Wisecrack: Feminism and Comedy

Small Screen: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2011-10-10T16:07:00.004-05:00

Don't miss Jamie Peck's "Does TV's Year of the Woman Really Constitute Progress If All The Shows Suck?":

...This disappointing lack of progressiveness gets less surprising when you consider that the percentage of women working in writers’ rooms has dropped from 35% (in ’06-’07) to just 15%. (The percentage of racial minorities is even worse, and a topic for a whole other essay.) The easy slide into sexist jokes gets a whole lot easier when there are few women around. And as for the shows’ quality, it’s not like King Of Queens or Two and a Half Men is any funnier than Whitney or 2 Broke Girls, but the success of shows like The Office, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock shows that it’s possible for a show to be smart and hilarious and remain on the air. It’s great that women are gaining more visibility in TV, but we still have a ways left to go. With quantity must come quality; just because you have a vagina doesn’t automatically make your material a step forward for women, or for comedy.

[For the record, I really, really wanted to like 2 Broke Girls. Maybe they can still salvage it?]

Roseanne Barr + Amy Goodman = OMG

2011-08-04T07:51:00.000-05:00

Liza Donnelly's TED Talk: Drawing Upon Humor For Change

2011-05-04T15:10:00.000-05:00

Lyndsay Hailey's "30% Chance of Hailey" Solo Sketch Show

2010-02-15T16:19:00.007-06:00

What are you doing Tuesday at 8pm? If you reside in Chicago, do yourself a favor and check out "30% Chance of Hailey," comedian Lyndsay Hailey's solo sketch show.

Hailey's comedy is hard to quickly characterize: The show includes real life stories, hyper-energetic rapping, historical romance, gymnastics, impeccable accents, singing and a lovely dose of audience participation. Hailey is a comedian's comedian- her jokes almost take on a meta quality as she's simultaneously being funny and making fun of the comedic convention being used. (Think poking fun of vague miming or obligatory audience participation... Okay, admittedly less funny when you try to explain it, but funnier when you actually see it!) Her grandiose characters are well complemented by the subtler moments when she plays herself, reenacting her own experiences.

Upcoming shows:

Tuesday, February 16
Tuesday, February 23
Tuesday, March 02

All shows are at 8:00 PM in the Del Close Theater at iO- tickets are $12 (FREE for iO students)

Women Stand Up and Shoot: A Comedic Film Competition

2010-01-24T18:04:00.005-06:00

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/37899119@N06/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The phenomenal folks at Women Stand Up! and the IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts have teamed up to host Women Stand Up and Shoot, a competition designed to promote and encourage women writers, actors and directors in film comedies. Bust out your typewriters, boom mics and dialect coaches... it's on.

Submissions are due by April 21st, and the films will be screened at Minneapolis's Bryant Lake Bowl Theater in May.

Eligibility Guidelines:
1) Films must have a female writer or director
2) Films must feature a female lead or leads
3) Films must be comedic
4) Films cannot be longer than 10 minutes

Films will be judged by nationally-known funny Minnesota-bred women: Lizz Winstead, a writer and comedian, a founding member of Air America Radio and Co-Creator of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show;” Mary Jo Pehl, one of the original writers for Mystery Science Theater 3000, which aired on Comedy Central and the Sci Fi Channel, and a writer for Minnesota Monthly; Jackie Kashian, a stand-up comedian who has toured nationally for over 14 years, has appeared on CBS, NBC, and the Nationally syndicated Radio/TV show Bob And Tom, and has a half-hour special on Comedy Central.

HOW TO APPLY:

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS APRIL 21ST 2010.

Please send the following information in an email to Dana Buchwald at womenstandupandshoot@gmail[DOT]com:

-Your name, address, phone number, and email address
-Title of the film
-Length of the film
-A brief synopsis of the film (no more than 50 words)
-A short bio (no more than 50 words)

You may submit your film on a DVD or as a URL.

If you are submitting your video online, include the link in the body of your email.

You do not need to submit a DVD if your work is available online.

If you are submitting a DVD, you need to send FOUR copies of the DVD. Each DVD must be labeled with:
-The title of the film
-Length
-Your name
-Your phone number

Send or bring 4 copies of the DVD to:

IFP Minnesota
WSU-Shoot
2446 University Avenue West, Suite 100
St. Paul, MN 55114

For more info, contact Lu Lippold, llippold@ifpmn[DOT]org or Dana Buchwald, womenstandupandshoot@gmail[DOT]com

Kudos to Women Stand Up! and IFP MN for creating spaces for comedic women in film.

Rest in Peace, Jean Carroll

2010-01-04T13:22:00.005-06:00

Punchline Magazine has a nice obit for Jean Carroll, who passed away on Friday. Also, check out the New York Time's obituary.

Chicago Panel: "Four Women Talk About Being Funny"

2009-11-01T16:30:00.003-06:00

Thanks to Carlin for passing this on! [Editors note: sorry about the unannounced hiatus in posting... we're back in the fray!]
From the Chicago Humanities Festival website:

What do funny and feminine and feminist have to do with each other? Anything? A lot? Four influential women in Chicago’s theater scene talk about what they’ve learned about being funny. With experiences—some funny, some not—in writing, directing, improvising, and acting, their conversation may range far and wide in search of what role gender plays in delivering and receiving humor, or if gender plays a role at all. Martha Lavey, ensemble member and artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre, will moderate the roundtable discussion, which will include Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, actor and director of 500 Clown; Tanya Saracho, writer, actor, and founding artistic director of Teatro Luna; and Lauren Katz, founding member of ED, a long-form improv group born in Chicago.

Where:
Francis W Parker School
2233 N Clark Street
Chicago, IL 60614

Tickets:
Adults: $5.00
Educators & Students: FREE

When:
Sat, Nov. 14 10:30 - 11:30 AM

GroupThink Update: The Interview

2009-09-22T01:25:00.002-05:00

Wisecrack sits down with Wendy Rosoff and Angela Espinosa of GroupThink.

Plus, the newest GroupThink Glimpse:

30 Rock Takes Home More Emmys

2009-09-21T08:38:00.003-05:00

30 Rock, once again, won Outstanding Comedy at the Emmys (for the third consecutive year). On top of that, 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, 30 Rock writer Matt Hubbard took Outstanding Comedy Writing (in the outstanding writing category, four out of the five nominees were 30 Rock episodes). Fey also snagged the Best Guest Actress in a Comedy for her SNL Palin portrayals last fall.

Other notable wins:

Toni Collette took home Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for The United States of Tara (extended props to creator Diablo Cody).

Glenn Close won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Damages.

Kristin Chenoweth, of Pushing Daisies won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

What We're Watching: GroupThink

2009-09-16T07:58:00.008-05:00

Angela Espinosa and Wendy Rosoff are the brilliant minds behind the self-produced online sketch comedy show GroupThink. I'm honestly not sure which is better, the writing of this show or their wonderfully nuanced delivery. Check out all their videos (and subscribe) over here.

The latest episode (but do yourself a favor and check out the others):

Despite the radically different format, they remind me of Chicago's own Money Kids (okay, now in New York). And not just because they're a brilliant two-woman sketch group. Because every once in a while, a duo comes along with such great chemistry that half of the fun is just watching them have fun:

Congratulations to Marina Franklin

2009-09-13T15:16:00.002-05:00

Seeing as she is three things this blog loves (hilarious, from Chicago, a woman), Wisecrack has previously big-upped Marina Franklin on several occasions for her continued commitment to awesome. So it was with that thrill of excitement/arrogance that comes when the rest of the world realizes something you always knew to be true that we read that Ms. Franklin will be working as a "comic correspondent" on Jay Leno's new show.

From Chicago Now:

Chicago is killing the game, comedy-wise of late. First, Hannibal Buress -- local stand-up star-- gets the call to join "SNL" to be a writer.

Now, we've gotten word that Marina Franklin, another Windy Town native, has landed a gig on the new "Jay Leno Show." She, along with a list of comics including DL Hughley, will serve as a comic correspondent on the show that debuts on Sept. 14.

Yessssss. I'm pretty dubious about the prospects of Leno's new show, especially considering that it's a big fuck-you to Conan O'Brien, and also that Leno's a huge hack, but with Franklin on board, there's a chance it could actually be worth watching. Plus, good for her and all that.

Here's Franklin on YouTube:

Thanks to Chicago Now.

Agorafabulous! An Interview with Sara Benincasa

2009-08-30T19:25:00.019-05:00

In the next on our continuing series of awesome fucking interviews with awesome fucking comedians, Wisecrack sat down with comedian, writer, and talk-show host Sara Benincasa in advance of her September 19th one-woman show at Chicago's Playground Theater.

Benincasa has been a fixture in New York comedy circles for the last few years, ever since the debut of her talk show "Tub Talk With Sara B." on Nerve.com, wherein she interviewed comedians and humorists in her bathtub. Seriously, who doesn't like half-naked comedians?

Since then, she's been working steadily, if not furiously, developing two one-woman shows, hosting Cosmo's "Get in Bed" sex advice show on Sirius Radio, and, most notoriously, skewering Sarah (with an "H!") Palin in a series of YouTube "vlogs" that eventually merited an interview with Jeanne Moos for Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room on CNN. She will be in Chicago on September 19th, performing her most recent show, "Agorafabulous," at The Playground Theater.

I figured I’d start with the heavy stuff. What fascinates me most about your career is your transition from anxiety and mental illness to performance. Could you tell me a little bit about how that came about?

Good question. I recognize that it seems sort of…there was a lot that went into it, there were many years of hard work that went into being able to leave my house (laughs). There was a bad bout of agoraphobia. I had trouble with panic attacks for a long time, starting when I was about ten years old. It didn’t pose a debilitating problem until I was in high school. Nothing that I couldn’t manage. It happened in a big way for the first time when I was 18; [Agorafabulous] talks about what happened when I was 21. When it became actually debilitating was when I was 21 in college, when I had a nervous breakdown. I wasn’t doing normal things like showering, leaving the room, things like that. That was the lowest point for me (I’m 28 now). So what happened then is my parents came and got me and I started doing intensive cognitive behavioral therapy. Basically, reprogramming yourself when you’ve been programmed with ideas that are going to hurt you. Cognitive behavioral therapy is for people that suffer from anxiety from all levels. Because you get actual homework, and you practice things you’re afraid of, you take baby steps, like in What About Bob, except Bill Murray isn’t there. Richard Dreyfuss helped me a lot. We’re married now.

So I started some intensive therapy. But then I started doing more real world things, got a job, applied to college. I’ve been doing therapy on and off since then. I think I’ve probably had four solidly healthy years since I was 24; the years from 21 to 24 were a building process.

I was not a performer at the time, and the way I became one was I went to grad school for a high school education degree, and I was unhappy, and a friend from Comedy Central told me I was funny and I should go into comedy. I started to do it to blow off steam in 2006, and I completed my masters and didn’t want to teach, so I began performing at nights, and doing pretty well, and then I got in the tub for Nerve, and then the radio show, and suddenly I’ve been making a real living at comedy for a year now.

Would you say your experiences with mental illness and your work in comedy are related? Do they draw on each other?

I actually found [performance] to be really liberating and exciting. I still have agoraphobic tendencies; it’s just managed. When I was 21 or 23 I was suicidal, and what I took from those experiences was a deep gratitude at being alive, and I wanted to just fucking do things before my time is done. And when my friend recommended comedy to me, it seemed like something to do while I have time. A lot of shit that I do is based around the fact that I want to be an interesting grandmother, so I can tell my grandkids how cool I was. A lot of stuff that I do is really interesting and exciting, I tell myself in New York that a long time ago “You peed in cereal bowls because you were too scared to leave the room and you slept for sixteen hours.” So since I’ve beat that, I can look at that and say, “performing isn’t as bad as that; you can do this.” In a way, it’s affirming to tell stories on a stage and be a human instead of being a doll.

So, does the humor function as a sort of therapy, or is it like a new phase in your life?

I think it’s both. I don’t use performance as therapy; I pay someone for that. I have seen performers who use it as therapy, and I think it does a disservice to the audience. You didn’t pay to see these people do therapy, and whine and shriek at the audience. I mostly do political stuff, and I try and make my show funny.

On the other hand, comedy was once a therapy. Things I’d do when I was in my house for 16 hours, I’d watch these shows with Margaret Cho and John Leguizamo and I’d listen to their CDs, and it made me feel like maybe, one day, things would be better. And I didn’t know I wanted to be a performer, but it showed me there was a way out of this shit, so now I want to be one of those voices to show that fucked up shit is something to escape, and so I created Agorafabulous to show what can be done.

You mentioned doing political stuff; would you say you’re a feminist comedian?

Feminism is woven into what I do. As a female performer you have to work hard to prove that you’re funny.

How do you do that? How do you work hard?

First of all, I deal with it by not talking about my period. Well, I think the way to deal with it is by being one hundred percent fucking funny. If your period is hilarious to you, then do some shit about it.

Understand that even though you have a vajayjay, and most people in comedy don’t have a vajayjay, you can talk about all kinds of things. I talk abut being crazy, you can talk about anything under the sun. As a female some people are going to have preconceived notions about who you are and what you’re going to do. Someone that doesn’t think bitches are funny isn’t going to change their mind, so I don’t worry about them. On the other hand, I love doing women’s shows, but I don’t want to get pegged doing women’s shows.

There’s a lot of casual misogyny in comedy because most male comedians were losers in high school and never got fucked in high school so as a female you have to deal with that, that you’re telling jokes to people that didn’t get fucked.

I should revise that: most comedians I know, male and female, are funny, smart, guarded, nerdy, and with good hearts. But you do meet those douchebags that resent that you’re a girl. When I was doing my Sarah Palin bits during the election, I got interviewed on CNN, and some guy told me, “Yeah, if I had tits like that I d get interviewed on CNN too.” What? I’m on CNN because I’m doing good comedy.

But I think most of the time, the takeaway pint is that sexism is there, but you can’t blame sexism if you don’t get cast in a certain part or you don’t get in a club. You just need to work with that and live with it. And sometimes it’s because you weren’t fucking funny, like you bombed. And sometimes it’s not because you were a girl.

Have there ever been instances where it’s something you have had to work through, where there’s been a rough show because of the attitude of the audience or other comedians?

I don’t think it’s something I have to work past. With certain crowds, that are full of bachelor parties, you’re gonna have to work for it a bit and these douchebags may turn into the best crowd you’ve ever had. But most mixed crowds, they just want to see you do your thing. If there’s a really hostile crowd, if there’s one drunk guy, that’s just going to happen.

No I don’t’ think female comedians have to prove anything extra unless the audience is soulless douchebags (brodogs, who read Maxim and join fraternities). Generally speaking, though, funny is funny is funny and they’ll put away whatever prejudice they have.

Have you ever found the opposite to be true, where the difficulties you faced become an asset?

I think it’s a real asset. Most comics you talk to, if you get past their exterior most of them have had some great difficulty whether they’ve dealt with racism or sexism or the death of their parents or a learning disability. There’s usually a reason people develop a sense of humor, and a lot times that reason is defensive. In comedy, you have a lot of former (or current) fat kids because they had to learn to deflect taunts with funny shit. I think it is an asset, some degree of fucked-upedness can be a source of great comedy.

On the other hand, I know a guy who’s super, super normal, who had a nice, easy upbringing, and is really happy, and a great comedian. But supernormal guy is really funny, because his life has been so normal he feels weird around his comedian friends.

So have you ever been to Chicago? What do you love about the city?

I have been to Chicago twice before, my best friend Alexandra Fox used to manage the Funky Buddha and perform at Second City. I loved it there and so I’m really excited to get to go and hang out in Chicago while it’s warm. I was just telling this gay British kid that Chicago is where you find the best comedy in the country. That’s where the best experimental genius shit is happening. I’m humbled to get to perform there with these geniuses.

Audiences are also more vocal and willing to laugh in Chicago. Oh, and Chicago also has really good hot dogs so I’m looking forward to that, too.

Oh, and before that, I used to be a competitive baton twirler. I was on the 1994 champion baton squad at the world championships in South Bend. We won.

What was that called?

Uhhhh. America’s Youth on Parade. (laughs).

---------------------------

Where to Catch "AGORAFABULOUS":

9/12- New York, 10pm, Switzerland Neutral Comedy ANNIVERSARY SHOW, Sage Theater

9/19- Chicago, 10pm, The Playground Theater GET TICKETS

Comedian Sarah Millican on Edinburgh Comedy Awards lack of female nominees

2009-08-27T00:02:00.005-05:00

Comedian Sarah Millican at the Guardian on why there are no women in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards shortlist this year:

The reason I wasn't selected is nothing to do with my gender. It's also not because my show isn't good. It's that it wasn't what the judges were looking for this year.
Last year, when I was nominated alongside Pippa Evans and Mike Wozniak for the best newcomer award, no one wondered why there was only one man. Is it that men just aren't very good at writing their first show? No, it's because the shows that Pippa, Mike and I wrote were popular among a group of people who happened to be judges.
Genuinely, if I had been on the list this year and had heard a whisper that I was there because of box-ticking tokenism, I would have wanted to be removed from the list. I am not female: I am a comedian. I want to be judged alongside other comedians on merit, not on gender.

