My beloved open mike is happening again at Curious Comedy Theatre on Sunday, December 12th. We’ve been having fun on 2nd and 4th Sundays for over a year now, and I’d like to see you there. Sign-up is at 8:30 and the show starts at 9! Full bar and snacks available!
The time has come to talk of many things, but mostly about what we’re being for Halloween.
I have, in my possession, an awesome wig made by 2guysfromvegas, and I’m watching and rewatching the amazing film Forbidden Zone. Her name is Queen Doris, and she’s more drag queen than woman, or else she’s more woman than this universe can handle.
Of course, the thing that I love about the internet is the opportunity to meet up with like minds-I said something on Youtube about planning to dress as Doris, and I met the lovely Asunder33, who shared this photo with me:
Now, she is going for the colorized and remastered Doris, which is awesome, and in later shots it’s evident that her eye makeup glows in black light, which is also superb. I went for the black-and-white Doris, because that’s what we had on our many-times-watched VHS copy of the film.
Postscript: This costume took on a bittersweet quality when we lost Susan Tyrrell in 2012, who had become my Facebook friend when the lovely Meggie Nicole sent her my Halloween photo.
Fall Arts Preview By Anne Adams, John Chandler, and Randy Gragg
Photo: Michael Schmitt
“You know what really gets my goat?” asks Virginia Jones. “Wolves.”
Pause … hope … laughter.
In the suspenseful lifestyle of casting one-liners for yuks (and bucks), Jones is one of a growing cabal of local weekend warriors tackling stand-up comedy—and, sometimes, slowly, starting to shape their work schedules around the gigs rather than vice versa.
“The great thing about stand-up,” she asserts, “is that you can work and hone until you get it just right … It’s completely unlike brain surgery.” Pause … hope …
On September 4, Jones will perform in the Grand Dames of Comedy showcase at Hawthorne Theatre and host two open-mic nights for Curious Comedy Theater, Portland’s first and only nonprofit comedy group.
“There’s a lot of new energy,” Jones says, noting the three-year-old Bridgetown Comedy Festival’s importing of such nationally acclaimed acts as Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo and the opening of city’s first comedy chain franchise, Helium, which lifted off this summer.
Why the sudden P-town laugh riot? Is it our coping mechanism for rising unemployment? Indie-rock fatigue? Jones calls it a perfect storm of rising national interest (e.g., the reality show Last Comic Standing), plus the growing chops of locals like Shane Torres, Christian Ricketts, and Marcia Belsky.
“There’s all this hungry talent,” she says. “They book anywhere they can—old-man bars, Thai restaurants—just to some get mic time.”
“When I started doing showcases, going to comedy was only slightly less hip than going to a funeral,” Jones adds, without pause but with plenty of hope. “I think now it’s starting to explode.” —AA
CURIOUS COMEDY THEATER’S COMEDY ROULETTE
Oct 8-23, Nov 6-20 A small cast of improvisational cutups including Stacey Hallal, Bob Ladewig, Virginia Jones, and Josh Fisher will redirect their comedy sketches and prepared material based on whatever the audience wants to see. Can we handle that much responsibility? Curious Comedy Theater, 5225 NE MLK Jr. Blvd. 503-477-9477. curiouscomedy.org
GREAT DAMES OF COMEDY
Sept 4 at 8 A slew of she-larious locals storm the stage in (presumably) diamonds, feathers, and big hats for a little X-chromosome humor. Picture the rowdy gals and quiet introverts from your high school all grown up and cracking wise. Belinda Carroll hosts.
Many thanks to the all-powerful and benevolent Anne Adams for including me.
This Spring, come time-travel to a mutant 60’s variety show, SOCK IT TO ME, where sketch, stand-up, dance, and aerial artistry collide!
Featuring local comedy favorites Virginia Jones and Gabe Dinger! Famous Mysterious Actor troupe members Josh Fisher and Wally Fessler! Curious Comedy founders Bob Ladewig and Stacey Hallal! Comic actors Scott Rogers and Katie Behrens! With dance and aerials from Daniela Steiner, Kyoko Uchida, Stephanie Seaman and Stephanie Cordell!
SEATTLE! Look out. For Christ’s sake. I’m gonna be up there. Really soon. There’s very little you can do to avoid it, except, I guess, not show up at Chop Suey on Madison at 9. But what fun would that be? I’m traveling with the always-odd Christian Ricketts.
