Le maudit Mo D.

Funny Funny Bitch

Yesterday I took my first sketch comedy class at the CTT. I liked it. I enjoyed dissecting the shit out of Arrested Development. But alas, I was the only one at the table with a cooter. Following the class, I performed my bee monologue twice. The first time was, in my bumble opinion (!), a better performance, since I remembered to work in that part about smelling like bee butt. I was the only female monologuist. That's fine. I'm not the only female comedian in the community. I just noticed that it had been awhile since I had done anything where I was the only girl.

While I was listening to Arthur talk about comedy and fixating on that swirl of chest hair he has just south of his Adam's apple, I was thinking, "gosh...no one at the ladycollege was publicly funny. Few people even tried to be funny in a public way." I thought that Mara and I were funny as shit, but I'm sure most of our peers thought we were grandstanding egomaniac assholes. Which, to the average, untrained Smithie, surely we seemed that way.

Then I remembered: there were no student comedy shows. There were the Suckos--the lackluster improv troupe that wouldn't have me for lack of Sapphic yearnings, and those lame newsletters that landed on the dining room tables, and that was it. No one was trying stand-up and there were very few female comedians appearing in Northampton. There was a humor magazine that existed my first year (attempts to join thwarted by lack of wanting to eat pussy, again) that fizzled out and died by my sophomore year. But there was plenty of whiny shit poetry, read aloud with a faux-Nuyorican vocal intonation, where every third word is said louder than the previous two. And there were sexual abuse survivor speak-outs, where one could sit soberly in a campus classroom and hear about the childhood incidents that led to a good number of these ladies being insufferably rude, unfriendly, and irritating. I know there will be a bunch of people that will leap to these women's defense, but when I actually heard one of them say, out loud, in my presence, "I just can't be friends with women who aren't survivors," that's when my supposed obligation to shut up about how obnoxiously entitled these twats behaved ended. Fucking A.

So we have whiny shit poetry, creepy public proclamations of abuse, and no comedy. Great. What a school. I can't believe sometimes that I LIKED this place. But I did, because I was being funny in my house with my friends and I guess at the time, that was all I needed. Which is not the case anymore.

"I could change that!" I thought, trying to figure out how to strong-arm the theater department at Smith into letting me teach a comedy writing class. I don't have a theater degree, but I do have hours and hours of unaccredited training and stage-time. In the eyes of the academy, that probably doesn't mean shit, but it's worth a try. I've learned recently that persistence is the key to everything.

Of course, I'd be up against all the self-declared protected-class twats--"you can't write comedy about gays, or brown people, or people with cervical cancer! Because I'm 19 and I know everything and I won't allow it and will gladly have your ass handed to you by the administration if you dare defy me!" NO PROTECTED CLASSES IN COMEDY. That's why it's so refreshing. Everyone, including myself, is free to be ribbed and needled.

I really don't mind that comedy is such a boy's club. I think in my own Smithly way, I am unintimidated by that. It's all about getting up there, being brave, and doing whatever the fuck your best is. I think that some women think they have to out-funny the boys, and so they don't even try. F that.

Posted by Zerd at January 21, 2007 12:13 PM