More Humor Research: Aggression and Joking

2009-08-25T23:53:00.010-05:00

Photo by JoF

German scholars have published a study in the Journal of Pragmatics stating that humor plays a significant role in establishing social hierarchy.

This study basically reiterates what feminist humor scholars have been saying all along: The power dynamics of gender dictate and guide the use of humor. From Ben Leach's great piece in the Telegraph:

The theory explains why until recently it has been extremely rare for women to tell jokes in front of men, according to Helga Kotthoff of the Frieburg University of Education.

She said: "Those 'on top' are freer to make others laugh. They are also freer to be more aggressive and a lot of what is funny is making jokes at someone else's expense.

"Displaying humour means taking control of the situation from those higher up the hierarchy and this is risky for people of lower status, which before the 1960s meant women rarely made other people laugh - they couldn't afford to.

"Comedy and satire are based on aggressiveness and not being nice," she said. "Until the 1960s it was seen as unladylike to be funny. But even now women tend to prefer telling jokes at their own expense and men tend to prefer telling jokes at other people's expense."

Throw other factors such as age and race into the mix, and you've got yourself a recipe for who and how humor is used among different groups to define social identity politics. These relationships aren't static- they shift and evolve. Just as joking can assert dominance and oppress others, it can renegotiate dynamics and empower marginalized groups.

What I like about this study is that it brings attention to the importance of power in comedy. Too often "joking" is quickly dismissed as trivial and irrelevant to real world issues. Studies like these help people take comedy's impact more seriously.

Diane Keaton Stars in Feminist Porn-Themed HBO Show

2009-08-13T08:16:00.005-05:00

by Anna Piontek

Diane Keaton--beacon of civility, Oscar winner, and delight--is slated to star in a new HBO series about her starting a porn mag for women. The so-far-so-untitled show will be produced by Keaton and a production team consisting of Marti Noxon and Dawn Parouse Olmstead.

Marti Noxon, for anyone who gives a hoot, is a former Buffy writer, and apparently grew up with a radical feminist mama. The Hollywood Reporter does some apologies for this fact by cherry-picking this quote from Noxon: "I wanted to be a gal, I was very interested in men, and I wanted to shave my legs." PHEW! We don't want this show to be *too* feminist, do we? If her writing for Buffy is any indication of her skills, though, Noxon is as top-notch a feminist as Hollywood can offer.

Reports say that Keaton will be portraying a Steinem-like feminist helming the magazine in an effort to rouse the sleepy Second (or Third?) Wave masses. That's really all we know of the premise. I'm interested to see how they pull it off, since I personally do not believe that sexually objectifying men = feminism, but hey, that's just one school of thought. My hunch is that they're taking the sexual liberation = feminism angle, which is fine.

Other than that, I think know what you're thinking: Diane? In television? Isn't she too classy?

Just comfort yourself that it's HBO, where many things, such as polygamy (Big Love), male prostitution (Hung), 'fang banging' (True Blood) and other fantastic and/or subversive sexualities are allowed and welcomed in the network's series. So the writers of Keaton's show just might go interesting places. The magazine at the center of the series may even shed light on something pop culture rarely allows us to see or understand: women's sexuality. I'm crossing my fingers!

"All women doing comedy are making feminist comedy, whether they choose to define it that way or not": A Chat With Margaret Cho

2009-08-04T00:00:00.009-05:00

By Carrie Callahan

Holy shit! Margaret Cho let us interview her! If you are interested in feminist comedy and don't know the work of Cho, I hope your friends make the effort to visit you under your rock. Cho has toured the country to critical acclaim and sell out crowds with no less than 5 one woman shows: I'm the One That I Want, Notorious C.H.O., Revolution, State of Emergency, Assassin, and most recently Beautiful. She has been a tireless fighter for equal rights, touring with the True Colors Tour raising money for the Human Rights Campaign, singing at anti Prop 8 rallies, and marrying same sex couples in San Francisco (during the couple months you could do that).
She starred in the groundbreaking show All-American Girl, which was one of the first and so far one of the few American tv shows with a predominantly Asian-American cast. Cho has been open about both the upsides and downsides of that experience, including the intense pressure producers put on her to lose weight and how that landed her in the hospital. It's fitting then that Cho has returned to TV on a show that puts the issue of the policing of women's bodies front and center: Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime, in which thin and conventionally gorgeous model Deb is killed in a car crash and comes back to life in the body of plus size smartypants lawyer Jane.
Cho was cool enough to share her thoughts with us on how women can conquer the comedy world even when it tries so hard to keep us out.

When did you discover you loved doing standup and what do you love about it?

I think when I was 7 or 8 years old and I was watching a Richard Pryor comedy special. My dad was a big comedy fan, and he loved Richard Pryor and George Carlin. I’d watch it with them and I didn’t really understand what was going on, but as soon as I saw it was making my dad laugh a lot, I sort of figured out what I was. I recognized it as something I was going to do. When I was a kid I had really vivid dreams about doing standup comedy, and it’s weird, sometimes when I’m onstage and I’m performing I really feel the memory of those dreams, like it was kind of a premonition of what I would eventually come to do when I was 16 years old. Even before that; when I was 14 or 15 I was going around to comedy clubs but I actually started working at comedy professionally at 16.
There’s a lot of things that I love about it. It is the job that I have to do. You’re a comic right? So you have to do it. When you think of something funny it’s like “oh you have to do this!”

Right!

I can’t not do this, I have to do this somehow, so you devise a way and that is anyone from an open mic-er to somebody like Joan Rivers. As soon as they think of something funny they have to do it onstage, they can’t wait.

What advice would you give to 15 year old Margaret Cho about her career coming up and what was going to face her?

That everything was going to turn out fine and not to worry about it. Because the comedy world is so male dominated, you really have to fight to get stage time, you have to fight to get support. That it’s not going to be easy but it’s going to be rewarding and it’s all going to be ok. When I started it was hard to break into this boy’s club, and standup comedy remains a boy’s club regardless of how many women are successful in it. The way the industry is set up it’s so much more supportive of the men than the women, so I think the most important thing as a female in comedy is to have your own support network that is not reliant upon the men in comedy that you’re coming into contact with. Another bit of advice would be to not listen to guys, because guys are mean about standup comedy and women. They’re just not supportive. So don’t listen to their criticism, don’t take their shit, and try not to have sex with all of them. I did that, but it’s hard not to do.

How do you build that support network?

I think it’s reaching out to female comics, befriending female comics, creating alliances with female comics, and making sure you build that community, which is what I did when I was starting. I built that community with people like Janeane Garofalo, and Kathy Griffin, and then people who were more established helped us a lot. People like Roseanne and Rosie O’Donnell both gave me and Janeane a big leg up when we were starting. The women in comedy generally need to be more supportive of each other. There’s a history of it, but there needs to be more.

What are you most excited about with being a part of Drop Dead Diva?

I love the show and the concept, and I think the acting is so good. I especially admire Brooke Elliott so much (who plays Jane/Deb). She’s so incredible. The writing is great. It’s the kind of show that I really believe in because it talks about these issues of women and their bodies and it’s very female supportive and female centric and I think it’s important to have images of real women out there. Even though it’s a fantastical premise for a show, it’s got the realest people, so I love that.

It’s striking how much of your career had been about visibility for people who are not represented on tv, and I was wondering when you realized that visibility was a political thing, that it was about who was in power?

I think that’s something I understood early on. Growing up as sort of a latchkey kid I watched a lot of television, television was sort of my babysitter, and so never seeing Asian-American people on tv was jarring. I realized when I was 5 or 6 that I wasn’t white and that really is weird, when you go, “Oh, I’m not white and I don’t see anybody like me out there at all;” that’s fucking weird. Especially when you want to go into a career like show business and then never seeing any images of yourself out there, it’s pretty hard to feel like you can actually accomplish anything, or get anything out there, or get anything done. Which is why I am so proud when I’m out doing comedy and Asian American comics and actors come up to me and say, “You’re the reason why I do this, because I saw you, and I felt so inspired, and I felt like it was possible.” That’s really important and if I can say, “oh this is my greatest achievement,” that would be it, that I gave other people the permission to do what they do. They saw my example and they followed it, and that’s the greatest thing I could have ever done.

That must be really hardcore to have that relationship with people.

It’s really good. It’s really empowering, for them and for me, I’m so happy and glad we’re able to have that.

I gotta think “Drop Dead Diva” is pretty special, that you aren’t approached by lots and lots of projects that promote visibility for people who don’t usually get it.

Yes.

Are there more projects like this? What stops there being more inclusive projects in the entertainment?

I don’t know. Who knows? Because when you do see it it definitely becomes very popular. “Drop Dead Diva” is already a huge hit. It’s clear that there’s a need for this kind of programming and a need for this kind of visibility. I’m not sure. I just hope that Hollywood can catch up with this idea of doing things that are really needed.

Obviously you have a million years of career left, but how would you like to feel looking back on the entirety of your work?

That it was fun. That people laughed. It’s such a beautiful thing to make people laugh; it’s such a simple and beautiful pleasure. To continue to be relevant, and to be strong, and good. Ultimately, I just want to be a good comic. I think all comics, that’s our goal; we just want to be good. For comics it’s a very special definition, we all have our own definition of what that is.

What does your definition of good look like? Does it look like Richard Pryor or George Carlin or someone else?

It looks George Carlin, it looks like Richard Pryor, it looks like Roseanne. She’s so cool, she’s someone who has come back and done a bunch of different kinds of stuff. She’s incredible. Joan Rivers is the ultimate, because she’s got such a great work ethic, and she can do everything, she’s an icon. She’s 74 and she rocks it, the filthiest material- you can’t believe how filthy her material is- and just rocks it. It’s so bad-ass. She’s so sweet and fun and I admire her so much because she was there doing it before all of us, when there were no women at all. She was rocking it in the sixties. She’s an incredible force and someone I really look up to. To me, you’re killing it if you’re still rocking so hard in your seventies. It’s beautiful.

Besides “Drop Dead Diva” what can we look forward to from you?

I’m working on a comedy album now. I’ll be recording that in the fall. It’s going to be a different kind of record, it’s a compilation of the music that I’ve been doing for the last five years. Comedy songs. I had a song in my last special, “Beautiful,”and then I had another song that broke out of my other show “The Sensuous Woman,” which was my big variety show. I’m working with other musicians, like John Brion, Grant Lee Phillips, Patti Griffin, and Peaches.

Do you consider your comedy a feminist act? What does feminist comedy look like to you?

All women doing comedy are making feminist comedy, whether they choose to define it that way or not. Being a comedian and a woman is a feminist act, because there are so few women in comedy, because the environment in general for women in comedy is fairly hostile. Not just from the audience point of view, but from the other comedians. For a woman to be a successful comic, you have to be twenty times better than any dude. That’s just a given. You have to be so much better than any guy to get anywhere. To get any stage time you have to be killing it. It’s a hard thing. Feminism and comedy, within comedy, it’s synonymous, you can’t have one without the other. Women who don’t identify as feminists, I think that’s weird, but if you’re a comic you’re a feminist.

Because I’m a comedian what you said about hostility from the audience really intrigues me. I’ve felt hostility from audiences; how do you get over that? How do you win them over?

You just deal with it. You’ll have hostility. Audiences have hostility towards female comics for a number of reasons, like if you’re too pretty they’re like, “Oh she’s not gonna be any good.” It’s just kinda like, you never get a break and it’s very weird, and you have to overcome it, but what’s great about it is it’s gonna make you a better comic tomorrow anyway. But it’s something you have to endure, and for one reason or another women have the hardest time. I find that especially attractive women have the hardest time of all. Society has a real idea of what comedy looks like. Attractive women are automatically discounted, so it’s a very tough thing to overcome. My favorite comics, interestingly, are the most attractive. My favorites are people like Sarah Silverman and Felicia Michaels. Have you heard of her? She’s incredible, she was a Playboy model and she’s hilarious, she’s so funny, you can get her stuff on Itunes. You guys should do a story on her. I think Sarah Silverman learned a lot from Felicia.

I want to thank you so much. As a comedian this was a really cool talk for me. Hearing you say things that match up with my experience makes me feel not crazy and that’s wonderful of you.

And you’re not crazy. It’s a really hard business for women but you should stick with it because it’s so rewarding, and it’s great. You just can’t get support from the guys, which is really heartbreaking at first, but then, who cares?

Drop Dead Diva airs 9 pm est on Lifetime, go here to watch all the episodes for free, and may I recommend their discussion guide.

Rape Joke Roundup

2009-07-29T08:25:00.005-05:00

h/t to Sonnet

Rape jokes are a hot topic on the blogosphere right now. A few excerpts:

Harriet Jacobs on why rape is joked about:

There is very little in casual, accessible culture that depicts rapists or rape victims as multi-faceted, complex human beings — and they all are. They are not depicted as people who survive, who go on to read trashy novels and get angry in traffic and learn a new hobby and think about volunteering sometimes but never actually do and get their degree in marketing but actually go into accounting because the job market these days, you know, and if they had never left that one significant other their lives probably would have been different. And rape is not depicted as an event that has complex meanings and consequences for men or women. Rather, it’s depicted as sex to advance the plot, define a (male) character, and/or be a super sweet hidden porno in the middle of your movie.

The Guardian's Brian Logan on The New Offenders of Standup Comedy:

[Jim] Jeffries tells me: "You can't do a joke these days about black or Asian people – and rightly so – [but] you can do rape jokes on stage and that's not a problem." Why does he think rape is now less of a taboo than racism? "I don't write the rules," he says. Nor, it seems, does he seek to challenge them. Capurro told me, with some distaste: "For a lot of comics, it's OK to talk about raping women now. That's the new black on the comedy circuit."

To which Jessica responds at Feministing with What's So Funny About Rape?

What I truly don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream - which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they're taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They're not a taboo at all - they're the norm, sadly. So all of these comedians giving themselves a pat on the back for being sooo controversial - when all they're doing is upholding the status quo - really fucking irk me.
Because if their rape jokes were actually challenging the mainstream, they'd be subversive, not holding up what American culture already perpetuates - that rape is a-okay. I think what is particularly telling is that so many of the people arguing that jokes about sexual assault are fine are dudes - the demographic that tends to be ones who, well...rape. (And who get assaulted at much lower rates than women.)

On a related note, last fall I had a positive experience talking with a rape-jokey comedian after a show. An excerpt of what happened:

...So, the headlining comedian was doing fairly well. Not exactly my cup of tea, but whatever. And then he gets to a rape joke. Ugggh.

For the first time, I was determined to say something. Immediately after the show, I went up to him. It went something like this:

me: "Hey- great job."
dude: "Thanks a bunch!"
me: "I'd really like to give you some feedback about something that really bothered me"
dude: "Sure thing, what is it?"
me: "You know, that rape joke was really off-putting"
dude: "What rape joke?"

Sigh.

me: "The one about a girl drinking too much at the bar..."
dude: "Oh. Yeah."
me: "Well, I just wanted to let you know that it's probable that more women than you think who are here tonight can actually identify with that happening, and it's not a pleasant experience to come out to a comedy show and have that be laughed at"
dude: "Yeah... uh... thanks for saying something."
me: "Thanks for listening."

Nice enough. Maybe he'll take that part out. Maybe he won't. At least I didn't feel powerless as an audience member.

The Rejection Show: Elna Baker

2009-07-25T09:30:00.003-05:00

Mormon comedienne and storyteller extraordinaire Elna Baker talks about rejection.

(You may remember Baker from her incredible This American Life story about working as a doll nurse at FAO Schwartz.)

"Comedy is feminist when it helps me understand how power works and how it can be fucked with": A Chat with Jessica Halem

2009-07-21T09:13:00.011-05:00

Jessica Halem can do incredible things incredibly well. She was named one of the "Queers that Make Our City Great" by Timeout Chicago and was nominated for "Best Female Comedian" at the 2008 Chicago Comedy Awards. She also served as Executive Director for the Lesbian Community Cancer Project in Chicago for five years, overseeing record levels of fundraising and expanding the organization's mission into one that was trans-inclusive. I first saw her perform at the Lincoln Lodge last spring, where she brought the house down with joyously raunchy tales of dildoes and fisting. Jessica left Chicago for the Pacific Northwest last year, and I needed a Jessica fix, so she was kind enough to answer some of my questions about activism and comedy.

