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Parkersburg native Seale performs stand-up, has product line

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Humor is important to Parkersburg native Jill Seale.

Her witty sayings and designs appear on cocktail ware, paper party products, back-to-school products, stationery, textiles and ceramics sold at stores around the world.

Seale’s best-selling licensed products include Kitty Katty themes with original quotes such as “I only wish I was as thin as the skeletons in my closet” and “Friends don’t let friends wear more than 25 percent leopard print.”

Seale has performed at comedy clubs in the Charlotte area since May 2012 and hopes to perform more often this year. She will be one of the featured comedians at “Comedy on Tap” at Sonny’s Sports Place in Waxhaw, N.C., at 8 p.m. today.

She has appeared at the Comedy Zone in Charlotte, which hosts touring comedians.

Seale, a 1979 graduate of Parkersburg High School living in Charlotte, will be appearing for a fifth time on the NBC “Charlotte Today” talk show at 11 a.m. Jan. 29.

Seale has found stand-up comedy to be fun and challenging.

“Some jokes don’t work when you deliver them to the audience,” she said. When the audience isn’t laughing at your jokes, it can be a scary thing, she said.

Why did she decide to add stand-up comedy to her business of developing quick-witted quotes and designs for products?

After running her last marathon, Seale said she needed another mountain to climb.

“And that’s right when my friend dared me to do an open mic, so I took the bait. I like doing it because it’s scary and challenging and looking for humor to put a set together keeps me sharp for writing greeting cards and life in general,” she said.

Seale says humor makes the ride of life smoother and easier to tolerate. And humor makes her feel good, she adds.

“In some ways it’s a survival tactic to look at life in challenging times (specifically raising children) and find humor. When other people laugh it’s because they get it and it’s a bond that lets you know you are not the only one,” Seale said in an email.

“Somehow that lightens the load.”

Seale, a West Virginia University graduate, enjoys keeping up with Parkersburg natives and residents on Facebook. Her mother, Karol Goldstein, lives in Parkersburg.

After years of parenting (and laughing at her own wild journey), Seale said she tweaked the Girl Scout Pledge into her original “Mom Scouts Pledge.” It was the basis for her book, “Stark Raving Motherhood: A Mother’s Pledge To Do It All,” which was published in March 2011 by Sellers Publishing.

Seale believes moms everywhere will identify with forgetting to read school memos, pulling dinner out of a hat at the last second, secretly pilfering the kids’ Halloween candy and having “brain freeze” over third-grade math homework.

For more than a decade, Seale’s quotes and designs have been snapped up by major retailers such as Nordstrom, Macy’s, Hallmark, Target, Marshall Field’s, Pier One, Michaels, Bed Bath & Beyond, and World Market.

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