. ?Wimps tend to come from a long line of wimps, because you know what? Wimps survive.? 
Novelist Jonathan Ames told a wild, articulate story, involving his son?s conception, drugs, Christmas, and transvestites. Ames? self-deprecating humor kept the crowd in rapt attention as he explained his reason for doing coke on Christmas day, ?Well, Freud did a lot of coke,? and freebase crack as, ?Well, Richard Pryor did freebase.? His story ended on the memory of a stranger?s kindness when Ames was at his lowest.
The least satisfying story came from stand-up comedian Margaret Cho. Her tale of dissatisfaction with her crazy agent crossed the line from storytelling to vitriolic gossip. At one point, Cho said, ?What I do with this anger is I Photoshop her face onto amateur porn.? The audience laughed, but was left with the question, ?Is she joking?? Still, anger is a often comedian?s preferred means of establishing pathos, and Cho was certainly funny, if nothing else.
Retired NYPD Lieutenant Steve Osborne proved that the gruff, no-nonsense New York cop is more than just a stereotype. ?A cop?s life is different,? Osborne began. ?We?re not normal people.? Thick Brooklyn accent and all, Osborne told the story of running into an appreciative crack dealer whom he had busted and to whom he had fed hot dogs five years prior.
After acknowledging the evening?s sponsor at intermission, Borowitz joked, ?This evening was also brought to you by crack.?
?Sex and the City? writer Cindy Chupack told the story of her husband?s realization that he was gay in the midst of their buying a home together. Chupack described the purchase of a house as ?the kind of commitment you shouldn?t make when your sexuality is pending.? She admitted that perhaps she should have seen his homosexuality coming. ?In full ?Moth? disclosure,? she said, ?he did go wedding dress shopping with me.?
The storytellers (with the exception of Cho, an LA native) New York roots shined throughout each performance. Fitting, as The Moth was founded by novelist George Dawes nine years ago. He and others would meet in his New York apartment, where they would ?gather around good stories, like moths to the flame.? The Moth soon moved to public venues, and has since become a Manhattan staple.
The biggest cheers were for Darryl ?DMC? McDaniels of hip-hop team RUN DMC fame. McDaniels told the touching story of a bad spell of depression that hit him while he was on tour, and the comfort that came from an unlikely source: the music of Sarah McLaghlan. ?For one year,? he told an amused audience, ?I did nothing but listen to Sarah McLachlan records.? The fits of applause and laughter that filled Royce Hall were a delightful reminder that nothing is more captivating than a good story. The performance was part of UCLA Live?s spoken word series, which will feature cartoonist Gary Trudeau on October 25 and writer David Sedaris on April 25.