When did you first know that you loved doing standup?

1995, Beijing, China during the Young Women's Talent Show at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. I was given the job of emcee and had to keep thousands of feminists from all around the world laughing. I felt the surge of bringing laughter and light to those who needed to let off some steam. I don't remember doing jokes per se but I remember the energy of being an enthusiastic fool for the night. That's when I knew I could be both an activist and a stand-up and in fact, it was a powerful tool to be both.

What does feminist comedy look like? Do you have any guidelines for what you will or won't make jokes about?

How about this for feminist comedy: A bloody tampon, wire hanger and Sarah Palin walk into a Rape Crisis Center...

It's hard to say what feminist comedy looks like...I know what my comedy looks like as a feminist living in this world and talking about my experiences and perspective. But just like women comics, or black comics, or gay comics, there are no two same feminist comics or one way to do feminist comedy. I'm not interested in pretending the categories of men and women (or straight and gay, etc.) are stable, constant identities that can be summed up or understood easily (or stereotypically to be more precise.)

I like comedy that helps us understand that there is, in fact, no stable category or binary or identity. I like comedy that plays with notions of what lesbian means, or female means, or feminist means. For me feminist comedy is a way to talk about power and how it operates. On an everyday level in big and small ways. Comedy is feminist when it helps me understand how power works and how it can be fucked with.

The topics that I cover are easy to choose because I stick to my personal experiences (with some embellishment of course) as an antidote to how hard life is for everyone. You can't go wrong as a comic if you find the funny in your everyday life. Everyone can relate to that. Or if not relate then really value insight into what life is like for you. I hope I get on stage and folks think "oh, this is gonna be good. I'd love to hear what this cute, short, Jewish, queer girl thinks about XYZ and I wonder if that could help open me up to a new way of thinking." Ok, really, I just hope they think...damn she's hot.

You perform for a lots of audiences that are queer or queer-allied. Did you start out seeking out these audiences, or did you do the mainstream open mic/ comedy club circuit at first? Has finding venues that attract queer-friendly audiences been a challenge? How important has exercising some control over the kind of audience you perform for been to the development of your onstage voice?

One of my main goals is to bring funny to those who need it most. Who has a voice or experience that is not getting voiced on stage or on screen enough? My hope is that folks who are working hard everyday living their lives on the margins or differently or in fear or struggling in some way will find a chance to laugh with me. So, that means I need to perform in venues or shows where they know it is for them. They don't show up at their mainstream comedy club on a regular night thinking they will find their life being valued on stage. And they are probably right.
Yes, I've done open mics and comedy clubs with no special advertising and done fine. I approach every audience with love and compassion and that comes through. But my goal is to uplift my brothers and sisters who need it most. So, I end up being picky and finding the right venues or getting involved with advertising so a "mainstream" show can be a chance for the queers to come on out for a good time! Some of my best shows have been mainstream venues where I've got a few queers in the audience who have just had the whole night flipped for them! I love that!
My dream audience to entertain for a night would be full of sex workers, artists, trannies, leather daddies, bears, butches, femmes,
teenagers, old lesbians, HIV+ folks, non profit workers, politicans, cancer survivors, and my ex-boyfriends. Let me be THEIR fool!

I might need to put that answer on my wall. Have you ever felt torn between "serious" activism and devoting time to your comedy? What performers do you look to for inspiration about how comedy can be meaningful in people's lives?

I am inspired when I make my friends laugh who are working in the trenches everyday as politicans, activists and social workers. Nothing like knowing your activist friend has her iPhone on as she waits for an important meeting with a Congressperson. Or a politican who appreciates dirty comments on his Facebook status updates!

I also love keeping up with my comedy heros like Margaret Cho and Marga Gomez via their Twitter and Facebooks who make life on the road look like so much damn fun! They and others have been doing comedy work a lot longer than me. As someone who has only recently switched to more comedy from more non profit work...I love learning how to do this well!

Most importantly, I'm inspired to do comedy as a tool for social justice everytime I make a 17 year old queer youth laugh or a long
time HIV+ gay man laugh or a gray haired lesbian from the rural part of Virginia who drove an hour to see me. I make them laugh through a story filled with equal parts love and misery from my life and I know I've lightened their load just a little bit for a little while. That's justice. That's change. That's comedy.

What should we look forward to from you in the next 5 years?

I've recently joined PhinLi Bookings, an agency for LGBTQ and sex positive talent. I'm excited to work with folks who get that I'm not looking to make my material easily palatable for TV or host a gay marriage rally. So, in the short term, I'm looking forward to being on the road more hearing from and talking to a new generation of queers in colleges and smaller towns. That and some regular yoga and meditation, I'm trying not to get too ahead of myself. I'm open to allowing the universe unfold in front of me. I'm working on being able to hear what it has to say.

The Heyday of UkeTube

2009-07-20T08:51:00.007-05:00

Molly Lewis as "Molly: Kickass Destructo-Cyborg Thing" by Len Peralta

By Russ Rogers

We are on the cusp of a new Ukulele Renaissance. The Ukulele had a short fad popularity in the 50's. This was inspired by The Arthur Godfrey Show and the availability of inexpensive, plastic ukes. Seriously, millions of ukes were sold. Then, Tiny Tim had a hit with Tiptoe Through the Tulips in 1969 and set the Ukulele back as an instrument by 40 years. Playing the ukulele became synonymous with being strange and fey.

Thanks goodness for strong Ukulele Godesses like Danielle Anderson who are at the forefront of a growing popularity for the much maligned and misunderstood Jumping Flea, the Ukulele.

Now, there are many factors that are leading to a resurgence of the Ukulele. The instruments are cheap (which makes them ideal starter instruments in these tough economic times). They are easy to play, with smaller necks and fewer strings than a guitar. And the nylon strings on ukes are easier on the fingers than the metal strings on guitars! But all the skills you learn, the fingerings, picking and strumming techniques will translate directly to playing the guitar. It can be a gateway instrument.

But I don't think the influence of YouTube (or as I like to call it, "UkeTube") can be overstated. In this age of DIY entertainment, the uke lends itself to being filmed in videos. It's small size fits in the frame! It's tone lends itself well to funny songs that are a bit cynical and snarky. And that's just perfect for YouTube!

There are a TON of cool Ukulele Channels and players to be sought out and discovered. But I do think that because of the ukulele's small size, it lends itself especially well to accompanying both women's voices and silly songs. So perhaps it's natural that many of the women who have gained fame playing on UkeTube are also funny.

Now, if you are listing UkeTube sensations, yes, you might start with Danielle Anderson, aka Danielle Ate The Sandwich. She's phenomenal, quirky, charming, smart and funny. Plus she has a beautiful, evocative voice.

A few more on my list:

Julia Nunes is the Queen Bee of UkeTube. The Madonna of the Uke, both for her popularity and versatility! She has over 100,000 subscribers. She recently played the music festival Bonnaroo. She is selling a couple of independently produced albums. And I think she's very funny. Her covers are great and she has some fine original songs too! Here's "Maybe I Will":

Julia has a huge fan following, has toured the United Kingdom twice, has recorded two albums and opened for Ben Folds several times! And this has all been done while she still attends college! Highly recommended!

Of course, Garfunkel and Oates are Wisecrack favorites. And their uke player Kate Micucci, has some great solo songs too! Here's "Dear Deer."

But I don't think any discussion of women, humor and UkeTube could be complete without mentioning Molly Lewis (aka SweetAfton23).

Molly Lewis isn't as professionally experienced as Julia Nunes, Kate Micucci or Danielle Anderson. She hasn't recorded an album, not yet. But her YouTube channel already has 16,000+ subscribers. Molly sprang to fame two years ago with a wicked ukulele cover of the Britney Spears hit, "Toxic." And Molly has a bunch of great cover songs and a handful of very funny originals. She's a rising comedy, music and ukulele star.

Check out "MyHope":

Molly's made a deal with Hank Green's Label, DFTBA Records. And recently she won the internet songwriting contest, The Masters of Song Fu!

I've only mentioned four visionary female voices on UkeTube and pointed out a few of their videos. If there is another Ukulele Godess or an even better ukulele video that has been overlooked, please put the link in the comments.

Tweet, Tweet!

2009-07-13T14:00:00.010-05:00

All the cool kids are doing it. Wisecrack's doing it (@wisecrackzine), I'm doing it (@lpark1984), and even some of your favorite comedians are doing it.
Tweeting, that is. It's the newest craze but it's actually a pretty interesting way to see change happening and stay connected to people in 140 characters or less.

Thanks to this list of "85 Comedians to Follow", I am following some funny ladies:

She talks about everything from her new show Drop Dead Diva to the everyday observations that we've come to love from Cho.

Likes to geek out and recently talks about her love for affordable hotels.

This Midwestern stand-up's most recent tweet says: judged a childs beauty pageant today and stole the souls of a few would-be Jon Benet's. Their Moms were crying tears of blood. Hilarity ensues - a must follow!

Stand-up lady and co-creator of SheckyMagazine.com takes time out of her day to update us with her funny thoughts.

AT let's her tweeple in on secret shows, her projects and when her back massages take a turn for the worst.

*BONUS*

Even the "Executive Transvestite" is tweeting it up!

This is just something to start you off. There are so many others to follow on Twitter. Let us know who you're following and who we should add to our list.

Weekend Wuv: Danielle Ate The Sandwich

2009-07-09T23:26:00.004-05:00

By Katherine Bradshaw

Ukuleleist and YouTube sensation Danielle Anderson, AKA “Danielle Ate The Sandwich,” frequently pairs light and whimsical sounds with darker, melancholy lyrics (think poptastic Garfunkel and Oates meets sardonic Jessica Delfino). Her songs tackle topics from transexuality (“Born In The Wrong Body”) to everyday human angst (“Afterwards” and “Another Day”). Her homemade music videos, featuring her quirky smile and antics, are irresistibly enjoyable.

British Coumediennes

2009-07-08T10:09:00.003-05:00

The extra "u" is because they spell things wrong.

So, bored with American accents, I have begun watching British comedy on Youtube and Hulu and other content-thieving internet mainstays. It's refreshing to discover an entire world (well, country) of humor (humour? huomor?) I had been mostly ignorant of. Yes, I'd seen The Office and Monty Python and Hugh Laurie on House, but there's an entire industry of sitcoms and panel shows; from the immortal Are You Being Served? through my current favorite, QI.

But that's not why you're here. You're here to learn about female comics in the UK. And they are legion and awesome. So I'm going to start, as a minor blogging project, and as my introduction to you all (first post! yay!), a rundown of some of my favorite funny girls (sorry, Caitlin) across the pond.

But first, to wet your beaks, here's Jo Brand, who I will write about more in my next post:

Target Women: Hair

2009-07-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

Letter from the Editor- 101st Posting: Wisecrack Goes Meta

2009-07-05T23:30:00.008-05:00

How about that? 100 posts. Bust out the Boone's Farm, this calls for a toast.

Conversations about gender and humor happen all the time. Especially if you're a comedienne. Doubly so, if you're a feminist comedienne. Scholars like Regina Barreca and the late Nancy A. Walker have published many books on the subject; these conversations aren't anything new. We'd just like to bring them beyond the bus ride after improv rehearsal, into the public sphere... the one in your laptop.

Have we done it? Well, we haven't exactly gone viral. But we do have a steady stream of regular visitors and a healthy core of writers, campus liaisons, and allies. We've sniffed out our own and discovered that at least half a dozen people hold degrees in comedy and gender studies. And through hours of dedicated "web research," we've stumbled upon the likes of Marina Franklin, Amy Andersen, Garfunkel and Oates, and many, many other incredibly talented comedians.

Perhaps most importantly, we've created a space to reclaim feminism in the context of comedy... or is it comedy in the context of feminism? (Cue mind explosions.) Either way, we've created a space where the marriage of feminism and comedy can simultaneously be taken seriously and thoroughly enjoyed. We hope to continue dispelling myths of feminism along the way, as well as encouraging greater intelligence, truth, awareness and intentionality in Comedy At Large. (That's right. It's our sneaky little agenda: World Comedy Domination via open letters to Lourne Michaels.)

We're slowly learning from our mistakes- no more blue text on a black background, I promise. As we mature, we hope to make the space more interactive and inclusive. If you have ideas, feedback, complaints or props, please consider this a solicitation (either respond in comments, or email wisecrackzine AT gmail DOT com). Lastly, we're disappointed by the lack of hate mail we've received. We take it as a sign that we're not saying juicy enough things. We'll try to step it up.

In the words of Lily Tomlin, "We're all in this together, by ourselves."

To the next 100 posts...

Thanks for reading.

Rachel Dratch talks Women in Comedy, Improv - An Improvised Blog

2009-06-29T08:23:00.001-05:00

Rachel Dratch talks Women in Comedy, Improv - An Improvised Blog

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Burning Moms use humor to push for education changes in California - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

2009-06-28T07:37:00.002-05:00

Burning Moms use humor to push for education changes in California - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

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An Open Letter to Lorne Michaels

2009-06-27T10:00:00.004-05:00

Dear Lorne,

I was watching an old episode of SNL the other day, one with Maya Rudolph playing Donatella Versace (a classic), and got to thinking about the gender and race of SNL performers. I did a little research.

Of the 35 seasons of SNL and 122 cast members, 31 have been women. And just a mere four have been female minorities. That's pathetic.

Why so few women? You don't seem to subscribe to the belief that women aren't funny. SNL has been home to many top female comedians of this time. Maybe you just don't know enough female comedians. For your sake, let me offer some suggestions.

My Comedian Wish List for SNL:

* Wanda Sykes - A sketch veteren with The Chris Rock Show; granted, she's about to have her own show, so you probably missed the boat.

* Kim Wayans - Wayans has 5 seasons of In Living Color under her belt.

* Christina Anthony - Second City: check.

* Frangela - It's a two for one and in these tough economic times, that's a comic deal! (Granted, they don't really do sketch, but they would be a welcome addition to the lineup. They would make great anchors for Weekend Update!)

* DSI Comedy grads - Bring a little southern charm to SNL! I can vouch for them, I've seen plenty of their shows and my funny bone was tickled without remorse.

*Marina Franklin- Another Chicago gem, also a Last Comic Standing and Chappelle Show alum.

*Melissa Vellasenor- Have you seen this girl's impression reel?

*Garfunkel & Oates - Cooler than sliced bread, with an already large fan base. Large fan base means more viewers, which is really what you want, Lorne. (Oh yeah. I can speak "biz.")

These are just a few suggestions and I know I've left out a lot of people. If you need more women comedians, check out our list on the left-side column of the blog.

Basically, there's really no excuse for the dismal representation of hilarity of the female kind on SNL. You are missing out on a huge demographic and the endless possibilities of new sketches.

Lorne, I know how much you like Kenan Thompson playing Oprah. But don't let it stop you from casting more women. Keep SNL cutting-edge. Feature more ladies.

Yours truly,
Lauren

It's the Weekend!

2009-06-27T08:45:00.002-05:00

Get your "Cats on a Treadmill" on.

Cats on a Treadmill - watch more funny videos

Jen Dziura: Spelling out success in comedy

2009-06-25T10:24:00.009-05:00

Comedy and spelling have a lot more in common than you think, and Jen Dziura is out to prove just that. As a ~~founder~~ [editor's note- our apologies, bobby blue is the founder] co-host of the Williamsburg Spelling Bee, an intellectual triathlon for adults, the New York native has her sights set on conquering not only the world of academic bees, but that of smarty-pants comedy as well. And with the recent success of her one-woman show, What Philosophy Majors Do After College, waiting in the unemployment line seems like the least likely scenario for comedy's queen bee. Hear what Jen has to say as she checks in with Wisecrack to discuss the correlation between grammar and comedy, getting back on her feet after failure, and Pee-Wee Herman in drag.

Wisecrack: Have you always known you wanted to pursue a career in comedy? Can you name a specific instance in which life drove you to laughs?

Jen Dziura: You know, that's a funny question, because I'm not totally sure what I'm doing now is exactly about pursing a career in comedy. I've always felt as though there's a Venn Diagram at play -- there's comedy, and there's my Platonic ideal of being the best possible public version of myself, and there's some overlap in the middle that is my working space.

I saw Sandra Bernhard's "Without You I'm Nothing" on DVD in a Queer Studies class in college, and I think that was pretty formative for me. And then I saw Josh Kornbluth's monologue show about being a math major, but at the time (in college) I was training to be an action adventure star in the movies -- I was captain of the boxing team for awhile, I did martial arts and rock climbing and bodybuilding and wrote a screenplay that I would theoretically star in, about a teenage lesbian superhero.

