Apart from Banksy shredding one of his paintings, this open mic simulator is best thing I’ve seen this week.
It’s a choose-your-own-adventure game about stand up comedy. Make sure to try ALL the options. Find the screenplay, the erotic tale, and the list of 1000 funny women that includes a shout out to yours truly!
This is a lifelike recreation of what it’s like to do open mic comedy in Los Angeles!
Is actually the industry’s fault. There are all kinds of women comics and non-binary comics talking about all kinds of things in all kinds of ways- but the comics who progress through the system JUST HAPPEN to be model-hot comics talking about their vaginas. So, Iliza is right, and Iliza is wrong, like we all are. 10/16/21
“I could walk into The Improv, close my eyes, and I can’t tell one girl’s act apart from another,” she said. “That’s not saying that 30-something white guys don’t all sound the same sometimes, but I’m banging my head against the wall because women want to be treated as equals, and we want feminism to be a thing, but it’s really difficult when every woman makes the same point about her vagina, over and over. I think I’m the only woman out there that has a joke about World War II in my set.”
Since I’m a woman comic who plays the Improv, this annoyed me.
So I did a selfless thing.
I watched Iliza’s newest special, Confirmed Kills.
I wanted to see how a truly original comedy mind works.
SPOILER ALERT-it’s not even a WWII joke, it’s about a baby boomer coming home from the war to fuck and be racist. THANKS, GENIUS.
Here are my notes.
1. Dog walks across stage in a long ballgown. This is the best.
2. Establish that this is Chicago.
3. There is a Party Goblin in the back of your head and it is your Id. This is a more animated rehash of Larry Miller’s Ten Stages of Drinking from the 80’s. Five-six minutes. She uses a D&D voice and then a sorority girl voice. Those are the two. There is a lot of kicking, I guess so she can fit another workout into her day.
4. Instagram joke
5. People like to talk when they’re drunk.
6. She’s the alpha in her group of friends. OBVIOUSLY.
7. Racist joke about being in Chinatown.
8. Tag from Calgon commercial from before she was born
9. Dudes need to pick girls up on time or else we’ll put on body glitter
10. Not trashy, just doing trashy things
11. One of the difficult things about being a woman is everything
12. There’s four minutes a night where a woman feels comfortable in her own skin
13. Talks about lip-liner, refers to self as a Chola
14. Joke about balls
15. Needed to find lip-liner in a big bag
16. Joke about method of finding lip-liner in bag
17. This is essentially women be shoppin’
18. Oh lord this is about the shit in the bottom of your purse
19. I think Erma Bombeck covered this in 1968
20. If you use an open tampon, you’ll die on the Oregon Trail
21. Dumps out bag on dance floor, makes Helen Keller joke
22. Door guy has to be described as good-looking because she said he’s black, so she doesn’t get in trouble with the PC police
23. Door guy leaves her alone because she’s “white girl crazy”
24. She felt vulnerable bent over on the floor in public
25. Gets an applause break by saying “nay” in fake D&D nerd voice
26. Women feel vulnerable because they are not as physically strong as men, if we were strong, we would never have waited for the right to vote, weakness is why women have to be scared of rape
27. Does an extended and very appreciated series of poses to show off her extremely toned body
28. CrossFit is a cult
29. CrossFit exercises are weird.
30. Women are strong in childbirth
31. Act out of delivery, when your child is in danger you can draw on mother’s strength
32. Second reference to single women being afraid of rape
33. That’s why sexual harassment is a big deal: you can wear whatever you want, it doesn’t give the right for someone to harass you- and it’s about the underlying notion that he could rape you if he wanted
34. Hard to be a woman: when men sexually harass you and you find them unattractive. This is a great message. If he’s hot, it’s just flirting. Super funny and brave and smart. It’s OK for men to comment on your body if they’re hot
35. Women and men shop differently
36. Does a bit mocking women who are trying to be creative or find themselves
37. Personal body goals: never thin enough, wants to look like the starved child on the Les Miz flyer, and other weird ana-positive stuff.
