Tummy!
Aw, man. I really needed to headline in Seattle. The audiences were smart and fun, the other comics were funny and nice, the club is brick and cool and the management loves comedy. I write this at great risk of sounding like a douchebag, but it was nice to be reminded that, "oh yeah, I'm funny." I kind of, sort of, do a pretty good job, actually.
So there.
KilBaby and I iChatted over the MacBook a few times. He is a plane/train/automobile fan and kept showing me his toys. He'd leave the screen, the pop up again holding a train. Then he'd leave, and come back with an ambulance. And so on. As he grows, the mysteries of men are slowly being revealed to me. They like to show off their shit. They don't hide this need and they don't do it secretly, like women do. It's not a learned thing, it's innate. Cause I didn't teach my son to lift up his shirt, pat his stomach and say "tummy," like it won a first place ribbon. That is not something I will ever do. The closest I will come to that is pointing to another woman's stomach and saying, if it is flat, "bitch."
I stayed at my sister's house for a night, way up in the Portland hills. Her cul-de-sac has a little cottage that the residents' houseguests can use. It was open, I slept in it and I haven't been that terrified in years. "Oh come on, it's so safe here," my sister said. Yeah. Doesn't Bill Kurtis say that every time he narrates a rape/murder? I missed the honks and sirens of Harlem. I think I'm a decent judge of who's a potential problem when I walk from the subway to my apartment. But in Oregon's woods, everyone looks like a predator to me. I can't tell the good guys from the pig-fuckers. Even worse, there was a spider on the wall. And when I woke up a few hours later, it was gone. I think it's still on me, hiding in one of my belly folds, waiting to strike.
Getting on a jet plane…
I'm on the road this week! In one of my favorite cities, Seattle. Oh God, it'll be like the good old days. I have been cramped over this laptop for two years straight. Longer actually, if you count my days at Tough Crowd and the Late Late Show. After 2004, I took very little road work, and just did sets in the city (because I was writing on Tough Crowd). Fifteen minute sets for New York audiences, over and over and over again. And then there was that year in LA. Seven minutes sets at coffeehouses and bowling alleys. I couldn't figure out why performing felt like a task, not a privilege, until I did a weekend in Providence last month. It felt so good to stretch out, to meander, to go off on a tangent because I had the time. To follow a feature who wants to be headlining, so every show he throws down the hammer. Aw, it was fun!
I should have submitted a tape to Comedy Central (for a half hour special) years ago, but I just felt off. I didn't want my half hour to be something I wasn't excited about. A friend of mine told me recently, "you're more of a long-set comic." And I think that's true. Years of short sets have have left me feeling crunched and depressed, like I've been trying to stand in a coffin. All I know for sure is that I'm excited to leave New York and Kilbaby and just be free for a few days. Free onstage, free offstage. I haven't been this jazzed to get on a plane in years.
A return to happiness
I can crap with abandon once more. For about six weeks, my toilet has been unable to gulp down anything I tried to shove down its throat, no matter how petit and dainty. I had to plunge after every encounter, for up to 10 minutes. Each flush was accompanied by dish washing liquid. We snaked, we changed out some hardware. Finally, the super took out the toilet and found the culprit: KilBaby's toothbrush. Either he threw it down the toilet, or it dropped unnoticed in the shuffle of three people's stuff crowded on one bathroom sink. I paid a couple hundred dollars to fix it, and damn, it's a relief to not have to plan visits to Starbucks around my outgoing meals.
The movie "Observe and Report" isn't out yet, but I have seen the trailer, with the controversial is-it-date-rape-or-not scene. This is Seth Rogen's explanation of that scene:
When we're having sex and she's unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay: "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?"
I disagree that "Why are you stopping, motherfucker?" makes it ok. Rogen's character had no idea that Anna Faris's character was conscious until she said it. He went into that vag thinking she had passed out. In fact, Faris waking up actually ruins Rogen's date rape. For him to say that line makes it "all okay," is a lazy justification. This is my impression based on the trailer. Maybe seeing the rest of the movie will put the scene into context, but right now, it looks like a 1960's Vegas lounge joke, writ large.
You and me
UPDATE: Ok, I overreacted. It's not as bad as I thought. Yet. Could be, might be, but not yet. I am a worst case scenario gal, so that explains my wasted rage. On the bright side, I am prepared to get fucked. It's better than a surprise attack.
PREVIOUSLY: I hate everybody. Even you. The past two months have sucked. And I can't even write about why because it would hurt me professionally. I just have to sit here and get punched in the fucking stomach.
The fact that someone can take a metaphorical dump on one's head and get away with it never stops sucking. It happens to all of us, so I'm not alone. That's my only consolation today. And it's not like I'm an African-American pilot who came home from World War II only to be asked to sit on the back of a bus. That would make me lose my mind. The dumps on my head are not so soggy. So let me re-trench. And I don't hate you, just everyone but you. They suck.
You and me, we're cool.
At least my kid is cute:
(Those are his Curious Georges, who must be diapered.)