It’s ok if she’s sexy

Well it was a long day of sanding things and painting them and sanding them again…or something. I took a well-earned shower and ate some well-earned raisinets. (Delicious.) And today, in the throes of physical labor, I may have been listening to “107.7 THE BONE.” Ok, yeah, yes i was. Someone else chose it, of course, but I let that happen. I agreed to it. We all have some hand in our destiny, am I right?

Now it really wasn’t all that bad…they played tons of Creedence Clearwater Revival, which is really conducive to sloppin it on there and gettin a blister. They even had this thing called “drive-by stand-up” where they would play these snippets of stand-up shows, and some it was kinda good. I am all for exlporing, or re-discovering, the possibilities radion has to offer, and I think it is a bold and original move. BUT.

Then, this song came on, by a band called “Buck Cherry.” Now, that is a band name that already makes me feel just a teeeny bit violated (not that I am one to run around finding band names that make me feel violated) but then this song came on, and the actual lyrics to the chorus go like this:

“You’re a crazy bitch/
but you fuck so good, I’m on top of it.”

Oh. Kay. Now, I am not offended because this chorus is dehumanizing and misogynist and in poor taste, not to mention bloody unoriginal. I am offended because “bitch” DOES NOT rhyme with “it.”

Just kidding, I AM offended because it is misogynist! Although, “offended” is kind of the wrong word here. I think being offended takes a little more energy than I am willing to dedicate to a band called Buck Cherry, whose band-naming skills and rhyming skills and music playing skills are sub-par in the first place.

But, you guys, I mean COME ON. It’s just lazy. Please PLEASE can we do something new? Like, let’s think of a more ORIGINAL way to demean the people we desire.

A few suggestions:
1) Some new words. “Bitch” is SOOOOO done. How about cunt-horse? Meat-pie? Poo-nah-nee BONANZA? Hmmm? Just a few thoughts to get the ball rollin for ya there…

2) Some better ways to describe the act itself. Again, “fuck” is so COLLEGE, so frat-boy, so spectacularly undescriptive. I would suggest “riding the banana train to kingdom Cum” or “Taking a sweet swoop down the ol’ Vag-tastic Slip’n’slide.” Again, just brainstorming here.

3) Write a song that is about something besides shock-value and selling records, at the expense of an entire half of the population, which is then reduced to a mere hole, just there for gratification, and, hey, it’s ok if you are WHATEVER you are, as long as it enhances my sexual experience.

Oops, sorry lads, that last one was kinda serious. I may sound like a bit of a crazy bitch. But no worries, everyone, I know how to fuck real good.

Chorus Line

So last night I went to see my little sister’s highschool musical, A Chorus Line. For those of you who may not know, this is the musical that takes place in the casting…of a musical. Wow. Way to comment on the medium, guys. I kind of think that maybe it was an exciting idea at the time, but…

Ok, first of all, the show is (sort of) calling into question the de-humanizing reality of auditions, like we all walk in there and dance our little dance and show them who we think they want us to be, and either they like it or they don’t, and we are either chosen or we are not. Ok, so far so good. But in this show, the director wants to see “the real you…who you REALLY are…” and so we get all these soul-searching, deep monologues and songs about Life and Performance. But then, at the end of the show, the director still makes his selection, and 8 people get cut (right in front of everyone) anyway. Now. This whole concept just pisses me off. I mean, it’s one thing to be rejected because you botched a dance step or they don’t think you are right for the part or whatever. But to show who you REALLY are and then have that person be rejected? How fucked up is that?

Because here’s the thing: I have been on both sides of that director’s table during auditions. I knew how it felt to walk into a cold room, with tiny judging faces looking at you, trying not to get too distracted by what you think they are thinking, and then doing a monologue-trying to “act,” and then leaving, having no idea whay they want or what they saw, then looking at a paper list of dreams being either broken or made true. Or something. (Sidenote: monologues are ridiculous. Acting happens between people, in a context. Doing a monologue in an audition is like trying to clap with one hand, in outer space.)

