I have known a creepily lifelike doll named Eliza Rickman for several years, and today she released a video for her song, Start With Goodbye. It’s composed of forced perspective vignettes with taxidermied animals. Please enjoy it.
A few days ago I was hosting an open mic and a very funny nice comedian said, “I don’t understand feminism. Do you feminists just want to BE men?” It’s not the first time I’ve heard feminism equated to butchness, yelling at men for opening doors for us, and growing out our Rapunzel-esque leg hair. Not that there’s anything wrong with not being traditionally feminine, but feminism is not about pretending to be manly; to me it is embracing being womanly and feeling empowered in all of its glorious Georgia O’Keeffe floweriness. Because girls just wanna have fun. And why does toughness imply masculinity? Rubber is tough and I’m never like oh man my bike tires totally have a Y-chromosome.I resent the idea that being a feminist means we’re pretending to be men. I am a feminist because I love women and I want women to feel good about themselves. And feeling good about myself does not mean being manly because my happiness does rely on possessing a penis. I’d have to buy new jeggings and learn how to urinate standing up. It would totally cut into my bathroom Vine watching time.
A few weeks ago, Vice Magazine founder Gavin McInnes said, “I think a lot of women smash through the ‘glass ceiling’… and they see their friends from their small town with 3 kids going to soccer practice and they think, ‘That looks kind of cool, actually.” But being a feminist doesn’t mean that we aren’t allowed to bear soccer player children. There are no overlords that will take athletically inclined offspring from us in the night. But that does sound like a cool plot to a young adult novel with a strong female lead!
Hilarious, clever, beautiful pioneer comedian Wendy Liebman said that her definition of feminism is: “Women helping other women.” And that’s really stuck with me. To me feminists are women who want women to feel empowered. We’re not flannel wearing, angry man haters, unless we want to be. As the amazing and insightful comedian Virginia Jones puts it, “Feminism means we can do whatever the fuck we want and we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.”
I’m tough and I cry and laugh and am vulnerable and I wear dresses and whilst doing all those things I’m still a feminist. If feminism is the concept that women should feel good about themselves, how could that possibly be a negative thing? Maybe in bizarro world, which is a construct of the DC universe, and regardless of our stance on gender politics, we’re Marvel kids, amiright? Don’t be a dick. Tune in next week to shave my legs for me.
I was delighted to appear on Think Out Loud to promote All Jane No Dick comedy festival. Here’s the whole article and clip! The article links back on this blog, so the world will become a hall of mirrors, endlessly referencing itself.
OPB | Oct. 17, 2013 12:30 p.m.
This weekend, Portland hosts the second annual All Jane No Dick Comedy Festival. The showcase was created to highlight the work of women comics in an industry that is still dominated by men. By some estimates 80 percent of comedy festival performers are men, and the ratio is similarly unbalanced in the writers’ rooms for TV sitcoms and late-night comedy shows.
Stacey Hallal, the creator of All Jane No Dick, says she often sees stand-up shows with eight men and one woman because there’s a general assumption in the comedy industry that “you can’t put two women in one show.”
Cameron Esposito, an L.A. comedian who will be at All Jane No Dick this year, performed at the fest last year as well. She says the festival doesn’t set up a dynamic of “men versus women.”
“I think what’s great about this festival is it’s like ‘Here’s all these women doing it.'”
GUESTS:
When I was young, full of hormones and Anne Rice novels, I wanted to be a vampire, because living forever would be GREAT. I would get multiple opportunities to make out with David Bowie, for one. I had watched the Hunger so many times that I wore out the rental tape from the Blockbuster in Plano, Texas. (As you know, all the most sinister people rent from Blockbuster).
If I were a wampyr, I would feel powerful and important and I would save a lot of money on food, and I would outlive all of my enemies- except for the very small percentage of them that also became vampires. When life feels like it’s full of infinite possibilities and people and combinations, this is an attractive concept. There will never be enough time to read all you want to read and see all you want to see.
Twenty years later, you couldn’t pay me to be a dirty stinking vampire! If I’m this sick of humanity and media right now, how bad would it be at 500? There’s only fifteen different kinds of people in the world, and I’m sick to death of fourteen of them- Also, if I lived forever, how many Spiderman remakes would I have to endure? Who am I going to talk to? Already, my interests and music references are met with blank looks of incomprehension by young people in bars. What about the little girl vampire in Let The Right One In? Two hundred years old, and all she gives a shit about is sucking blood and working a Rubik’s cube! Who’s gonna talk to me about Robyn Hitchcock and Twin Peaks and Heathers in a hundred years? Huh? Answer me, goddammit!
~THE BEST OF THE BEST OF WOMEN IN COMEDY~
~~OCTOBER 17-20 IN NORTHEAST PORTLAND~~
Innovative, hilarious comedians coming together to perform, discuss, inform, and inspire. A four-day festival featuring stand-up, sketch, improv, panels, workshops, and a documentary screening.