So it all took awhile to gel and come around to my running an adult spelling bee and telling jokes about philosophy. I can no longer do as many pull-ups as I once could.

W: Is there an inherent relationship between good spelling and good comedy? How are the two connected?

JD: I'm not sure about spelling, but there's a strong correlation between irregular grammar and comedy. For instance, just take a basic joke form such as the "your mom" joke. Compare:

What I love about your mom are (noun), (noun), and (insulting noun).

What I love about your mom are (noun), (noun), and (insulting independent clause).

Both forms have a "surprise" at the end in that the third item in the list does not actually belong in a list of things the speaker loves about the subject, but the first joke template obeys the principle of grammatical parallelism and, despite the nouns chosen, will likely end up only moderately funny; the second violates the conventions of grammatical parallelism, and is thereby already funnier. Try it!

Another good example -- the other day, I made some vegan ravioli for myself, and they were kind of hideously green, due to some kind of spinach pasta situation. Also, they had come apart in the pot a little bit and were leaking things like peas and beans. My boyfriend looked over and said, "Oh look, you made boiled terribles!"

It was such a funny comment because "terrible," of course, isn't a noun. I don't think "boiled disasters," for instance, would have been as funny at all; a great part of the humor was in the surprising (and technically incorrect) diction.

W: You seem to have a wide-ranging array of interests, from comedy to martial arts to nearly every facet of academia. Can you describe the process by which you brought all of these things together to formulate a bankable career?

JD: Well, thank you for assuming that I masterminded the whole thing! I think it was quite a bit more haphazard than that. And it involved a lot of failing. I failed at running a dot-com, I failed at shopping around a screenplay, I failed at making a living as an art school model, I failed at holding a 9-5 job, I failed at getting myself into the traditional comedy club system.

I also tried a lot of things that didn't stick. The martial arts didn't stick. Some other things I've tried that didn't stick include skydiving and lesbianism. (No connection).

Somewhere in the middle of all the failing, when I was living in East Harlem in one of those hallways that people cordon off with a shower curtain and rent out as a bedroom (welcome to New York!), someone asked me to host an adult spelling bee. That was in 2004. And I've been doing that every other Monday since then. The high-water mark may have been when the New York Times ran a story about the bee on the front page of the style section, and that night, Bill Maher made fun of us on his show. It was in the "New Rules" segment -- as in, "New Rule: Adults must stop acting like children. The kids are going to spelling bees in bars!" I think the low-water mark was when Law and Order: Criminal Intent put out a casting call for, um, an actress to play a "female 20-something host of an adult spelling bee in a Brooklyn hipster bar." Seriously. I sent them something ("You know, I could just make a cameo as myself -- ever hear that story about the time Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest and came in third?") but didn't get anywhere. Finally, the episode came out, and of course it was awful. As in, the Brooklyn "hipsters" had bleach-blond gelled hairdos and earnestly said things like, "I just want to ROCK, man!" In other words, they were straight out of a 1987 Pop Tarts commercial on Nickelodeon. I never did get to see who they cast as me, because the spelling bee scene had been cut -- there was just a mention that the "hipsters" had attended a spelling bee before one of them was murdered. Jeff Goldblum got to be all, "Kids these days! Spelling bees! Pshaw!"

Anyway, the spelling bee happened and became very popular, and then I started running geography, math, trivia, and vocabulary tournaments for adults, and somehow word got around the internet that I tell a lot of grammar jokes, and then I was in a pilot for a show on the Sci Fi Channel that didn't get made, and every once in awhile something awesome would happen, like the time I had this piece on McSweeney's that was getting a lot of hits, and then someone posted it on Fark.com, and then someone trying to be mean commented that I look like "Pee -Wee Herman in drag" and I said, "Oh my god, it's true!" It was a great feeling, like finding a long-lost twin. But a twin with his own playhouse!

Keep in mind, though, that this all happened really, really slowly, over a period during which I couldn't help being aware that I am aging, as are we all, and that Hollywood cares about this sort of thing an awful lot. I'm waiting to get some really good crow's feet so I can have diamonds embedded in them. Don't steal my idea!

So, no master plan. I just realized, over years of trying things, that I am good at hosting intellectual game shows and being nice to people even when they get the answers wrong, and that I'm good at telling jokes for smart, polite people. If I could just tour from library convention to library convention ... oh, a girl can dream!

W: What is your favorite word to spell, and why?

JD: For years, one of my favorite words was "apropos," because I learned that word as a young teenager from a translation of Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" in which the book's second part is called "Apropos to the Wet Snow." Could that possibly have also rhymed in Russian?

Here are some of my favorite words from the Williamsburg Spelling Bee:

chionablepsia - snow blindness

rhinorrhagia - nosebleed

horologium - timepiece

discalced - barefoot, especially of a monastic order

poetomachia - an Elizabethan "War of the Theaters"

kakidrosis - smelly perspiration

Of course, that last one shares a root with:

kakistocracy - rule by evil men

Which reminds me a bit of:

hecatontarchy - rule by one hundred rulers

Which reminds me that this word is not "rule by eight rulers," which would instead be "octocracy":

ochlocracy - mob rule

And then there are the classics: lepidopterology, triskadecaphobia, trichotillomania, rhododendron, hyacinthine, hippopotamian. For the literature buffs: Lilliputian, Brobdingnagian, quixotic. Many of the hardest words are not from Romance languages: schipperke, aebleskive.

And if I'm going to go all meta on your ass: sesquipedalianism.

W: Ten years from today, what is the life of Jennifer Dziura going to look like?

JD: Hopefully no chionablepsia, rhinorrhagia, kakistocracy, etc.

In comedy, I'm really moving away from telling 15 minutes of jokes here and 15 minutes of jokes there.... I'm just going to develop one big show every six to twelve months, and do that show a few times, and then go back inside my head for a few months. I admire people like Mike Daisey, who do just that. Spaulding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia" was really seminal for me. Of course "seminal" is a pretty gross word. And it's funny, I've donated eggs -- maybe I should insist that creative works that really influenced you be referred to as "ovoid." Of course, that just means "egg-shaped," which, in virtually all cases of seminal works, is simply not true.

The going back inside my head business is really crucial for me, and I've come to terms with the fact that stand-up comedy does not create a huge overlap on the Venn Diagram with what I know my mission to be. I've never been one of those comics who needs to be on stage five nights a week. I'm going to save it all up -- you can come watch me once or twice a year. It'll be more special that way. You'll be more likely to buy me alcohol when it's over, because of the extra specialness. Hmmn, you know what's never happened? Cute young men don't come up to me after the show and ask me to autograph their chests. I would like to autograph some chests. I just realized that that's a goal.

My current one-woman show is called, "What Philosophy Majors Do After College." I'm doing it August 7th in New York at The P.I.T., and then taking it on the road. Then, a book, a comedy CD.... Over the next ten years, I'd like to do a live show a year or so, and do more projects for television, hosting a reality show or variety show, ultimately landing a talk show. (Have I mentioned that Dick Cavett is a national treasure? That's what I mean when I say "talk show.") I'm going to have some kids who are really good at spelling. And a nanny who makes mimosas.

Also, I just moved into this Wall Street apartment that has a 25th-floor balcony, and I put a hammock on that balcony, and every time I lie on the hammock and look up the side of my 50-story building, I imagine that Batman's on his way, which I think can only be a plus for my creative process.

Read more from Jen in her McSweeney's pieces:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/7/10dziura.html

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2007/3/2dziura.html

Laurie Kilmartin On Balancing Motherhood and Setlists

2009-06-24T22:25:00.011-05:00

(Photo by froggygrl727)

By Laurie Kilmartin, Originally posted on Babble

It was 8:45 PM on a Saturday night and the babysitter was not here. I had to be onstage, telling jokes at a New York City comedy club, at 9:15. I'd already left her a voicemail in my high school Spanish.

"Hola, uh, es la mama de William. Donde?"

I would be late for my spot if I didn't leave immediately. I wrapped my one-year-old son in a blanket and ran for the car. The babysitter and I communicated via Babelfish.com. I would write an email in English and convert it to Spanish. She would do the same, in reverse. I thought we were good for sabado. Damn. Merde?

I had four fifteen-minute sets that night, at three different comedy clubs. My final set ended at about one a.m. In theory, William and I could hang out in the car between spots, but while I was onstage, I'd have to hand him to somebody. I pulled up to the club at 9:12. Five or six comedians were standing out front. Some I knew, some I didn't.

"Hey!" I shouted, flipping on the hazard lights. "Can anyone sit with the baby? I'll pay you twenty-five bucks and I'll be back in twenty minutes." A comic named Maggie slid into the back seat.

"Thanks," I said, handing her the diaper bag. "Now, try not to kidnap him."

"You're no fun," she said. Maggie rode with us for the rest of the night, pocketing about a hundred dollars, which was not much less than me.

This wasn't supposed to be my life. I wasn't going to have kids. When I got pregnant by accident, I was forty and single. But also bored. I took a "Hey, why not?" approach to motherhood. My belly became a prop that I took on the road. We had a good time, the fetus and me. Indiana, Texas, Montreal. We flew to Alaska in my fourth month and L.A. in my eighth. My last show as a non-mom was the night before I delivered. When the baby came, I lost fifteen minutes of material.

And my lifestyle.

Comedians have the best lives. I used to stay up until four a.m. and sleep until whenever. Now, most mornings I wake up like the amnesiac from Memento. I have no idea where I am, or whose child is crying. Next to my bed is a helpful Polaroid of my son, captioned with the words: "You are his mother and his diaper needs to be changed."

William's dad is also a comedian. We took the baby on the road when he was six months old. My boyfriend would do his set, then run back to the green room, where I was waiting to pass him the swaddled baton. The emcee would kill a few minutes onstage until I arrived. It worked because there were two of us.

Now the baby is older, and there's often just one of us.

The boyfriend and I usually work alternate road weeks, but recently we each booked separate gigs during the same week. Neither of us could afford to cancel. We figured it would cost less for me to take William to Michigan than for my boyfriend to take him to North Dakota. I found a sitter online. She came to the hotel at seven p.m. I debriefed her on her mission as I saw it, which was to keep my son awake for as long as possible so I could sleep in the next morning.

"He's gonna start yawning in an hour. Don't buy into it. If you cave and put him to bed, he's gonna wake up at six a.m. And that can't happen because I will be dead by Sunday. I need you to keep him talking until eleven or so."

"Like, sleep deprivation? For a two-year-old?"

From the tone of her voice, I could tell she was not completely on board.

"Of course not! That's a torture technique. Jeez. All I'm saying is, when his eyes start rolling back into his head, point out the window and yell, 'plane!' That's it. Now, if he happens to spend the next thirty minutes looking for a plane that isn't there, well, that's his choice, isn't it?"

"Uh huh."

"Five or six times over the course of the evening should do the trick. And you don't have to say 'plane' each time. 'Firetruck' works. If you really want to keep him hopping, try 'Daddy.'"

I returned to the hotel at 1 a.m. I'd done two fifty-minute shows. I was tired.

"What time did he go to bed?" I asked.

"A little before eight."

Being home is hard, in a different way. After William was born, I cut back on the road work and took a day job writing for a now-defunct website. We had health insurance and the basic bills were paid. But I was in a frustrating position as a comic.

Sunday-Thursday spots in New York City don't pay much, or at all. But they are the best shows to try out new material. There is no pressure to kill. And new jokes get fine-tuned for the weekend shows, which do pay. That system worked great before I had a kid. Now, I had to hire a sitter for those nights. And all of a sudden I was out $10-$50 dollars every time I did a set. I went from eight to fifteen development sets a week to about two.

My growth slowed, despite the fact that I had so much more to talk about. The problem was solved for me in January, when the day job ended. Now I'm back on the road, doing long sets where I have plenty of opportunity to sneak in new stuff. The corporate benefits are gone, but so is the stagnation.

And the boyfriend and I have settled into a groove. When we're both in NYC, we perform on alternate weeknights, or one of us will do an early set, and race home so the other can make a late set. We spring for a sitter on weekends and the occasional miercoles o domingo. My schedule's not the same as it was during the non-mom days, but is anything?

Comedy Equals Puberty Plus Time

2009-06-23T17:33:00.003-05:00

Guest Post by comedian Erin Judge

I don’t think most male comedians are sexist. I just think they don’t always know how to react to a woman who, like themselves, is trying to be funny. You know, on purpose. My pseudo-scientific faux-anthropological theories about it go a little something like this:

We discover our senses of humor around puberty. The development of sex organs and body hair and vocal fluctuations leaves us painfully exposed and uncomfortably aware of ourselves. But at least we can crack jokes about it, deflecting some of those casual humiliations. And we’re finally far enough along to understand adult references – not just sex jokes and drug jokes, but political humor as well.

The problem with all of this is that puberty is also an almost entirely homosocial time. Boys roll with boys and girls roll with girls. And being funny carries much more weight in male social circles than in female ones. Sure, adolescent girls like a good laugh, but they prefer manipulative Machiavellian back-stabbing triangulating evil drama. While cool girls consolidate their power by capriciously excluding, humiliating, and character-assassinating others, cool boys are the ones with the loudest and most hilariously-timed farts.

Around middle school, it always seems that girls are much more interested in boys than boys are interested in girls. But in truth – and I’ve only learned this as an adult – boys are so interested in girls that they’re borderline nauseated with terror and embarrassment over it. Everybody always talks about trivial changes in adolescent males, like voice cracking. But the horror that comprises boners and sex dreams and carnal impulses must not be understated. Pre-teen girls develop crushes on the cute boys and the funny boys and the polite boys for all these wholesome, socially accepted, public reasons. Meanwhile, (straight) pre-teen boys are having involuntary X-rated fantasies about these sweet young ladies, and, sadly, sometimes feeling pretty guilty about it. Until boys get a little bit older and feel more control over all that sex stuff, I think it’s just really damn hard for them to let their guard down around their female peers the way they do around other boys.

I remember being a different kind of girl back then, and I’m sure lots of other female comedians occupied the same strange place in the middle school social hierarchy. I preferred quoting Monty Python to scribbling rumors in slam books. The click of irony and the satisfying rush of cracking a joke thrilled me more than learning how to put on make-up. Maybe all female comics were as inept as I was at female social games back then, but as far as I can tell, we were just smart and uninterested in being particularly sweet or particularly mean. And holy crap, was life frustrating back then! Sure, I could get laughs here and there, but half the time the guys wouldn’t even hear my jokes and would wind up unconsciously repeating them as their own. The popular girls looked at me like I had three heads when they even acknowledged my existence at all.

Fast forward to the stand-up comedy scene circa today. Male comics tend to be the most successful funny dudes from middle school mixed with the comedy-obsessed nerdy guys. They’re the irreverent geniuses out of the gifted classes or the wisecrackingest (and smartest) kids among the troublemakers. On some level, male comics rely on the skills they acquired in middle school in order to do their jobs and make people laugh. And maybe there’s a teensy bit of regression going on, and maybe they revert to a state of wariness and confusion around females and supreme comfort around an all-male social group.

Female comics, meanwhile…well, let’s face it. We are still the overwhelming minority in any city’s scene. We have a harder time coming to comedy and a harder time sticking it out long enough to get good because we feel like outsiders and get treated differently. We’re still fighting the same adolescent-era battles to be heard and appreciated for our senses of humor by our male peers and by the community as a whole, now represented by the audience.

I used to work for a nationally-known comedian, and he asked me not to sit in on writing meetings because he found his male collaborators wouldn’t be as free and open if a female was present. Even now, when some of my (straight) male comic peers tease me, they backtrack or apologize. Worst of all, they can’t tell when I’m teasing them.

Guys, I know girls are confusing. But do me a favor. Respect us more by “respecting” us less. We’re not in the comedy business to get handled with kid gloves. We’re not wilting flowers who gasp and say “Well, I never!” Trust us. Listen to us. Make fun of us, and we’ll make fun of you, and we can laugh at each others’ jokes and give each other notes and write together and make everybody’s comedy stronger, more relevant, and just plain funnier.

Oh, and P.S. – If we like you, you’ll know. We’ll hit on you. That’s just the kind of girls we are.

Nia Vardalos on Women and Hollywood

2009-06-20T08:48:00.004-05:00

Nia Vardalos (of My Big Fat Greek Wedding fame) recently posted a piece at Huff Post on gender in feature films:

A little-known fact: some studios recently decided to no longer make female-lead movies.
Lately, I've been in meetings regarding a new script idea I have. A studio executive asked me to change the female lead to a male, because... "women don't go to movies."
Really?
When I pointed out the box office successes of Sex and The City, Mamma Mia, and Obsessed, he called them "flukes." He said "don't quote me on this." So, I'm telling everybody.
...It's called show business for a reason. The theater owners want to make money, and understandably so. My Life In Ruins is the highest testing movie in Fox Searchlight history so we've been given a chance. And, the theater owners said they'll keep the movie in their theaters if people go.
So, women: can we speak up with our wallets?