And, I have sat as a director, watching as one by one my peers became weakened by their desire to join in the club I was the self-named president of, and feeling uncomfortable with that power imbalance (but obviously I still agreed to it, so I couldn’t have been that uncomfortable with it. Power structures exist whether we like them or not…right?) I hated that they walked in there and had to perform for me like little wind-up toys, and then be manipulated into doing embarassing things (in the name of gauging their “directability”) alone in front of a group of people. (I was with some other directors. I wasn’t the one telling people to roll around on the ground or pretend a cardboard column was a beautiful woman, but someone was, and people did.)

But I don’t really have a solution. First of all, auditions are such an institutionalized form of a selection for this form, and there is a reason for this: they do serve a purpose. they are useful in a way. You do get a taste of the actor’s abilities, you know some little sliver of who they are and what they do, and you can cast or filter them accordingly. I am not saying I know a better way, I am just asking about this one.

Actually another way to cast is called “favoritism.” That one is basically you can cast your friends and people you know.  You may even choose a show with someone in mind. Of course this happens all the time, even if ostensibly you are “holding auditions.” I would be the first person to decry this favoritism if it had never served me. But of course it has. I have gotten roles because I knew someone or they had seen me or whatnot. And that is actually not necessarily bad, really. Developing working relationships is useful, for one thing.

My sister had a negative experience with this show because she wasn’t part of the main ”line.” She was pissed off to have to do a smattering of shitty background scenes, plus the opening and closing part and then that was it. She is an amazing singer but she doesn’t have dance training so, she says, that’s why she wasn’t on the line. The way they do things at her school is that everyone who auditions gets a part. So then in that case the audition process is intended to be softened, and less scary and dehumanizing. But because of the nature of this particular show, the result ended up being worse than if they had just cut people in the first place. She spent weeks working on something she was barely in. Now, of course there was the politics about who got what role and so and so has been dancing since she was in utero but she cant sing worth a damn or whatever. She was mad because she thought she could have done a better job, which sucs of course.

But I guess my overall feeling is this: auditions are brutal. And they are imperfect. But that is how it is. To try to make it into something else by either using people’s real personalities to measure their value (as in the show) or to just include them for the sake of including them, is not fixing anything essential about the problem. Don’t try to fix just one little easy part of a broken whole, because you can easily make it worse. Plus it is a cop out. (kind of like the end of this post..ehm…)

Women and Comedy

So I was enjoying my current unemployed status (read: i am lame) and i went to the ol’ public library to do some very important cultural research on, you know, THIS CULTURAL MOMENT. as i thumbed through the pages of Vanity Fair (shut up.) i stumbled upon an article called “Hey, women ARE actually funny! after all! and they are pretty!” (note: not really the title of the article.)

The article was all about how women have historically not been thought of as funny, but hello! Now they are! And we got Tina Fey and Sara Silverman and Amy Poehler and hoo-boy, they are so funny and not only that but they are hot! I would totally do them! drunk. or something. And while it is nice to have the rising tide of female comics acknowledged and discussed, I would also like to point something out, just real quick, before we get ahead of ourselves: women make each other laugh. hello. women know how to be funny to each OTHER, we have just never (until recently) been acknowledged in this capacity on the mainstream stage.

Now I know nobody likes a Pouting Pamela, or a Feminist Fiona, or least of all a Screaming Shirley…or whatever. But can it possibly be a coincidence that this article, which is (on some level, at least) intended to applaud the success of female comics, also focuses on the beauty of the women it describes? There is  this “new” female comic, one who is not “confined” to tampon and high-heel jokes, one whose material has more wide-reaching appeal, and one whose face could also be used to sell..um. i was going to say dishwashing gloves. but how about herself? sell herself? because apparently, in the comedy world, cuteness  and hotness are seen (by the sexually-frustrated males in charge of the whole affair) as a detriment. Ginger, you gotta do everything fred astaire does, backwards and in silicone. i mean heels.

So, because cute women are harassed in comedy clubs, and any success they gain is attributed to who they fucked to get there (as opposed to…whatever, i dunno…personal merit?) now we are all supposed to throw a fuckin parade that they are meeting with success. or.

or? this is just another avenue in which the “good looks” monster has descended, casting its youth-worshipping, binge-and-purge, plastic or plastic rules about who gets the spotlight where interesting-looking people once dared to tread.

this is turning into a rant.