38. Women have to be thin to be vulnerable so men will love us
39. Strong women are told to tone it down- wear high heels so you can’t run from your attacker, smoky eyes look like you’ve been choking on a dick
40. Men aren’t allowed to be vulnerable but too bad (Agree)
41. Some women die trying to be thin
42. You have to be the thinnest in your group of friends, pose-off between women. You want to be the kind of thin where your friends are worried for you. “I wear a youth large” Makes a weird joke about R. Crumb comics but thinner, has never seen a woman in an R. Crumb comic
43. It’s only the last 40 years that women of color have made it OK to have an adult body
44. It’s OK to bully and fat shame white women on Facebook (?) Is it?
45. WASP jokes
46. Black women have good self esteem (three women in the audience of a thousand respond)
47. She said “a black”, OK.
48. Iliza’s “Lean In” moment: you have to take respect, not wait for it
49. Iliza shares that whatever your body is like is OK, while she has spent the whole set demonstrating that it’s not, over and fucking over again. But be proud of your body! Even if it’s not as good as hers!
50. Commanding respect through the way that you speak
51. It’s not OK to talk about sex or sexual stuff and it’s not where your power comes from. If we talk about sex, it lets people know it’s OK to sexualize us (see 34)
52. Mermaid shaming
53. Fourth rape joke at 42 minutes in
54. Fifth rape joke and a joke about how the Japanese would eat mermaids
55. Little mermaid was a liar and a hoarder
56. Five minutes talking about how mermaids would have dreadlocks
57. More mermaid shaming #nomermaids
58. Mermaid anal prostitution
59. Jesus Christ, are we still talking about mermaids? This has been ten minutes
60. WW2 joke: what made America great was military men returning home and growing up, making families, not trying to find themselves
61. Pandering pro military statement gets lots of applause
62. Back to talking about white grandparents, baby boomers, rock and roll, Millennials showed up and invented Instagram
63. People are mean to women when they like themselves on Instagram, only fat girls can be on Instagram
64. Talks about how dumb her ex-boyfriend was
65. Men can date dumber and women can’t. Men will date a Popsicle stick in a wig
66. Makes fun of ugly girlfriend who rescues animals and has a great personality
67. “You want to be a feminist, but we have to get attention”
68. I’ve dated ugly guys who were funny and smart. YOU’RE A HERO ILIZA!
69. Women are chastised for talking a lot, this comes from caveman hunter and gatherer times and sharing of information
70. She will be a feminist and clarify: it means you want to be treated fairly and a lot of women don’t like to say that they’re feminists because it’s not attractive
71. Portrait of an unattractive woman feminist
72. Wage gap: gotta close it-but let’s start with porn, where a woman kicks in a door and demands oral sex. Sure
73. (She says that’s so gross, OMG that’s awful, that’s so off brand)
74. Have you ever been having sex with your boyfriend and gotten excited because it’s almost done and you can go to the farmer’s market?
75. Don’t talk to your boyfriend after sex
76. Goblin impression callback
77. What women think about during sex (lavender, food, your mom)
78. If you’re not happy, don’t stay in a relationship out of fear of being alone
79. We like to label single women negatively and we have to be kinder to women
80. #fuckbitchesgetmoney (I don’t know what this means)
81. Women spend so much time hating themselves and trying to meet someone and men can relax because they don’t have eggs
82. Shark Tank: I want a live episode of Shark Tank. (Giant act out closer)
OK, all in all- I respect her ability to churn twenty minutes of animated stand up out of a premise better suited as a tag.
She refers to herself as a feminist many times while mocking unattractive women, fat women, and letting women know it’s not OK to be sexual. (She keeps saying this word, feminism. I don’t think it means what she thinks it means.) She’s a pick-me girl. She’s the antithesis of feminism.
However, in this special, it’s true that she only mentions a vagina a couple of times.