Her newest film, My Life In Ruins, is now in (some) theaters.

Vardalos is right- the biz depends on consumer spending. So don't forget to buy Maria Bamford's new album, see My Life in Ruins, or check out your local women's comedy night. Not only will you reinforce the fact that there IS a demand for women-led entertainment, but it's also the easiest, most enjoyable activism ever.

THR's "Emmy Roundtable"

2009-06-17T23:31:00.005-05:00

The Hollywood Reporter brings together small screen comedic leading ladies Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Christina Applegate, Jane Krakowski, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Mary-Louise Parker:

More excerpts over here.

Weekend Wuv: Catchin' Up With Sarah Haskins

2009-06-13T23:16:00.002-05:00

In case you missed these Target Women episodes:

The First Queen of Comedy: Moms Mabley

2009-06-10T09:28:00.010-05:00

The extraordinary Moms Mabley performed with Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Cab Calloway, wrote with Zora Neale Hurston, and went on to play Harlem's Apollo more than any other entertainer. She was the first female comedian superstar, with a career spanning more than sixty years.

Mabley has quite a background. Orphaned by the age of eleven, and a survivor of rape, she had given birth to two children who had been put up for adoption before the age of sixteen. She was forced by her step-father into marrying an older man. With the encouragement of her grandmother (a former slave, whom she later based her stage persona on), Mabley ran away to Cleveland, Ohio. Ohio is where she joined the vaudeville circuit and began her stardom.

Featured in 24 comedy albums, she went on to produce and act in at least nine plays and seven films. By the end of her career, she was making $10,000/week for her stage appearances alone. Cited as a hero and influence by many comedians, she remarked, herself, on how often she saw white comedians sitting at her show with pen and paper in hand. She had no problem confronting these material thieves.

From Moms Mabley's BookRags Biography:

Though Mabley's act may seem stereotypical to some, it was really quite a clever show business ploy. While attractive young women, particularly black women, could show little in the way of intelligence or sexuality without condemnation, "Moms" was safe—a laughable figure of fun. From behind the shabby clothes and mobile toothless grin, Mabley could offer sharp-witted insights and social commentary that would have been unacceptable from a more serious source. Beloved by African-American audiences, Mabley's whole persona was an "in" joke among blacks, and she did not hesitate to focus her scathing humor on whites and their ill treatment of other races. She also demonstrated glimmers of an early feminism with her jokes about old men and their illusions of authority. One of her trademark jokes was, "Ain't nothing an old man can do for me, but me a message from a young man."

I could find just one video clip of Moms Mabley comedy online. It's not the most biting social commentary, but you do get to see her perform:

There's some question over whether or not Moms was gay. Besides "Moms," a hit play in '87, blog posts and a few academic papers, relatively little has been written about her. What a shame.

Web Comedy Reveiew: Chick Comedy

2009-06-09T10:53:00.006-05:00

As the name implies, Chick Comedy features comedy by women, for women, on a woman-friendly pink, lipstick-kissy background. Videos include comedy news, stand up performances and solo sketch shows, ranging from amateurs to videos featuring Chelsea Handler, Natasha Leggaro and Melinda Hill.

The most popular video at Chick Comedy, featuring Anjelah Johnson:

Overall, this is the Cosmo of women's comedy sites: Pretty girls being heteronormative to the max (while making jokes!). As the women's wing of the site Comedy Time, I'm going to go ahead and posit that it wasn't created by women. Or anyone under 30 (who says "chick" anymore?). But it's still nice that it exists. It gives new comedians a place to be featured and discovered by fans who are bored of Comedy Central's typical dude-itude.

"Are Funny Girls Really Funny?"

2009-06-07T23:35:00.007-05:00

From Chris McNamara's article "Funny Girls," published today in the Chicago Tribune:

It seems silly to ask, but here goes -- are women as funny as men?

"Yes," confirms stand-up comedian Cameron Esposito. "The difference is in exposure to comedy and gender norms."

In our society, she explained, women are exposed to less comedy (scan the crowd at the next comedy show you attend), they are instructed to be demure and they are often turned off by the entry-level opportunities to get into comedy -- open-mic nights.

The article goes on to talk about Feminine Comique, a women's stand up class in Chicago taught by Cameron Esposito.

Quick Thoughts:

1) Go Feminine Comique! This is what the world needs.

2) I'm pretty darn sick of articles about adult female comedians including the phrase "funny girl" in the title. New decree: "Funny Girl" articles will be limited to Streisand or the show Funny Girl itself.

3) Did we really have to start the article with WAF ("women aren't funny")? Seriously? When will we at least pretend to live in a post-WAF society? That McNamara ends the article with an acknowledgement of "prejudice against women" doesn't negate the fact that he frames the whole story with that notion that it's a big ol' gender battle/women need to constantly prove their comedic worth.

Weekend Wuv: Marina Franklin

2009-06-05T23:36:00.011-05:00

Just For Laughs will be hitting the Windy City later on this month. Making the homecoming journey will be Chicago's own Marina Franklin (her performance schedule).

A veteran of Last Comic Standing, and the Chappelle Show, Franklin's most recently featured in the standup documentary "The Awkward Kings" which premiered in NY last weekend:

Have a safe weekend, everybody.

A Tribute to Marietta Holley

2009-06-04T22:53:00.009-05:00

"The female Mark Twain." This is how historians refer to Marietta Holley, if refer to her at all (she was largely forgotten until the 1980's).

Never heard of writer, activist and humorist Marietta Holley? Don't beat yourself up. It doesn't help that she wrote under the name "Josiah Allen's Wife," but still you'd think a former literary celebrity, who sold over 10 million books in the 19th century, would have somehow snuck into our literary canon.

Holley, born in 1836, began publishing poems under a male pseudonym in the 1860's. In 1870, she sent a poem to Mark Twain's publisher, Elijah Bliss, who strongly encouraged her to write a book, resulting in the Samantha Smith Allen series.

From Josiah Allen’s Wife: The Story of Marietta Holley:

In Samantha, Marietta created a character who would talk about women’s rights and women’s lives, particularly in rural districts where life was very hard. To defuse resistance to her radical ideas, Samantha had to be a woman who wasn’t a rabid suffragist. As a woman who could laugh at herself as well as her husband, Josiah Allen’s Wife was accepted as a moderate thinker by the reading public.

She died in 1936, having written at least 16 books and many poems and short stories.

Many things about Holley are remarkable: she was tight with both Susan B. Anthony and Mark Twain. As a pioneer for women's rights, she was invited to speak to congress multiple times. She brought social and political criticism to the people through her humorous writing, popular among men and women.

As an early American humorist and critical thinker, she changed the political landscape of her time and paved the way for the likes of Dorothy Parker and Erma Bombeck. Marietta, you are gone but not forgotten... at least by a handful of us.

Links:

Kate Winter tries to get other educators to teach about Holley

One of her most popular works, Samantha at Saratoga

Dying to know more about Holley vs. Twain? Check out Marietta Holley and Mark Twain:

Cultural-Gender Politics and Literary Reputation by Charlotte Templin

The Shacktacular Liz Feldman

2009-06-04T00:24:00.007-05:00

Shack Talk w/ Ben Stiller & Amy Adams - watch more funny videos

Liz Feldman, a Brooklynite living in LA, already has quite a

following from her After Ellen webshow "This Just Out with

Liz Feldman." She now hosts Funny or Die's "Shack Talk,"

(essentially a straighter version of This Just Out). Both

shows feature comedic monologues, interviews with famous

people, a flashy blue velvet sport jacket and a room full of

laughing staff members.

If you live near Temecula, California, you can catch Liz in

person this weekend, hosting the "Pretty Funny Women"

show... check her myspace for more details.

Women ARE Funny: Notes from a Feminist Male Comedian

2009-06-03T09:00:00.004-05:00

Over the last month four different female comedians have spoken with me about the troubles in being a female comedian. One said that comedy was rough for women because club owners, bookers and producers often hit on the comedians, making it difficult for them to rebuff these advances and still get booked on shows. I, occasionally billed as a feminist male comedian, do notice the difficulties women go through in this business. It is harder for women to get booked than it is for men.

In the early eighties when I started going to NYC comedy clubs regularly as a fan, bookers were less likely to hire female comedians. They said that audiences didn't like women comics, that all they did was talk about their periods and complain about men. Some club owners were even quoted as saying that women simply weren't funny enough. It was very rare to see more than one woman in the line-up, even if the show had a dozen comedians.

And unfortunately, when people see a small amount of truth in something, they may believe the whole thing. The small amount of truth being that in fact there was a percentage of working female comics who did talk about their periods and complain about men. Sure, male comics talked about their girlfriends but they were more likely to say "MY girlfriend stinks" whereas the females were saying"ALL men stink" and for an audience there's a difference between the two statements. I'm not her boyfriend but I am a man, and I'm therefore being insulted for my gender.

Some generalizations may have had a bit of truth twenty years ago, but no longer.

It's been my observation lately that at amateur shows and open-mikes in NYC around thirty five percent of the comedians are female (this is more than a guess-- I've been counting). The percentage of professional female working comics is probably much lower. But before the statisticians start calling, I do need to point out that you can't compare the two-- you'd have to look at the proportion of female amateur comics several years ago vs. working comics now (and not just in NYC) because it takes years to go from starting out to making money. And maybe only one percent ever make it to the professional level.

It takes a long time for things to change. Right now one NYC comedy club, Laugh Lounge, is owned and booked by a woman, and the person who first auditions comedians at The Comic Strip is also a woman. Many other clubs have women who book/produce shows. And if you look at who is booked at some rooms, the proportion of women seems to be on the rise. There's no Title IX in comedy, but there are women who are doing all they can to help other women succeed. Change is happening. Not terribly fast, but faster than it would happen without the women in comedy who are there helping other women. But there is a group of people who can help women comedians even more than the bookers and other comedians can. It's you. How can you help? Keep reading.

Some people say that one reason that men are more successful in the business world is that while women tend to seek consensus, men are more likely to try to win people over to their point of view. Genetics? Upbringing? Sexism? A combination of all three? We don't know. I will say this about comedians-- search for comedians on the web and you will discover a lot more male comedians than female comedians, and the men's sites are more likely to have content that draws you in-- as an example, look at my site (www.BrainChampagne.com) or Steve Hofstetter's (www.SteveHofstetter.com). Of course there are exceptions-- Laurie Kilmartin's website (www.Kilmartin.com) is a good example of a woman's comedy website with a lot of content. But only 15% of the comedians choosing to list themselves on ComedySoapbox.com are women, and an equally small proportion of the comedians who regularly post blogs, one of the site's most popular features, are women. Marketing is very important in comedy-- the more we promote, the more people we get to shows. And it's putting people in seats that gets us booked.

I've learned that the comedy business is half about being funny and the other half is about people. The business really runs on favors. You gave me a spot last year when I asked for one, so I'll tell my agent about you. You introduced me to this booker, so come open for me on the road. You gave me a ride home when I was sick and it was raining, now I have a TV show so come audition for it. Successful comedians have learned to be nice to other comedians-- more than half their help as they start in the business will come from other comics.

Want to know the reason that comedy clubs put on theme shows such as Latino comics or gay comics? Because they attract an audience. Vote with your feet-- if you see that NYC's Gotham Comedy Club is putting on an all-women show, go to it. If the room is full the owners will notice and put on more of these shows. They'll probably also put more female comics into the regular line-up. If you go to The Comic Strip because Judy Gold or Veronica Mosey or Karen Bergreen is playing, mention how much of a fan you are within earshot of the person at the door. Amateur comedians are told that one step in getting noticed is when the waitresses at comedy clubs start talking about them-- they see a hundred comedians a week and what they say carries some weight. More importantly, if you, a paying customer, let it be known why you went to a show, you will be heard. It's not exactly as scientific as the Nielsen ratings, but it works.

Why aren't female comedians getting their share of TV shows? Where's Laurie Kilmartin's sitcom, or Jessica Kirson's? I don't know. I don't think TV executives are geniuses, and surely they prefer going with what has already worked instead of risking something new, but if the few female-centered shows were drawing in huge ratings, the networks would notice. There seem to be a lot of television shows about young women-- they're all on UPN or WB. How are they doing? Obviously well enough that we're getting more of them. It actually took Fox to put on a number of TV shows about black families (after very few of them on network... "Good Times," "The Jeffersons" and "The Cosby Show" come to mind) and now there are a lot of them. And black people are what, fifteen percent of the country? Women, you're are more than half, and I'm pretty sure you all own televisions.

Why aren't there any women hosting late-night talk shows, traditionally a job given to a stand-up comedian? I don't know. Joan Rivers had a shot at The Tonight Show but she blew it. Frankly I really liked her on Monday nights but I don't know if I could have watched her five nights a week because she was, to me, more of a character than a person I wanted to invite into my home on a regular basis. I would quickly get sick of having so much of her. I would have said the same thing about Rodney Dangerfield, by the way. But perhaps this is still the result of sexism. Possibly women in comedy have to be more character-driven in order to get to the top, and then at the top they're locked into their character. Roseanne and Ellen got sitcoms, but Jay Leno got the comedian's biggest prize. I think he does a fabulastic job and I'm thrilled he buys some of my jokes, but when Johnny Carson retired part of me wanted Rita Rudner to get the job.

A long time ago people said that women would never be TV stars, until Lucille Ball proved them wrong. In the eighties people said that the traditional sitcom was dead because it had been done to death, until "The Cosby Show" showed that the problem was not the sitcom format but simply that we needed better sitcoms. For a long time people said that standup comedy as a TV show or movie theme wouldn't work, until Jerry Seinfeld proved them wrong. Some people even say that Kevin Costner will never be in a movie without baseball. Eventually he may prove them wrong too. There will consistently be number one sitcoms starring women. Maybe even, shockingly, with me, a feminist male, as the head writer of one of them. What will make these shows number one? When you all watch them. That's what made Oprah the Queen of daytime TV. Viewers. It's as simple as that.

And before you go completely batty, remember that while the winners of all three seasons of "Last Comic Standing" were men, not one has a TV show. Pamela Anderson has had how many?

You want more female comics to succeed? Get yourself to their shows. There are thousands of comedy clubs in big cities, in little cities and even occasional professional comedy shows in small towns, all over the United States. Comedy is a business; it runs on money. Your money is your vote. Go out and vote.

Shaun Eli

Feminist Male Comedian (sm)

This article originally appeared on www.BrainChampagne.com in 2006. Republished with permission.

Spring Breakdown (2009) Trailer

2009-06-02T22:52:00.002-05:00

Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, Will Arnett's Spring Breakdown is available today on DVD and Blu-ray.

Spring Breakdown was mentioned in Lauren's blog a while back. It's receiving mixed reviews, thus far. Anyone seen it, yet? I'm worried that if it's great, I'll be angry that it went straight to DVD and if it's so-so, that will be disappointing.

Obviously, I do want it to be great. And I want it to have been released already in theaters. And I would like a pony.

By the way- rated R?

Reversing Midol's Curse

2009-06-02T13:45:00.004-05:00

So recently Lauren and Caitlin posted videos in which comedians Lynne Koplitz and Lauren Ashley Bishop are featured in ads for Midol about periods. Lauren posed the question of whether or not this ad represented progress in our culture's discussion and understanding of periods.

For now, let me just say that this ad represents progress in Midol's advertising strategy. After all, this is a company that used the phrase (imperative?) "Reverse the Curse" to sell their ibuprofen.

I know this isn't exactly comedy-related, but perhaps it is funny in a terrible sort of way that our periods, a very normal, banal occurrence in the life of most women, have been conjured into unmanageable nuisances by advertisers.

And as Midol's very livelihood depends on the way they portray periods, it is no wonder that the company must evolve their advertising for the times, lest we all realize that midol is not any more special than my Walgreen's brand of pain killer.

I go into detail about that marketing campaign here. Please read on if interested:

It’s time to reverse the curse. No, Midol commercials, I don’t mean ending my period. I mean reversing the curse you have conjured up against periods.

Products marketed for women have long cashed in on exploiting women’s fears and insecurities about their bodies. Exaggerating the inconvenience of menstruation is yet another ploy churned out by the pantheon of myth-making advertising bullshit to scare up some dollars. In the meantime, however, talking about periods as though they curse women damages the ultimate feminist goal of achieving equality between men and women.

The whole article can be read here...

Try this incredibly fun, rewarding interactive experience!