I am not saying that pretty women are not funny. jesus. who cares. one of the cool things about comedy is that it doesnt matter what the fuck you look like as long as you can make people laugh. that is supposed to be inclusive, and hey, inclusive includes pretty. i am just not ready to throw a party just because women comics are “allowed” to be pretty. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you kind media! i now have the freedom to spend a large chunk of my income on ways to enhance my appearance! i was so afraid before, i was wasting away in my roseanne flannel shirts and my ellen dykey haircut! now i am free to be cute! once was lost but now am found!

i was pretty stoked that the article recognized that women have been panned as unfunny in the past. i guess jerry lewis or some other famous important old dude is quoted as saying he thought women sucked at comedy, and years later larry king asked him about it and he was like “oh, yeah, i said that…yeah…” some other person said women do not want to take the risk of looking ugly, which narrows down a whole shit-ton of comedic material (the main thing thats left, i think, is “pretty girl with a pottymouth.” sara silverman, anyone?) Of course there is some truth to this, but here’s the thing: if you spend your whole life getting the message that your inherent human value stems from your attractiveness, are you really going to throw that all away for a joke? (oh what a pretty baby girl! oh what a big strong boy! what lovely handwriting, molly! good idea, jake!)

I am just not really ready to blame women for wanting to look hot, even if that means that their mainstream perception as “funny” has to suffer. and if you are ready to criticize women for spending excessive amounts of money and time on their appearance, you better also be ready to shut the hell up when you see a woman with muffin tops, or a unibrow, or any of these other buzzwords everyone likes to toss around to break people’s bones.

oh yeah, also…regarding tampon humor or whatnot. here’s the thing: first of all, of course it is silly for women to have to talk only about *women things* when they get on stage, same way Black comics should not have to just talk about “Black People Things” or Asian people About “Asian Things” and so and so and so on. But part of what makes comedy good is if it is honest, and part of honesty is about taking somewhing real from one’s own experience. what makes you different? what makes you tick? what did they tease you for in school? make a joke about that, it will be HILARIOUS. Women should not be forced to use “lady jokes” or something, but it is bullshit to think that they should shy away from them for fear of alienating a male and male-dominated audience. You know what alienates me? Hamlet! Because that shit is about male psycho-sexual anxieties, oedipus complex and fuckin castration fears and the lot. but i read that shit. and i ignored the part of me that said that what I was reading had NOTHING to do with me, and you know what? that part was wrong. it did have something to do with me…just not everything. but since when is the pleasure of the spectator entirely reliant on identification? how lame. there is something i can gain by reading Hamlet (or, by playing Hamlet, cause I did. ha.) but there is also something to be gained by some dude sitting through a few jokes about me, a heterosexual woman, having sex with a man. deal with it, bro. it’s good for you.

Numero Uno

Hi party people. I am, of course, opposed to this page in principle. Like all the cool people. But Catherine told me that I need an outlet for my genius, and I just can’t argue with that.

I have a lot of ideas spinning around in the ol’ noggin, and post-college drunken discussions just ain’t doin it for me, man! And apparently I can come across as a bit of an arrogant bastard sometimes, but hopefully this will help me channel that shit and maybe, JUST maybe, if i am putting it on here instead of interrupting you with it at dinner, then we can all love the world and hate a bit less, and I can make some friends, or at least keep the ones I have.  (Ah, my first irritatingly-long run-on sentence. I am a natural at this, what do you call it? Bloggong?)

I just have to say that my opposition to blogging stems from the lack of privacy. But try this one on for size: I WANT people to hear my ideas! Some of them are damn DAMN good. If. I. DO…saysomyself.  So anyway this is not a blog for the “today i got the shits and last week i had sex with danny and tomorrow i will be alooooooone..in the rain” (You’ll have to sneak into my room and read my…er..deadjournal? for that one. heh. you little voyeur. whatever, i love it.)

Ok, enough about me, what do YOU think of me?

Just kidding. I dont care.

Love,
Genie