At the risk of being an asshole, I want to tell you a story about this show.
With four years of comedy under my belt, I was delighted to be invited to come up to Seattle for a midweek showcase. I considered it a real high point in my career as a mostly unpaid comedian. I was also offered that I could bring another Portland comic for a set. Magnanimously, I reached out to Christian Ricketts, who was funny and who I liked, along with everyone else I knew. At the time, liking Christian was just a hobby, like how girls put on drag queen makeup for TikTok today.
PROK posted about the show on Facebook, and a woman in Seattle said something to the effect that she’d like to get a closer look at Ricketts.
This activated his ex-girlfriend, who lived in San Francisco. where she had publicly berated me onstage to a crowd that DID not GIVE a SHIT. She got in a car and drove to Portland and said she wanted to come along. It reminded me of the time NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak put on a diaper and drove cross country to attack her rival. Christian called me and casually asked, hey, can she ride with us?
I said no, I didn’t care for her, and I didn’t want to go from being on a buddy roadtrip to chauferring a couple. She was mean to me. He could drive them, or he could just not go, and either one was fine with me. Someone else could do his set.
I don’t know what conversation transpired, but he called and announced dramatically that he was coming alone.
Fine.
We had a fun drive, and then one of the hosts, Kevin Hyder, greeted me and I introduced him to Christian. “And I understand”, Kevin said, “you brought another comic?”
No, I said, confused.
“Yeah, she called and said she was on the bill.” Amazing. Bitch had booked herself.
I don’t know if Christian’s Seattle admirer came or not, she didn’t appear to come introduce herself. Christian and I had good sets and had fun, and then we drove back and I dropped him off at 2AM, then went to work in the morning.
The ex girlfriend moved to LA but hasn’t done comedy in years, so all of this energy being aggravated with her is useless. I try to have empathy for her, but she’s only been awful to me, so it’s hard.
Well, I’m honored to be included in New York’s finest all-comedy magazine, The Comedians. I’m in the same issue as Larry Miller!
Virginia Jones
written by Kelly Mackin
Standing in front of the crowd. Making them laugh. Having all of their attention on you. When a comic hits the road, it’s where he or she thrives, where they are most comfortable. Then there are shows, like the one Portland, Oregon comic Virginia Jones experienced her rookie year in nearby Medford:
“In this ‘venue’,” she recalls, “there was a microphone stand on stage. Behind it was this shiny brass pole! As I walked on, I asked, ‘Is this what I think it is?’ A second later, a guy in the back yells, ‘Yes! That’s where the pretty girls dance!’ I had to call my mom. I asked her, ‘Mom, am I pretty?’ She said to me, ‘Honey, you are unique.’”
Some people become famous because they want fame more than anything else in the world. They reform and repackage themselves into whatever idea they think will make them appealing. They sell whatever parts of themselves people will purchase, like a personal pawnshop where everything’s for sale.
Not Virginia Jones.
A transplanted Texan who’s found a home here in the Pacific Northwest, Jones is a 30 year-old comic who’s now three years past her first open mic. In her act, she exhibits cares in what she says, taking her time to relate an idea. A famous professor once said that speakers of English get anxious after five seconds of silence. That’s just the rest note between the beats for Jones.
You can find her on YouTube where one of her segments features her dealing with an unlikely heckler at a show in Austin, her mother. We’ve all been to homecomings, but it’s rare when we have to good naturedly joke, as Virginia did, in front of a crowd, “Mother, I love you. But if you step on my punchline again I will punch you in the face.”
“Most people heckle because they think it will help,” says Virginia, “or because they want the attention. Hecklers don’t bother me very much and I think it’s a mistake to get upset with them. My mother heckled me simply because she didn’t realize that it was something she should not be doing. ”
According to her website, badinia.com, Virginia was the first runner-up in the Portland Amateur Comedy Contest in 2007, was a finalist in the 2008 Comedy Knockout, and is a biomass made mostly of carbon.
Seeing her live, you notice how she is tall, pretty, and has a lot of stage power. “The first time I saw her do comedy,” says comedian Jessa Reed, “was at a show we did together in 2008. She killed. She stood up against men with bad feet wearing sandals. It moved me. I was convinced that she was always trying out new material on me, but I come to find out she just really is that funny.”