2009-06-02T07:00:00.002-05:00

Pic by Flickr's Pink Sherbet

Alright folks. This is an interactive blog post. Here's what we need you to do:

1. Look to the left of this column.

2. Scroll down and check out the list of comedians and shows (then come back, we'll wait).

3. Get upset about who we've neglected to link to.

4. Leave a comment about who we should include on the list.

5. Go back and check out some of the phenomenal comedians already listed.

6. Enjoy some sherbet, like our technicolor tween model.

What is Feminist Humor, Anyway?

2009-06-01T10:59:00.004-05:00

When I talk about this feminism and humor project, a considerable number of people shift their glance, squirm a bit. Sometimes they smile politely and change the subject. Sometimes they smile and ask what I think of 30 Rock/Roseanne/this one prostitute joke. Once, a guy tried to bait me into an argument over Andrew Dice Clay. (My response: "Yeah... I guess his rise was before my time.") More than once, I've been treated to the "Feminism and comedy? Isn't that an oxymoron?" quip. Zing! Way to prove you know nothing about feminism.

But you can't really blame people for being confuddled, especially if they're not hip to what feminism actually is, compared to its stereotype: angry, male-hating bra-burners with a not-so-secret agenda to lesbianize our daughters, refinish our garage cabinets and rule the world. And these people have jokes?

The internet is littered with "Feminist Humor" sites, only adding to the miseducation. These sites feature anti-male or anti-feminist jokes (like this, this, & this). They were not written or labeled by feminists (we were too busy refinishing our cabinets). But nonetheless, they reinforce the idea that feminism is about putting men down, which, if you're still confused about, isn't true. (There are millions of phenomenal feminist guys!)

So, here's the hard part. It's easy to say what feminism isn't. And much harder to say what it is. Contrary to popular belief, feminism isn't one big united front, with a sneaky set of objectives. Feminism or feminisms, as Make/Shift magazine likes to put it, are as varied as the groups that identify with the terms. A commonality is a concern for the well-being of women and girls in a world that frequently treats them like crap. Many feminisms recognize the intersectionality of how race, gender, class and sexuality can severely limit the opportunities for individuals... and think needs to be addressed and changed.

And so, what is true "feminist humor"? It's a slippery slope to try to create a classification system- this counts, this doesn't. Generally, feminist humor is based on a worldview cognizant of the way the world oppresses certain groups. It might address and invert cultural assumptions about identity or experiences of being marginalized. But it might not. In a world where women and minorities are given so few voices in the mainstream media, I feel that the act of a woman holding a microphone is feminist, in itself. (Er, unless she's reinforcing misogyny with that voice. See how tricky it gets to start saying what counts and what doesn't?)

Feminist Humor Theory is a interdisciplinary field of scholarship devoted to intersections of gender, humor and power. It's really cool. I'd recommend Nancy A. Walkers, A Very Serious Thing, if you're looking to read more about it. More recently, Sabiyha Prince is writing about the ghettoization of black female comedians.

We at Wisecrack truly believe in the power of comedy to shape the world we live in. We hope Wisecrack will be a virtual space for exploration of issues of gender, comedy, feminism and ultimately, justice. We'd like to include as many voices as possible- if you're interested in contributing, please contact us at Wisecrack [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Across the Pond: Little Miss Jocelyn Jee Eisen

2009-05-30T11:21:00.001-05:00

In 2006, British actress Jocelyn Jee Eisen made major history as the first black comedienne to star in a sketch comedy show.

"Little Miss Jocelyn," which she wrote and starred in brought her a New Talent Award at the Women in Film and Television Awards.

Have a great weekend!

Sara Benincasa on Feminism, Stupid People, Power Dynamics of Humor

2009-05-27T22:16:00.007-05:00

Sara Benincasa is a comedian, blogger and host of Cosmo radio's "Get in Bed" sex talk show. (You may remember her from MTV's coverage of the election.) From Danna Williams' interview with Sara Benincasa from Decider.com:

Decider: Many female comedians consider “feminism” to be the other “f word.” Have you ever addressed feminism, explicitly or implicitly?
Sara Benincasa: On "Get In Bed," feminism is implicit in that we celebrate the female body and liberal and open sexuality. We celebrate “safer” sex: We say there's no such thing as safe sex, but there is such a thing as safer sex. Feminism definitely comes into play on stage. I make some jokes about it, but just the fact that I have that platform as a woman—to be up in front of people, in front of a live audience, on television, or YouTube—is one of the results of feminism. I feel privileged to have been born in a generation that followed generations of women who fought so hard for us. That's not to say that it's perfect. But I feel my grandmother had it a lot harder as a woman than I do.
D: A lot of people still think women aren't funny—including women. How do you confront that stereotype?
SB: The best way is by actually being funny. I hear some people who go, “I don't usually think women comics are funny, but you're funny.” That's not a compliment. To me that just says you're stupid, and I don't really need another stupid person liking my comedy. If you're going to see my show or paying me to make something, that's great—I'll take your money. But I'll think you're stupid. To tell me that most people with the same genitalia as me aren't funny, but I'm the exception is just bullshit.
In our culture, men are still socialized to only find one another amusing. I'm not sure why that is, but part of me thinks it's because the person who makes you laugh has some degree of power over you—to provoke a reaction in you that's very definitive, spontaneous, and kind of remarkable—just as the person who prompts you to cry has power over you. So if you’re laughing at someone, you’re in some way subservient to them. For so many reasons, some men—and some women—don't necessarily want to give control to women.
But there are many women who are so fucking hysterical. I love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and of course Margaret Cho, Amy Sedaris, and Kathy Griffin. Since the beginning of time, ladies have been hilarious. But it's always going to make some men uncomfortable—because if you're funny, it's not because you're hot. You might be hot to boot, which is great, but your prettiness doesn't make someone laugh. What makes someone laugh is your brain. And women with intense, strong, active brains can be frightening.
Comedy can be a sexist industry, but you know that getting into it. I'm not going to change that on my own. It's something you accept. Maria Bamford is a great example of a comedian who is able to mix it up with the boys, so to speak. You don't have to become an insult comic to mix it up with the boys, and you don't have to become an aggressive asshole, or swear all the time, or be the most crass person in the room. You can just be you.

"Funny & Fine" Sexy Comedienne Poll at Huffpost

2009-05-27T11:27:00.006-05:00

A "Who's the sexiest comedienne?" poll is going on over at Huffpost today.

Gah. One on hand, sure, these women are extremely crushable and Huff gives them props in the intro. But must we recognize their awesomeness with a beauty pageant poll?

Yeah, yeah, they're doing the same to male comedians on Thursday. It still doesn't sit right with me.

Thoughts?

An Interview with Kate "Oates" Micucci

2009-05-27T08:08:00.005-05:00

Photo w/ permission from katemicucci.com

This past Saturday you got a taste of Garfunkel and Oates.

As part of the duo, Micucci is well known on the West Coast for shows at the Steve Allen Theater and if you're a Scrubs fan, she was goofy lawyer Ted's girlfriend, Stephanie Gooch, this season. You can see her around town playing her ukulele or on the beach building sand sculptures (they're quite spectacular). I'm pleased to sit down and talk (via email) with Kate "Oates" Micucci.

LP: How does Garfunkel & Oates come up with the fun, true diddies, like Present Face?
Kate: Oftentimes Riki (Lindhome) says, "We should write a song about this." Then from there we sit with the piano and guitar and a tape recorder and just go.

LP: Do you consider yourself (or your duo) socially conscious humor?
Kate: I never think of my solo songs as socially conscious. I think my songs have pretty simple subject matter. But with Garfunkel and Oates, we touch on some social ideas. Our latest song is a pro gay marriage song called Sex With Ducks. With G and O, it is nice to be able to be more bold with both subject matter and melodies.

LP: What's your favorite experience or moment as a comedian?
Kate: I've only been performing for a little less than two years. But in that time I have a lot of favorite moments. Last month's Playin' With Micucci at the Steve Allen Theater was pretty special. It was the first time my mom and dad were seeing me perform. It was 420. And it also happened to be my mom's birthday. So it was the "Let's Get High With My Mom Birthday Show." Over 100 people sang happy birthday to my mom. It was pretty special. I'm not sure how many of those people then got high.

LP: Where did building sand castles come from? What's your inspiration behind this very cool hobby?
Kate: I studied sculpture in college and I always enjoyed sculpting in the sand. Then my brother told me that a fancy hotel in Santa Monica was looking for a sand castle building instructor. I got the job and spent every Sunday evening teaching kids how to build in the sand. The best part was, most of the time, nobody showed up for class so I got paid to go to the beach. I don't teach classes anymore but I do still go to the beach to sculpt when I have the time.

LP: Do you consider G&O the female version of Flight of the Conchords? Do you get that a lot?
Kate: We've been getting that a lot. I've actually never seen Flight of the Conchords although people tell me all of the time that I should check it out. That is the popular comedy band right now, so that is the automatic comparison. If it were ten years ago, we'd be the female Tenacious D. But it is all very flattering. I think as girls, we are able to get away with saying things that guys could never say. I don't think a guy could get away with singing Pregnant Women Are Smug. So I think it is new hearing songs like this from a female perspective.

LP: and lastly, do you think humor can be used as a tool for social change?
Kate: Absolutely. I wouldn't doubt Tina Fey's portrayal of Palin swung some votes Obama's way.

Hopefully she and her partner-in-crime, Riki Lindhome, will be able to swing some votes to overturn the Prop 8 decision in California with this:

If you're looking for Kate to come your way, she's thinking about it and would love to take her show on the road. Kate loves Chicago - maybe a Wisecrack event? I'm crossing my fingers.

Comediennes Online: Interview with Jacki Schklar

2009-05-27T00:15:00.001-05:00

Outside a handful of Facebook groups, online communities for female comedians (and their supporters) are hard to find. This week I caught up with Jacki Schklar, creator and publisher of one of the most established groups on the internet serving this purpose, www.funnynotslutty.com.

Since May 2008, FnS has been featuring videos, interviews and humor by women through monthly editions of the site. They also host a Ning community, a social network for comediennes and fans.

[Note: This interview was conducted via email.]

What was your motivation behind starting FnS?

I had to hunt and peck through tons of young male targeted humor to find humor geared for me, a mature female. Masturbation and tits don’t really make me laugh. It takes a lot more than that to entertain a woman in her sexual peak years, and if I want to see big breasts all I need to do is look down.

Do you run FnS entirely by yourself?

FnS is a growing community of networking and humor based creativity with dozens of contributors, becoming more expansive all the time. But I created the site and I am the webmaster/publisher.

What, would you say, are the ultimate goals of FnS?

Well, I’d love to be the chick’s cracked.com or Funny or Die.

It’s a funny haven for women to take a break and laugh. And it’s a catalyst for female artists and fans to converse and inspire one another.

As far as goals for the next few years, I’d like to incorporate a live streaming show and produce a video series concept I have that can incorporate content submitted by Funny not Slutties from all over. I hope to get the new collaborations started before the end of 2009. I need to finish up my productions How to Live and Eat like a Southern Jewish Princess and Footastic Theatre before I get the new series in gear.

How has FnS been received? Have any reactions surprised you?

It has been greatly received by the U.S. comedy population. Many comedians and comedy bloggers know about us and buzz around the site. The site is not comedy by women for female comedians though, it’s comedy by women for all women who want to laugh. So I have some work to do to get beyond “preaching to the choir.” But getting the attention of artists is a great start.
I don’t really know about surprises, but can say that I look at our metrics and enjoy it when we hit a “lottery,” get featured or listed somewhere and get hits from that. Or an awesome artist shows up in our membership. But the site is pretty much becoming what I am setting out for it. I guess the number of men who enjoy the site is a bit of a surprise.

I've got to ask about the title. Could you explain it a bit? Are you afraid it might be seen as "anti-woman," since calling sexually active women "sluts" is a way to stigmatize enjoying sex?

The name is a word play on the fact that when you get a bunch of ladies together on a site “showing off their stuff”, that might conjure up thoughts of porn. But we are not “slutty chicks,” we’re “funny chicks.” The word slutty has many meanings and it’s just a catchy and funny site name, not literal. If you don’t get it, the site is not for you.

I discovered the fabulous Jocelyn Jee through FnS- how do you find and decide which comedians to feature?

I get emails from producers, writers and talent asking me to consider their projects. I have a community called the Funny not Slutty Network on the site and will often find talent who has joined and like to give them priority. I have been delighted at many of the contributions and often pull from the community to post on the homepage. And sometimes I request a specific contribution and artists are happy to be included.

What's Atlanta and the South, in general, like for female comedians?

My background is corporate media production and journalism so I’m no expert on the entertainment industry. I know that in Atlanta the headlining female is extremely rare. But I can’t tell you why. I have interviewed Etta May and a few other female comics and they all have different opinions. I do feel that women need to concentrate on supporting one another before they point to the opposite sex at fault. The only reason why there is no “Old Girls Club” is because we have not created it. Women tend to be supportive of one another only when there is something in it for them. You don’t see much real altruistic bridge building between us. The top 4 referring private sites sending traffic to FnS, are all men’s. That is not a coincidence. The successful guys reach back to promote us, the a-lister women have not. Yet.

I ran across a comedy forum where people were mighty nasty about FnS- is that reaction common? How do you deal with disrespectful criticism?

I can count the incidences of negative criticism toward the site on one hand. But that forum was one of my top referrals that month. You have to have an antagonist to bond with the heroine. I wish my forums were a little more controversial, it would be great. So I have had little negative feedback but aspire to be big enough to attract more in the future.

Organizations like Bitch Magazine and the bloggers at Evil Slutopia have had certain difficulties and complications due to racy names- have you experienced this?

The first month or two I had over 50% smutty referring keywords, which I expected. But I’m pretty good with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that is down to under 10% most days, which is probably not much worse than what any adult content comedy site would attract. Leaving the slutty keyword referrals is ultimately not good for your stats, because it may send more page views but it lowers your visit time and pages per visit.
There are some instances where I could not be listed in an automated system, etc. because of the name being filtered but I think all in all the name works and I’m ok with paying that price. If you think that is bad, I also bought the domain unfunnycunt.com. This should really be a doozey.

Lastly- I've got to ask- who are your favorite upcoming comedians?

Can’t touch that one with a ten foot pole, would leave someone out or piss someone off…But I have tons of great talent on the site to check out. The artists who have been most commended by readers are Alice Jankowski, The Retributioners, and Nicole Terry.

Designing Women Creator on Feminist Comediennes on TV

2009-05-26T10:16:00.008-05:00

I know. You've been counting down the days. Designing Women is finally available on DVD. Rich Heldenfels interviews creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason about the state of feminism on TV, over at the Akron Beacon Journal. A few clips:

''There's such a lack of strong women in comedy,'' Bloodworth-Thomason lamented. ''I think the television culture has changed. The role models just aren't out there.''

Instead, she sees an entertainment world where the focus is on the likes of Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters, where attention goes to ''attractive young girls who are . . . vapid and empty.''

...''I knew that feminism had gotten a black eye,'' she said. ''I wanted to have really good-looking, smart, sophisticated women.'' Although they had their flaws and quirks (especially Suzanne and Charlene), any one could make a sharp point. Any one could make you laugh.

...Bloodworth-Thomason got a rough lesson in [the changing state of feminism on TV] not long ago. She made a deal with HBO for a series called 12 Miles of Bad Road, set among the Texas rich. Six episodes were made. It had a great cast, including Lily Tomlin, Mary Kay Place, Gary Cole and Kim Dickens; it had a lot of snap, and moments that felt like Designing Women at its best. But there was a regime change at HBO, and the show never aired.

Nooooo! Not a cancelled Lily Tomlin TV show! Gah.

Bloodworth-Thomason writes of fewer feminist comedian role models on TV... at a time when comediennes seem to be making progress on TV. I guess the element lacking is the intentionally feminist writing- although I'd argue that most shows comedically depicting women's lives might be inherently feminist, in bringing women's experiences into the mainstream culture.

Designing Women was a bit before my time- I vaguely remember the reruns. I guess my generation's experience of feminist comedy TV shows falls somewhere between Clarissa Explains It All and... Ally McBeal? What am I forgetting?

Pregnant Women are Smug by Garfunkel and Oates

2009-05-23T12:30:00.002-05:00

Have a great long weekend!

Ellen DeGeneres Commencement Speech at Tulane University (2009-05-16)

2009-05-23T01:12:00.003-05:00

Found on Feministing.

Coincidentally, David and I watched Ellen's coming out episode just yesterday and were surprised by 1) how dated it seems and 2) the classy writing.

MEET THE EDITORS OF WISECRACK

2009-05-20T21:28:00.004-05:00

Check out this awesome video! Who are those bodacious babes? YOU'LL NEVER KNOW UNTIL YOU LOOK!!!!

Aunt Flow is a Riot!