I stopped eating meat 30 years ago today and this is what I’ve learned:
Tell people you had to stop eating meat for health reasons. Say you were gonna die if you didn’t stop. That will make them feel better. If you say it’s for moral or environmental reasons, that makes them feel bad. They will hate you.
Hitler was a vegetarian for health reasons and everyone liked him, I guess.
If you go to someone’s house who eats meat, they will give you something covered in cheese. They are not sure what else there is.
Sometimes vegans are annoying but that sometimes carnivores are annoying and also smell like dead flesh.
Discourage romantic partners from veganism because when you break up, the next time you see them they will eat a rolled up hamburger patty over a fire. It will be weird.
BBQ sauce is still delicious, because it’s just ketchup and liquid smoke.
“Tofurkey” is a spoonerism of Faux Turkey, so you can stop wondering about that.
If a consumer package is green, I know it’s for vegans, if it’s black it might be for fancy vegans!
I have never, ever, not for one day in the past 30 years, gotten my RDA of protein of 65 grams a day. How am I still alive? God’s will. Or else, that RDA is bullshit.
Every cup in a breakfast place stinks like eggs from the dishwasher. Now you have a superpower.
Before we had Garden Burger, we made veggie burgers out of falafel that we made kind of flat.
Meat is Murder made me a vegetarian, even though it’s not a very good song and has cow noises in it from those little turnover cow things.
Did you know that if a neighborhood has a good coffeeshop, bike lanes, and a vintage store, it must by law have a vegan cafe?
When California was in heavy drought, some restaurants had tabletops suggesting eating vegetarian to save water.
I laughed, vegetarians have been saying that for years but everyone acted like we were nuts.
The first vegan I ever met in the world was Derron Pulley, and he ate nothing but fried tofu and brown rice, because we lived in Dallas, and this probably scared me off trying veganism for a decade.
Vegetarians think they’re 90% like vegans and vegans think vegetarians are one late lunch from eating cooked ground beef by the handful.
Eating vegan is easy. Everything that the earth makes, that grows from the ground or from the trees is vegan until you start shoving animals into it.
I’m practicing spot gratitude.
Today is the 12th anniversary of my first open mike. It was under the expert hosting of Kevin-Michael Moore at the Boiler Room in Portland, which is now a Starbucks.
Since then, I’ve been graciously given spots at lots of places by lots of people.
From backroom bars to club sets to road rooms, they’ve all given me the spots that shaped my inscrutable comic persona.
Several of these people are famous now. A few are dead. Some quit doing comedy. But I thank all of ’em.
I got to do an episode of the incredible Dork Forest Podcast with Jackie Kashian, whom I inundate with Labyrinth trivia. We also try to help her figure out the difference between David Bowie and Billy Idol. Jackie is a legend and I love her, I love Labyrinth, and I love all of you.
Check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/
MONDAY: It picks up the silk kimonos from the cleaners. It checks the ticket very, verrry carefully before it gets back into its Geo Metro, to make sure it has the right number of kimonos. We do not want to punish It like last time. It’s harder on Us than on It.
TUESDAY: It sorts tax receipts. It puts mileage receipts in the blue envelope, it puts business purchases in the pink envelope, and it puts tattoo-and-piercing related expenses in a manila envelope. IT DOES NOT SPEND ALL DAY FUCKING AROUND ON FACEBOOK! Nobody wants to see a photo of what It ate for lunch, the food makes It look and smell disgusting.
WEDNESDAY: It brings a fruit plate for Jenny’s baby shower. It chooses a fruit plate with a lot of strawberry and pineapple and not as much melon or kiwi.
THURSDAY: We apologize for saying that it smells disgusting. It sometimes does not smell very bad. We still need It to dust the house, and also to collect all loose teeth into a Mason jar.
FRIDAY: It gets paaaaid. Yayyyy. It can buy all the tacky blue mascara and Lee Press-on Nails it wants. It cashes Its check right away, so that it does not appear outstanding on our bank balance. It is on call all weekend, so It does not turn Its phone off! Its phone is never off!