It took several weeks to interest Virginia in an interview. She just didn’t seem interested. But at last, she told me about a show she was doing up in Washington. So I drove up The Five to a beer hall/ comedy club called Peter Pipers at an I-5 truckstop, about a third of the way to Seattle. It was an inauspicious location. But the town was well-lit and clean, much to my surprise.
During the course of the night, she showed she clearly loved being in the presence of other comics, finding acceptance and support. As Jessa noted, “Virginia appreciates the talent and doesn’t have to compete.”
As much as comics rate each other and audiences rate comics, comics rate audiences. Virginia was asked about her favorites.
“My favorite gig is the Women’s Comedy Festival in Eugene Oregon,” Jones says. “It’s just the most supportive audience. I pick up so much energy from that.”
“My least favorite comedy venues are goth clubs. I mean, they are way too cool to actually laugh.” She chuckles. “I once did a regular gig at a club and four goth friends showed up. The entire place was in tears and they just sat there, with their goth clothes and makeup. It’s just not part of the goth culture to laugh. That’s just the way they are!”
Over Lunch at Nell’s Café in Portland, he revealed herself as sensitive and clear headed, intense and sweet. I asked her about what fuels her interest in comedy. She said, “I was a blue state woman who grew up in a Red State: Texas. What more do you need to know?”
“I used to have a Keep Abortion Legal sticker on the back of my car when I lived in Texas,” says Jones. “People used to try to peel them off, or deface them. They would rip it so that it said emKeep Abo Lega/em. I’d just put another one back on there. Then one day, a truck on the road started bumping me from behind. I moved over and they kept doing it, even heading around a cul-de-sac. They were trying to run me off the road. They were trying to kill me. People in Texas are different. You say something, it gets transformed. They hear something different. You say, ‘feminist’ and they hear, ‘Lesbian serial killer. It’s just how they’re wired. I came to Portland and I said, ‘I feel like I found my people. I’m no longer the outsider.’”
To some, expressing an opposing point of view is a statement of rebellion. In Virginia’s case, it’s more a state a mind; useful in surprising a crowd that doesn’t know what to expect next. She’s married to experimental musician Thomas Jones, a decision her mother was against at the time. Virginia recalls with laughter and irony why that no longer bothers her. “They (her parents) were both divorced. Really divorced.”
Jessa Reed adds, “Virginia says horrible things about Paris Hilton that make me laugh. But when every other woman comic in our age group is telling jokes about her kids, Virginia will give you twenty minutes on why babies are not where it’s at. And it’s hilarious.”
“Sure. I don’t like babies,” says Jones. “People go gaga for babies. That’s fine. But that’s not me. I don’t want to be a mother. I’m fine with that. I wanted my husband to do the surgery, and he didn’t want to. Besides, it might make him sleep around.” She smiles.
Virginia strikes one as aloof at first. But that’s an essential part of what makes her an interesting comic. Her timing is unique. It’s legato, a slow waltz, like cool jazz. If you recognize the humor in jazz, then you know what I mean. She also has a strong variation in dynamic range, going from whispers to loud; all for effect. She usually takes the time to breathe while smiling at you like she knows she has a gift for the audience. If you listen to a lot of comedy, you think, “this is different. It’s compelling.”
One of Jones’ keynote riffs involves her mom’s dating and how mothers and daughters relate as grown-ups. “My Mom has started dating on seniorsmeet.com, which is THE place to go if you want to date my mother. She’s an attractive lady in her 60’s. She’s got 12 cats. She likes Motown. She’s a Baptist and lives in a small town in Texas. Contact me. I’ll get you in touch with her. [Laughter.] She was writing me all the time about this guy that she met up there, ‘He’s so hot. He’s so hot!’ So she sent me a picture of him. Uh, hmmm. We are operating with very different definitions of hot!”
Kelly Mackin is a writer from Portland.
Listen, I know you like me, and I like you, and you wish we could be together all the time, but we can’t. This is a hard fact of life. You’ve got your job and your family, and sometimes I’m in telling jokes in a casino or a bar & grill. Enter the good people at the Coghlan mint: artist 2nd Coming made this picture of me and has made it available for the general public.