2009-05-19T23:50:00.007-05:00

I'm getting my dose of late night TV and see this gem:

What say you? Is this a step towards acceptance of "that time of the month"? I don't have any answers but it's better than some lady in a green suit handing you a gift box on the beach (Thanks Tampax).

Also if you know the comedian in this commercial, let us know if she's done anything else. She's got great comedic timing!

The Rise of Black Comediennes on TV and Wanda Sykes New Gig on FOX

2009-05-19T16:24:00.006-05:00

Next year's television deals are the big news of the month. A number of African American women will be taking over the small screen with their own new shows.

We've already mentioned Mo'Nique's talk show on BET. It's just been announced that Wanda Sykes will be hosting her own Saturday night political talk show on... FOX (cue confusion).

From Stage Time:

The one-hour show will feature biting commentary on topical issues and heated panel discussions with recurring personalities. The series’ unique format will highlight Sykes’ outspoken comedic perspective on current events and will also allow her to leave the studio to shoot segments in the field.

Also, Stage Time notes that Aisha Tyler will be hosting a comedic daytime talk show on ABC, and Sherri Shepard (notorious for her input on The View) has landed a Lifetime comedy pilot.

A Reading from Humorist Sloane Crosley

2009-05-18T10:14:00.001-05:00

Sloane Crosley's essay collection "I Was Told There Would be Cake" was a New York Times bestseller. Here's a reading she gave at Google in 2007.

Her book has been showered with complimentary reviews and comparisons to David Sedaris. HBO has purchased rights to the stories for a possible television adaption.

SNL's Casey Wilson on Funny or Die

2009-05-16T15:36:00.001-05:00

SNL's Casey Wilson Reads Internet Comments from Casey Wilson

Have a great weekend.

Science Discovers Flirting

2009-05-15T10:27:00.009-05:00

(Photo courtesy permanentlyscatterbrained)

Psychology researchers have determined a new correlation between being attractive and funny.

Previous studies have shown that being funny increases one's attractiveness, but this study shows that it can go the other way, as well.

The general conclusion of the study is that humor is used as a relationship initiator. In other words, the academy has discovered flirting.

There was only one real reference to gender at play. They acknowledge that cracking a joke can be risky- if the joke flops, you're left with awkwardness and discomfort. They suggest that men may have less to lose than women in a botched attempt to hit on someone (evolutionarily speaking), so men are more likely to crack a joke first.

The authors also argue that Humor Studies has been neglected in the field of social psychology. Yes! Absolutely. The lack of study in this area has given rise to too many mediocre studies leading the pack (my personal favorite).

Good, Then Bad News for AbFab Fans

2009-05-14T13:31:00.004-05:00

Remember Absolutely Fabulous, the British sit-com? It followed the lives of Edina and Patsy- two drunken, single, middle-aged best friends, obsessed with fashion and staying hip. The show gained a huge following during its run from 1992 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2005...and was slated to become an American remake on Fox. That is, until it was officially canceled earlier this week.

In the show, Edina and Patsy seemed perpetually hung-over while striving to be ultra glamorous, wearing excessive make-up and leopard print tights, while never admitting that they are getting older. Edina's mature teenage daughter, Saffy, was constantly disappointed in them, taking on a reversed parent/child relationship.

The new show was to be directed by Mitch Hurwitz, known for directing two amazing shows: Arrested Development and The Golden Girls. The original Edina Monsoon, Jennifer Saunders, would have been the executive producer. The American version was to be set in Los Angeles, starring Kristen Johnston from 3rd Rock from the Sun as Patsy and Kathryn Hahn from the Revolutionary Road as Edina.

In an article about the cancellation, Fox apparently wondered if the show was really for their audience.

Oh, how Fox got our hopes up!

A clip from the original show, for old times sake:

LAFF Recap

2009-05-12T12:07:00.005-05:00

We've made it back from Austin's Ladies Are Funny Festival (2,600 miles of driving later!) Here's what happened:

Thursday

Sadly, we missed out on Cabaret Night, after getting lost in Mississippi and getting caught in Dallas traffic. We heard the show was fantastic. Performers included Selena Coppock, Amy Albert's Delilah Dix, Holly Lorka, Virginia Jones, Luna Tart, Kerri Lendo and sketch group Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting.

Friday

We checked out the Cathedral of Junk, the Capitol building and had a coffee at the Hideout Coffeehouse and Theater, home of much Austin improv.

Friday's show included improv by Austin's troupes Firth and Arjet, Adventures Squad! and NYC-based FOCUS, an improvised take on The View.

After that, we were treated to Megan Grano's one woman show Obliged, a show lampooning the worst of wedding culture. The night ended with Sara Benincasa's Agorafabulous, a comedy/tragedy about, among many things, an agoraphobic breakdown.

Saturday

Saturday's performances included Mocha Jean Herrup's Letters of Complaint and Compliment, improv by the women of Houston's Massive. The night ended with a musical improv double feature. First, by Girls Girls Girls (the organizers of LAFF), followed by Jill Bernard's one women show Drum Machine.

After much deliberation in the the car on the way back, our Critic's Choice Award goes to to Jill Bernard's one woman improv explosion. Bernard uses a randomly chosen drum machine loop as the background for musical scenes which regularly feature up to 8 characters- all played by herself. Whereas with much improv, it's not difficult to predict what's coming up... Jill seems to be 7 or 8 steps ahead of you.

Yesterday, I got a chance to catch up with Kacey Samiee, one of the organizers and GGG cast members, post-LAFF:

CR: What a weekend. Are you relaxed now that it's all over?

KS: Yes! I think everybody in the troupe is now recuperating, since so much work went into it. [There] were so many people who did so much organization and planning, emailing, number-crunching and all of that kind of stuff to get it up and running, but now that it's done I think everyone is relieved but really happy with how it turned out.

CR: That's great. What were the goals of LAFF?

KS: We're trying to get bigger every year, to get known by people in other states and maybe eventually internationally as well. Also, giving a spotlight to women in comedy who do this because they love it and usually do this on their own and have things to say. Generally it's a male-oriented industry, not that there's anything wrong with guys, but we really try to honor and represent women who are out there doing it on their own.

We're also trying to get bigger and better acts every year, and maybe eventually, we'll be able to extend it longer than just a weekend.

CR: That's fantastic. By those goals, would you call this past weekend a success?

KS: Totally a success. This weekend was thrilling, it was bigger than we thought it would be. We ended up selling out most nights, so that went really well. We had a really great line-up and audience participation was fantastic.

I'm really excited about how it turned out this year. The first two years were hard because people don't really know about it and people don't want to apply to something they haven't heard of, but finally this year it took hold and had a snowballing momentum.

Wanda Sykes at White House Correspondents' Dinner

2009-05-12T10:13:00.002-05:00

In case you missed it, here's a clip from Wanda Sykes performance on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. It seems to be causing even more of a stir than Stephen Colbert in '06.

Why has greater offense been taken? Maybe Colbert got a few free passes by speaking in character. But I'm willing to guess that Sykes race, gender and sexual orientation add insult to injury for a predominantly white, male-dominated and anti-gay party. The general criticism seems to be that Sykes' tone was too mean-spirited, a criticism surely influenced by the fact that making aggressive jokes falls outside of the acceptable realm of behavior for women.

Here's what Feministing had to say.

New Target Women with Sarah Haskins: Michelle Obama's Arms

2009-05-09T09:50:00.005-05:00

If you're unfamiliar with Haskins, then you have a whole series of Target Women segments awaiting your discovery. Target Women regularly and accurately lampoons the daily barrage of annoying media and advertising aimed at the fairer sex. Haskins has taken on yogurt and jewelry ads, WE and Showtime tv shows, and yes, even Carl's Jr.

Haskins is herself a Chicago native, Harvard grad and former Second Citizen. She's won quite the cult following among all types (even Entertainment Weekly!). At her WAM! performance, she received a standing ovation before she even spoke.

She's able to critically examine how mainstream media treats women without alienating those with an aversion to big bad scary feminism. She's cool, she's hilarious and she's raising our media literacy, one viral video at a time.

Catch Comedienne Showcases in Minneapolis and Austin this Weekend

2009-05-08T11:46:00.005-05:00

This is the weekend of Austin's Ladies Are Funny Festival! David Butler and I have driven down from Chicago to check it out, so stay tuned for updates from Austin.

Also, in Minneapolis, tomorrow night is "Women Stand Up!" This will be the last show before a summer hiatus, so if you're near the Twin Cities, check it out:

   Women Stand Up!
        A Comedy Cabaret
        Presented by Eos Productions

        Come and get it—brainy, gutsy, heartfelt humor! Revel with
witty women who speak their minds.

"Women Stand Up! A Comedy Cabaret" is a new hit regular series at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater--a smorgasbord of comedy styles from the Twin Cities' top female comedians.

Performers run the gamut in experience and disciplines within the umbrella of comedy, including: stand-up comedians, improvisers, sketch comics, slam poets, singers, storytellers and a bit of everything in-between.

Each show is unique and features different performers.

        May 9th Performers:

    Writer/ rapper Dessa Darling ( of Doomtree)

Singer Jennifer Eckes

Sketch Comedy from Heidi Fellner & Jen Scott

Storytellers Molly Priesmeyer & Katherine Glover

in her stand-up debut, WSU!'s own Lindy Venustus

        Bryant Lake Bowl Theater
        810 West Lake Street, Minneapolis
        http://www.bryantlakebowl.com
        Reservations: 612- 825-8949

"http://www.myspace.com/womenstandupcomedycabaret"or search for the group "Women Stand Up! A Comedy Cabaret" on Facebook

Sabiyha Prince on "Race And American Comedy"

2009-05-06T11:20:00.004-05:00

Sabiyha Prince just put up this great piece over at Huffpost.

Excerpts:

[Shows like SNL, The Daily Show and Colbert Report] only paint a portion of the picture of political acumen and resistance on the American comedic landscape. What about the black political variety on U.S. television? To whom have Richard Pryor and Dick Gregory passed the baton of African American comedic observation? The absence of Dave Chappelle's cackle-punctuated prescience has left a woeful gap in an, already, floundering genre and while I'm not taking anything away from Chris Rock or D. L. Hughley, these two are yet to find sustainably lucrative vehicles for their politically-oriented work on television.
[...] OK, women who challenge the sexual status quo deserve some sort of credit but where are the black equivalents to Tina Fey, Janeane Garafalo, and Stephanie Miller? Who are the sistah-friend humorists of Wanda Sykes, Nancy Giles, and Frangela?
The channels for black, female, political humor on American television are blocked. This dearth is fostered, in part, by limiting, age-old notions of femaleness and the funny which have been examined by such scholars like Regina Barreca and others. Juxtaposed against perceptions of race and class in American life, these views intersect to create an atmosphere uniquely ghettoizing of African American women comics.

Prince is currently working on an ethnography examining "black female standup life to show how raced and gendered ideas about status and identity affect the experiences of black women doing comedy today." How cool is that?

Mindy Kaling's NBC Sitcom Deal

2009-05-06T10:56:00.005-05:00

(Photo Courtesy NBC)

Mindy Kaling, currently playing Kelly on "The Office," will soon be starring in her own NBC sitcom (yes, yes, cue comparisons to Tina Fey.)

Kaling has also been a writer for "The Office," where she'll continue to work while bringing the writing/acting duel attack to the new yet-unnamed series.

I guess it's Women Get TV Show Deals Week. Who will get a show tomorrow?

"The Mo'Nique Show" Coming Soon

2009-05-05T15:16:00.006-05:00

Comediennes rarely host late night talk shows, which is why it's a big deal that Mo'Nique will be getting her own show on BET, come the fall.

She joins the ranks of Chelsea Handler who hosts Chelsea Lately on the E! cable network.

Sharon Horgan of BBC's "Pulling"

2009-05-04T01:49:00.002-05:00

The Guardian calls her "The Funniest Woman You've Never Heard Of."

While Sharon Horgan co-writes the BBC3's show "Pulling," it's been her outstanding acting on the show that landed her a British Comedy Award in 2008. (Yes, it's on Netflix.)

The show centers on three flatmates living in London. Sometimes cited as the antithesis to Sex and the City, this black comedy shows the less-than-glamourous realities of dating, sex and living with your friends.

Despite a large British following, "Pulling" has been canceled (upsetting many). Fortunately, we can expect an american version coming soon to ABC! Horgan is also rumored to be writing for a new HBO series.

Pulling's hour-long finale will air on May 17th on BBC3.

Note to Self: Only Perform for Young Feminists and Free Thai Food

2009-05-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

Last night, Carrie Callahan, Anna Hall and I had the pleasure of performing stand-up for University of Chicago students, at a show hosted by the Feminist Majority group.

The audience wasn't huge, but they were so receptive and fun to perform for. Entering that stage, I felt like a comedian, rather than a "female comedian". Did I mention there was free thai food? What else could we have asked for?

Of course, it didn't hurt that I was sandwiched between rockstars Carrie and Anna. They both worked wonders with the audience, and I had the joy of slipping in and "pretending" to be a real comedian (how I felt after my stand-up hiatus).

Here's a video of Carrie (not from last night), who performs at various showcases around Chicago, including Chicago Underground Comedy.

Citizen Journalism is Hot, Cosmo is Not

2009-04-30T13:44:00.021-05:00

'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man

Cosmopolitan, with a readership of 632,000, is one of the most well-known “women’s” magazines in the world. It has also been criticized relentlessly by feminists who argue that women have interests other than just pleasing men.

It had been awhile, so I decided to check out Cosmo’s website and see if things had changed. Apparently not. One of the first articles that came up was “Sex Tips from Guys.” There’s no better way to "empower women" than by having men write the articles in women’s magazines, telling them directly what to do for them in bed. The advice given was anything but sex-positive. There was no focus on healthy communication. The article emphasized the importance of satisfying your partner with no mention of getting satisfied yourself. And, per usual, it assumed a heterosexual relationship from the get-go. I left reading Cosmo feeling insecure and paranoid.

Women's magazines shouldn't tell women what to do; they should give women a voice. This is why it is critical to support independent and feminist media. And if you’re not reading articles that represent you or your ideas, don’t be afraid to jump in and create something yourself. That’s how newspapers and magazines are founded.

Citizen journalism is a great way to get involved and reclaim the media. And the best part about it is that anyone can do it. You don’t have to be professionally trained as a journalist to write a story, post a photo or video online, or start a blog.

In an article in MediaShift, it says “One of the main concepts behind citizen journalism is that mainstream media reporters and producers are not the exclusive center of knowledge on a subject -- the audience knows more collectively than the reporter alone.”

The article describes how in "We the Media," (Dan) Gillmor traces the roots of citizen journalism to the founding of the United States in the 18th century, when pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine and the anonymous authors of the Federalist Papers gained prominence by printing their own publications.

Some cities have their own citizen journalism websites. In Minnesota, there is the Twin Cities Daily Planet, where anyone in the community can contribute articles, and there is also a list of resources for citizen journalists. In Portland, there is the Portland Independent Media Center, which advertises independent tv news, radio, print, and video; and where publishing a story is as easy as sending an email.

Another great way to create your own media is to start a zine! Zines are awesome and easy because you can make them at home, and there are no rules. You can be in total control of the content. In Portland, The Independent Publishing Resource Center is a great resource for getting started- members have access to workshops, a computer lab, copiers and a humongous zine library, which is a great way to learn about and support other independent writers. Independent and feminist bookstores are always a good place to look, and some local libraries even stock zines (and perhaps would stock more if requested). Portland is also host to the annual Portland Zine Symposium, a three-day event full of zinesters and workshops galore.

Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go is an all-women workshop group based in Southern California that focuses on the empowerment of young women through the production of fanzines and self published works. On their website, they have tips about how to start a zine group yourself.

There are many ways to get published, so if magazines like Cosmo aren’t representative of you, create something that is.

Air America Interviews Kristen Schaal

2009-04-29T12:35:00.002-05:00

You already love her from Flight of the Conchords and The Daily Show... don't forget to check out Penelope Princess of Pets!

Uniting Against Scout's Sexist Remarks at Melbourne International Comedy Festival

2009-04-28T12:15:00.011-05:00

From Australia's The Age, this article by Peter Munro covers comediennes calling out a sexist scout on comments she made in this other article:

[...] No less than 27 female comics from this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which ends today, signed a letter deriding independent TV casting agent [Henrie Stride], who scoured the comedy festival for new talent and concluded that much of women's comedy was "angry and quite hard, bitter, man-hating, lesbiany"...
... Stride, a former Channel Nine casting director, directed most of her criticism at the narrow casting on commercial television, rather than female comedians. She laments the way commercial stations "turn everything bland" by preferring attractive, likeable personalities they see as marketable to mass audiences. "Don't shoot the messenger," she said yesterday. "I don't make the programming choices; I put forward the people somebody else chooses.
"A lot of people I know in my industry have said to me it's the white elephant in the room that nobody is brave enough to talk about." But she is sorry for the upset her comments have caused female comedians. "I was too judgemental and a bit harsh in hindsight … I hurt people and that was certainly not my intention."