The first and only festival of its kind, this four-day event presents a carefully curated blend of the best up-and-coming comedic performers and nationally headlining comics from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, and beyond.
This year’s lineup includes Bonnie McFarlane (HBO One-Night Stand, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Last Comic Standing), Lauren Lapkus (Orange Is the New Black, The To-Do List, Are You There Chelsea?), Cameron Esposito (The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, “Put Your Hands Together”), and Aparna Nancherla and Janine Brito (writers and performers on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell). Local performers include Portland staples Whitney Streed, Stacey Hallal, Barbara Holm, JoAnn Schinderle, Susan Rice, Amy Miller, and expatriate Virginia Jones.
The goal of this festival is to celebrate the unique voices of women in comedy, providing inspiration and increasing visibility for the top performers of today and tomorrow. It encourages collaboration and dialogue and highlights the great diversity of artistic approaches amidst female comedic performers today.
OK, last Friday a photo of my dog Hazel Samedi Jones with a Damned record in 2007 was posted on Buzzfeed, which I took as a sign from the universe that the genius of Animal Sleeveface was finally being recognized. I’m a little hurt that she gets called a boy, because look at them womanly nips!
See the whole post here.
I am close to taking my Summer Sabbatical, which is not really what it is, but it makes my Mom feel better when I say “I’m Taking A Sabbatical” instead of “I’m quitting my job and hanging out all Summer”. I thought it was time to get my list of “OTHER” skills together and post them on the Internet.
If you feel like you read a slightly different but kind of the same list as this one, it’s because my site was hacked and my service restored from last week’s restore point and I lost it. It’s because SOMEONE was very jealous of my 70 hits a day. Eat it, haters!
1. Pit Toilets: I’m very good at using pit toilets in Asia. You just have to pretend you’re camping, which you kind of are.
2. Sleeping on Airplanes: Also work related. I can sleep bolt upright on a red eye to Turkey and emerge as fresh and ready as if I had slept in a garbage- filled car.
3. Tap Dancing. I’m not the world’s best tap dancer (SAVION GLOVER, because we can really only have one famous tap dancer at a time), but it’s the skill that took the most time and expense to learn, and which has the lowest street value. I’m considering trying to make people pay me NOT to do it.
4. Bemani. It’s no longer fashionable but I can totally do it- I get more points for style than accuracy on Dance, Dance, Revolution, but Karaoke Revolution is my bitch.
5. For that matter, I can lead in six count swing, and I can lead about five things in Lindy hop- I’m a good Lindy follow- I like a lot of dances.
6. I can make dance parties happen. I can make people do it. At karaoke, at coffeeshops- most of the time.
7. Karaoke. I’m good at it. I don’t have the most amazing American Idol style voice, but I know my range and I will perform the SHIT out of a song. I like to work a crowd. When I do it in Hong Kong they are upset with the dancing and eye contact.
8. Comedy. I do it for money and for free. Mostly for free. Don’t ask me to tell you a joke, I’ll make you laugh, m-f. Just you wait.
9. I can draw- I haven’t for around five-seven years, but I probably still can, right? I’m sure I can. I have an art degree. I can blind contour the shit out of something.
10. According to the Munsell test of Color Acuity, I am a Superior Color Discriminator. I will discriminate the shit out of your color. I need a lab coat and a light box with a true North setting. But I will do it.
11. I can make patterns and sew. Again, I usually don’t. But I can make seriously obscure and fucked up Halloween costumes!
12. Goth Makeup and Fantasy Make up! I have an airbrush and I’m not scared to use it, including airbrushing a fake tattoo on you!
13. I’m really good at telling long, involved, interconnected stories to people on acid. I can be on acid or not, it doesn’t matter.
14. I can tell a fake art history lecture at the drop of a hat, especially if the hat is from a particularly evocative period
15. I’m really good at making one kind of vegan chocolate chip cookies. Just one kind.
16. I’m really good at maintaining a blog for 8 years that only my mother consistently reads!
17. If I had just bought my first guitar, I would be a crazy natural guitar playing genius- however, I have had my own guitar for a decade, and play it occasionally. I’m mediocre, but proud!
18. I’m really good at steering an oversized Costco shopping cart with my elbows while eating free BBQ nuts.
19. I’m a good trivia team member- I don’t know that much about television or sports, but I’m very good at arbitration to try to determine the likeliest answer. Also, I like to win but I don’t care if I do.
20. I’m really good at running a White Elephant party. I will whip the crowd into a frenzy over Scratch tickets and a rubber garden gnome. Blood will flow!
21. Despite all the above, I’m really good at not going to Burning Man! I haven’t gone every year it’s happened! Consecutively!
With this kind of skill set, I’m gonna destroy this job market!
Aw, actually, I would almost pet this one… maybe.