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  1. Some years ago, when I was in a show at the Limerick House, lots of women attended who had been in a play with me.  Also a woman who was having a crush on me came to the show and sat beside me.  Some young guy was on stage doing his set.  I was sitting in the unlit section of the room, and I assumed the privacy that came with that.  I had no idea that the guy on stage could see my face.  I wasn’t making faces or anything, but I probably looked like someone looks when their entire gender gets spoken of as if stupid and put here for men’s use.  I felt badly that my guests who came to support me were getting this crap that isn’t funny if you don’t share the values and just plain bad for female morale.  I felt self-conscious that the gay woman was seeing the misogynistic milieu called comedy.  So my face must have showed that without me realizing or thinking it mattered.

    “Could you stop looking at me all judgmental like my mother?!” he said pointing to me.  I was so off guard.  I went hysterical laughing.  That may have been the funniest moment of his set.  I was absolutely hysterical.  I had to give him credit.  He was in the moment, he reacted to what he saw, and it made us laugh.

    Last Friday night, I was supposed to be judgmental.  I was judging a comedy competition.  I’d never done that before (except privately in my head, at least I thought it was private).  I didn’t know if I was going to be the only judge.  That thought made me nervous.  I didn’t want everyone’s fate in my hands.  Once there, I was told to sit at the table where the judges sit.  Plural.  Whew.  Then I wondered if I’d be the only female judge.  I imagined each comic who wouldn’t win blaming it on “the cunt.”  To my surprise, there were five judges, and we all were female. 


    The judges:  the woman in the purple top, me (in the black and looking judgmental), the woman with the white blouse, the one in the red pants, and the one in the gold top.  Without any conferring, we each were to hold up a card from a stack that was numbered one through ten.  The highest and lowest were dropped.  The three middle scores were added.  There were many contestants; each had three minutes.


    The place was Le Poisson Rouge on Bleeker Street in the Village.  In the photo above, you can see the large drawings on the walls.  Those are from Leah Yerpe’s show.  If you remember my blog of 2/19/2013 called “Body Art,” it talked about my experience posing for her.

    However, I posed after she put her pieces together for this show.  I liked that I knew the artist whose work hung in the space.  It helped me feel at home in a way.  When she creates her work of me from the photo session, I will share.

    They put a comic on first who was not competing.  It was for us to set the bar in terms of scoring.  I found that as I drank, the jokes were not necessarily funnier.  I also discovered that I was one of the tougher scorers.  The judges all seemed to take their role seriously and responsibly.  They were artists of different sorts – poets, singers, actresses, etc.  Before the show, some comics looked at us nervously.  I had hoped it wasn’t because their set was based on us being bitches, sluts, and cunts.  That would be something to go up there with and face a panel of five women judges.  I am pleased to say that I don’t remember feeling repulsed at any time during the show.  I understand being at different levels of development as a comic, but I can’t stand listening to one’s hatred and prejudice portrayed as a given, as a premise with which we all begin our day.  I was glad this show offered true attempts at comedy, some more successful than others, of course.  I enjoy watching people develop their art.  There was a man who did his stand-up upside down.  He stood on his hands and delivered his set.  Most contestants made us laugh.
    The host, Advocate of Wordz (that’s his name), was a funny man from the Bronx.  I liked his style.  I guess we both speak Bronx in a way.  When we met at the bar before the show, I told him I was so excited to finally be asked to be judgmental.  He laughed and used it on stage. 

    The winner of the night’s competition was… Sarah Hartshorne.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    You can find Sarah on Facebook.

    I definitely would do it again.  I had fun.  And a bonus – one of the other judges, K Fhox, gave me her CD, Light Shines Through Me.  You can find her on Facebook and at youtube.com/kfhox.
    When I got home and was hanging out with myself, answering email, and thinking about being a contestant in the next competition, it hit me how late it was getting and that I had agreed to attend an all-day teacher conference starting at 8:30 Saturday morning.  It all sounded good when I registered.  The job was picking up the fee.  There were many choices of interesting sounding workshops to take.  I enjoy learning and expanding my teacher repertoire.  But late on Friday night, I looked at the time and said, “Why did I think this was a good idea?”

     

  2. 3 comments:

    1. Amy said...

      This post is so awesome! You are so right regarding sooooo many things that are comedy.

    2. She So Funny said...

      I read this the other day and for some reason, my comment didn't post.... AWESOME blog!!! ~S

    3. Thank you both. Always feels good to find comments. Samantha, I found it strange that for days, I had a high amount of viewers and no comments until today. I was actually surprised by both those numbers. I thought something computery happened beyond my comprehension.

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