Here's some interesting commentary by The Outland Institute blog:

So if you’re thinking of getting into comedy and you’re a lady, make sureyou stay upbeat and pretty! Don’t do any of that silly political material - it will only give you wrinkles. And for god’s sake don’t be lesbiany. That’s so important that Stride has made up a whole new word to get it across.
In fact, the word “lesbiany” gets to the heart of the matter. For a start,it’s not a real word. Secondly, by directly telling us that LESBIAN = BAD, Stride has tipped from latent homophobia to overt homophobia.

I'd love to see the letter and hear about this from the comedians, themselves (email me at "wisecrackzine AT gmail DOT com" if you know someone who knows someone!).

First Annual "ImprovBoston Women in Comedy Festival" May 13-16

2009-04-27T12:16:00.003-05:00

Press Release from the WICF website:

Cambridge, Mass. - ImprovBoston presents the first annual "ImprovBoston Women in Comedy Festival" to be held May 13-16, 2009. The festival is a celebration of Boston-area women performing improvisational, sketch, film and stand-up comedy. Acclaimed artists include Comedy Central's Kelly MacFarland and Erin Judge, Second City's Leah Gotsik and Marty Johnson, film featuring Sarah Haskins of Current.com TV, and actors from ImprovBoston and Improv Asylum Mainstage.

The festival's mission is to create a forum for people to experience the unique comedic expression of women, see strong female performers and, most importantly, to have a great time. The event is affordable and many shows are family-friendly.

There will be workshops on sketch writing and improvisational comedy taught by award-winning, professional talent. The festival will also feature panel discussions with local talent and entertainment professionals to increase dialogue among Boston-area men and women performing comedy, as well as comedy workshops with area high school students and the Cambridge Women's Center. Co-produced by veteran performers Maria Ciampa and Michelle Barbera, the festival is a volunteer effort made possible by the hard work of its artistic staff, the not-for-profit ImprovBoston Theater, and a grant by the Cambridge Arts Council, nurturing the arts in Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More information can be found at www.womenincomedyfestival.com and www.improvboston.com.

Funny Women in Comedy Festival videos athttp://www.youtube.com/user/WomenInComedy

Location:
ImprovBoston
40 Prospect Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
617-576-1253

Tickets:
Doors open at 7:00 p.m. Shows begin at 8:00 p.m., 9:30 p.m., and 10:00 p.m. Prices vary: $10 - $25 for adults, $7 - $15 for students and seniors. See website for details
*VIP Festival Pass: $70*

Schedule:
Wednesday, May 13:
8 p.m. - "Comedy Kick Off", stand up comedy with Bari Olevsky, IB sketch group "User Friendly", and storytelling with Jess Sutich (A Night of Oral Tradition)

10 p.m. - "Funny Guys Stand Up Showcase", hosted by Maria Ciampa, with Dana Jay Bein, Shane Mauss (Late Night with Conan), Ken Reid, Robby Roadsteamer, Micah Sherman, and Zach Sherwin aka MC Mr. Napkins.

Thursday, May 14:
6 pm: - "Fabulous Females Cocktail Party" at ImprovBoston Lobby. Join us for a festive fundraiser to benefit women in comedy.

8 p.m. - "Bastards, Inc.", featuring stand up comedy with Jess Sutich (A Night of Oral Tradition), Lindsay Gonzalez, Michelle Barbera (We're Making a Movie), and improv by Three Hole Punch and Bastards, Inc.

10 p.m. - "Funny Films" featuring a night of short films and video sketch written, produced and created by women. Hosted by Rheri and Jim Kenney.

Friday, May 15:
8 p.m. - "Atreus", Aeschylus meets Dallas. The world's first soap opera is reimagined in the modern-day, high-stakes business world.

10 p.m. - "Friday Night Variety Show" with The Steamy Bohemians, stand-up comedians Carolyn Castiglia, M. Dickson, Shereen Kassam, Jennifer Myszowski, Sharon Spell, and special guests.

Saturday, May 16:
6 p.m. - "Family Show", featuring the women of one of ImprovBoston's most popular shows. Suitable for the whole family, Family Show combines music, improv, and audience interactivity for a completely new show each time.

8 p.m. - "The Women in Comedy Stand up Showcase" featuring Headliner Kelly MacFarland (Comedy Central), hosted by Erin Judge (Comedy Central's Live at Gotham) and Bethany Van Delft (Boston Comedy Festival) with Maria Ciampa (North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival), Selena Coppock (North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival), Desiree Burch (Hysterical Festival), Robin Gelfenbien (Hysterical Festival), Shane Webb, and special guests.

9:30 p.m. - "Boston News Net", Boston's premier weekly fake news show features the funniest women in Boston: Kristina Smarz, Megan Golterman, and more.

10 p.m. - "Improv and Sketch Showcase", featuring ImprovBoston Mainstage, Two Girls For Five Bucks, sketch comedy featuring Cathleen Carr and Daiva Dupree (Ars Nova), Somebody's In The Doghouse, sketch comedy featuring Marty Johnson and Leah Gotsik (The Second City at Sea)

Thank you for being a friend

2009-04-25T16:51:00.003-05:00

Beloved Golden Girl and Maude actress Bea Arthur passed away today at the age of 86.
As one of the great comedic talents, Arthur will be missed. So here's to you Bea, rest in peace.

What is Feminist Humor, Anyway?

2009-04-25T12:40:00.004-05:00

When I talk about this feminism and humor project, a considerable number of people shift their glance, squirm a bit. Sometimes the smile politely and change the subject. Sometimes they smile and ask what I think of 30 Rock/Roseanne/this one prostitute joke. Once, a guy tried to bait me into an argument over Andrew Dice Clay. (My response: "Yeah, I guess his rise was before my time.") More than once, I've been treated to the "Isn't that an oxymoron?" quip. Zing! Good one. Way to prove you know nothing about feminism!

The internet is littered with "Feminist Humor" sites, only adding to the miseducation. These sites feature anti-male jokes. They were probably not written or labeled by feminists (we were too busy refinishing our cabinets). But nonetheless, they reinforce the idea that feminism is about putting men down, which, if you're still confused about, isn't true.

Here's the hard part. It's easy to say what feminism isn't. And much harder to say what it is. Contrary to popular belief, feminism isn't one big united front, with a sneaky set of objectives. Feminism or feminisms, as Make/Shift magazine likes to put it, are as varied as the groups that identify with the terms. A commonality is a concern for the well-being of women and girls in a world that frequently treats them like crap. Many feminisms recognize the intersectionality of how race, gender, class and sexuality can severely limit the opportunities for individuals... and think needs to be addressed and changed.

We hope Wisecrack will be a virtual space for exploration of issues of gender and comedy. We'd like to include as many voices as possible- if you're interested in contributing, let us know at wisecrack [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Mary Mack Attack

2009-04-24T20:37:00.003-05:00

I'm currently in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes, "no, you go first" courtesy showdowns at four-way stop signs and jello mixed with cottage cheese, tangerine slices and- if you're lucky- shredded carrot.

Which puts me in the perfect mood for self-described "folk humorist" Mary Mack. Her midwest-focused work often includes musical numbers, a few of which can be found at her website, www.marymackcomedy.com.

Enjoy!

The Colbert Effect (a.k.a. the Sarah Silverman Effect, the South Park Effect)

2009-04-23T08:55:00.005-05:00

Lee Drutman has written this excellent article over at Miller-McCune about research on viewers' perceptions of Stephen Colbert's actual politics:

They then asked participants to evaluate Colbert's ideology and his attitude towards liberalism. What they found was that the more liberal participants reported their own ideology to be, the more liberal they thought Colbert was. And the more conservative they reported their own ideology to be, the more conservative they thought Colbert was. Both, however, found him equally funny. The results are published in the April edition of the International Journal of Press/Politics. "Liberals will see him as an over-the-top satire of Bill O'Reilly-type pundit and think that he is making fun of a conservative pundit," LaMarre explained. "But conservatives will say, yes, he is an over-the-top satire of Bill O'Reilly, but by being funny he gets to make really good points and make fun of liberals. So they think the joke is on liberals."...

..."The nature of satire, when you boil it down, is that messages are to varying degrees implied messages," explained Lance Holbert, a professor of communications at The Ohio State University who studies the intersection of entertainment and politics. "It requires the audience to fill in the gap, to get the joke. And it requires a certain bit of knowledge to fill in the gap. ... Certain types of humor are much more explicit. In satire the humor is very complex."

Just like 12 year olds and college professors can love the same South Park episode. Or the Simpsons. Or the Sarah Silverman Show.

Is it possible for irony to ever be used transformatively? Does it matter if the audience understands when you're winking? Is this simply a brilliantly inclusive form of comedy?

Like my friend Andrew says, "Even when you're doing it ironically, in the end, you're still just doing it."

Jeremih - Earthday Sex

2009-04-22T20:45:00.001-05:00

Okay. It's just the Birthday Sex song by Jeremih. But see how fun it is to change the words to Earhday.

Marie Claire's Quotes from Comedians

2009-04-21T14:45:00.005-05:00

I keep getting emails about this article, and even though it's not brand new, it deserves some link love.

Marie Claire has gathered dozens of comedians' comentary on gender, race, appearance, etc. It's an interesting read, although I find myself craving actual interviews, rather than sound bites.

National Humor Month

2009-04-20T14:56:00.008-05:00

I spent April Fool’s Day falling for and dishing out prank after prank, including getting my brother to eat a raw potato (disguised as an apple), finding a fake parking ticket on my windshield, and turning on the kitchen faucet only to get sprayed in the face. But, luckily, we can participate in shenanigans all month long, because April is National Humor Month!

It was founded in 1976 by best-selling humorist Larry Wilde, Director of The Carmel Institute of Humor. According to www.humormonth.com, it is designed to heighten public awareness on how the joy and therapeutic value of laughter can improve health, boost morale, increase communication skills and enrich the quality of one’s life.

“Since April is often bleak and grim and taxes are due on the 15th, it can be one of the most stressful times of the year,” says Wilde on www.larrywilde.com.

Here are some videos of lovely comediennes to celebrate:

Why, Anna Faris, Why?: An Open Letter

2009-04-19T01:41:00.007-05:00

Possible trigger warning...

Dear Anna Faris,

You had me at House Bunny.

I hadn't really known you before that. I watched HB with low expectations. Maybe She's All That times ten, with lap dances. And while the script wasn't exactly innovative, your seemingly effortless comedic artistry carried the show. You acted in circles around Tom Hanks Jr. You spoke in a gremlin voice. You won me over.

Which is why I was elated to hear that you'd be in Observe and Report and brokenhearted upon seeing the trailer. Specifically- the scene where your character gets raped, one of the many "hilarious" moments highlighted in the preview. (Quick clarification for readers: To have sex without consent is rape. Someone cannot give consent while under heavy intoxication. Ergo, having sex with a passed out person is raping them. Everybody clear?)

Yes, I've read the interviews. I know you thought the scene wouldn't make the final cut. Did it ever cross your mind that it might and what the repercussions might be? Did you think of the sexual violence survivors who might see their own traumatic experiences turned into a punchline? Did you think of the young people who will list this scene as an example of why it's okay to have sex with wasted people?

Seth Rogen's been taking a lot of heat over this. I haven't seen you blamed once yet, and while I know you didn't write it, direct it or edit it, you did agree to shoot this scene and you're partially responsible for its existence. (I know, there's an eerie victim-blaming echo to these words. But you were not a victim. You were an accomplice in a terrible scene.)

Thankfully, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The public controversy currently raised by Observe and Report is a fantastic opportunity for you, Rogen, and director Jody Hill to speak out against sexual violence. It would be a great time to clarify your views on assault and educate the public on the importance of consent.

This isn't about being politically correct. This is about addressing a social epidemic rooted in a culture that doesn't take rape seriously. Actions taken now could prevent sexual assaults in the future. Please do something.

With respect,

Caitlin Rogers

Executive Editor, Wisecrack

Smart Girl at the Party

2009-04-18T21:59:00.017-05:00

I'm talking about the one, the only, Amy Poehler.

Why She's Badass:

1. She celebrates and honors young girls who are changing the world by being themselves with her online show Smart Girls at the Party. Check out the episode with Ruby the Feminist. Ruby's five years old. Nuff said.

2. Remember this?

3. Poehler's natural talent for "grossout humor" (One-legged hypoglycemic Amber with a flatulence problem, anyone?). And she's taking on the gross boy's club with her new movie Spring Breakdown, out on DVD this summer.

Feeling behind the times because you missed it in theaters? Actually, you didn't. Warner Brothers decided to release straight to DVD. So why, WB, did you pass up on the opportunity to put out this possible comedic gem to the masses? Recession cutbacks? No way, comedies are still making money. Is it simply a dud? Well, you are releasing 17 Again and Ghost of Girlfriends Past. So I ask, Really?! Really Warner Brothers? Straight to DVD?! Do you think that women can't handle being leads outside of romantic comedies (which are not really comedies but that's a post for another day)?

It's not like there's no star power (SB also stars Parker Posey, Rachel Dratch, Amber Tamblyn, and Jane Lynch). All of these women have a following. Do you think there's no demand? Whatevs, man.

Wisecrack readers, I issue you with a call to action: Rent Spring Breakdown. If you like it, buy the DVD (we'll show you WB!). Watch Amy's new show. Show studios that it's time for some equal opportunity goofball fun.

To get you pumped, I leave you with a little Parks and Rec:

That's So Gay - Wanda Sykes

2009-04-17T18:38:00.001-05:00

In honor of the Day of Silence (today), bringing attention to anti-LGBTQ bullying and harassment in schools.

The Skinny...

2009-04-17T08:51:00.005-05:00

We're in the midst of planning our upcoming launch (read: launch party!). Our quarterly and blog will be up at www.wisecrackmagazine.com before you know it. In the meantime, one way to stay connected is to join us our Facebook group. Or you can follow us on Twitter.

We're also looking for a few good bloggers to join our communal blog. Interested? Send Caitlin a note at wisecrackzine AT gmail DOT com, with a link to your writing and a note about yourself.

Looking to submit something? Anna, our Submissions Editor can be reached at submissions DOT wisecrackzine AT gmail DOT com. She's always accepting pitches, narrative essays, and articles (although read this entry first.)

Karen Williams on Logo

2009-04-16T12:54:00.002-05:00

Karen Williams

This video of Karen Williams had me rolling.

More Gay & Lesbian Video At LogoOnline.com

Karen Williams also leads workshops on comedy and healing from sexual violence. I just wanted to give you the chance to watch this video, but she deserves a much longer post about the possibilities of comedy to heal individuals and create a safer world.

Tweet Us!

2009-04-16T00:31:00.000-05:00

Look out, internets. We're on twitter.

From the Producer of Daily Show comes "Women's Studies"

2009-04-14T23:37:00.001-05:00

(Getty Images Photo)

HBO is exploring gender politics with "Women's Studies," a comedy project from former "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" exec producer Ben Karlin and "NYPD Blue" alumna Theresa Rebeck.

"Studies" is being developed as a potential starring vehicle for Tony winner Julie White and centers on a onetime famous author who, after a tumultuous period as a feminist "it" girl, is now a professor at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast.

Exciting! We have high hopes, especially since Colbert Report/ Daily Show generally seem to have feminist underpinnings. From Hollywood Reporter, full article here.

Video: A Storm is Gathering

2009-04-14T10:26:00.001-05:00

Wake Up World

A lovely parody of Nation for Marriage ads from Shoot the Messenger.

BEV / Warp X Last Laugh: Women Create Comedy

2009-04-11T13:59:00.001-05:00

What a program!

Last Laugh- a UK-based initiative to encourage and women comedy writers of feature films. Check out http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/ for more info.

Supporters Potluck Meeting- Wednesday, April 15th, 7 PM

2009-04-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

Quiz time! Do you enjoy:

Eating dinner with wonderful people?
Aldi wine?
Free fridge magnets?
Getting exciting updates on your favorite gender and comedy magazine?

If you said "yes" to any of the questions, you're invited to us for the next Wisecrack Supporters Meeting.

-April 15, 7PM
-Caitlin and Michael's place in Chicago (for the address, email a request to "wisecrackzine AT gmail DOT COM")
-Bring something edible.

Friends are always welcome! Feel free to forward this invitation to potentially interested parties. This is a non-committal way of supporting and checking out Wisecrack.

Your brains will be picked, poked, prodded by our highly credible team of brainologists. The magazine will be discussed. Fun will be had.