She So Funny

 

 

    Hi everyone!  A haiku of mine on the theme of winter is published here:

I'm in here towards the end

 

    Another poem of mine has been requested to another publication.  That part of my life is going well.

 

    My show, The Almost-Winter Comedy Show, at The Artist, 249 City Island Avenue, is on 12/20/2024 at 8pm.  Only $15 cover, no minimum, and a hat gets passed around for contributions so I may pay the comics.  There is a vegetarian-friendly menu and delicious desserts to tempt you, but it is not required.  You may even BYOB.  Glasses, ice, and a corkscrew will be provided.  It is a family-run place and very welcoming.

 

    The desserts are provided by Jenny's Sweets and they are SPECTACULAR!

 

    The line-up:

Helaine Witt

Jose Angel Diaz

Shelly Colman

and me!

 

    This show is my birthday eve, and I hope you want to attend.  I’d love to see you there and hear your laughter.

 

    I hope everyone had a decent or better Thanksgiving.  Mine started out sort of depressing, but I was expected at a dinner in the evening at my best friend’s house.  It was a vegetarian dinner, delicious, and with great company.  So much sharing, wine, weed, and laughter.  I am so grateful. 

 

    However, the next evening, someone was ringing my doorbell.  I was not expecting anyone, so I almost didn’t go to the door.  Then I thought maybe it was a package I wasn’t expecting.  I went to the door, looked through the peephole, and it wasn’t anyone in a FedEx or UPS uniform.  I asked, “Who’s there?”  The young (maybe early 20s) man had long hair, maybe in dreadlocks, braids, or twists, and didn’t look at my door, so I only got a profile view.  It seemed he was reading off his phone.  He said that he lost his I-Phone around here and wondered if I had seen it or heard about it.  I told him, “No,” and I added, “Good luck.”  If he thought I would open my door, he got the wrong girl.  I was born and raised here in the Bronx. 

 

    What I didn’t hear was most significant.  He didn’t ring anyone else’s doorbells.  So this was specific.  I wondered if someone was watching me, or if someone hired someone to do something.  I don’t generally make enemies, but as far as I know, there are some people who think they would like me to be dead.  I was never cruel to them.  Both are connected to a man I chose to not be with.  Draw your own conclusion.  Then there are people in the neighborhood who might feel rejected by me simply because I don’t respond favorably to disrespectful men.  Whatever that person at my door was about, it could’ve been a very Un-Thanksgiving Day After.  Life isn’t boring.  That’s for sure.

 

    This year, Hanukkah and Christmas begin on the same day.  Amazing.  And for the first time in my memory, Hanukkah will conclude in January.

 

    Come to my show on 12/20!

 

Love always to CGG-M  ❤💕❤

Mindy Matijasevic

December 2024

 

 

I slept most of Thanksgiving Day.  People called and left messages on my land line’s answering machine.  I heard the messages as they came in.  One was from a friend and former co-worker, Steven.  He said that he hoped I wasn’t alone.

Thanksgiving was typically a hard holiday for me since childhood.  It’s very family-oriented, and I had a hard family experience. Then it continued to feel like a sad holiday for me with the exception of the years my once-friend Brenda invited me to join her family.  She had two adorable children, and I had a wonderful toddler.  She had a high chair in her apartment, so we were set.  My son loved being with her children.  His cheeks were covered with mashed potatoes by the end of the meal.  

Those were precious times, but, for me, the holiday always felt difficult.  Eventually Brenda moved away in more ways than one.  I was in an unhappy situation, so no matter what went on for the holiday, I felt sad. Years later, more developments happened that just made the holiday worse. Eventually, I began to act as if it weren’t a holiday, and I treated it as any other day.

A friend in New Jersey, Barbara, had invited me for Thanksgiving, but I don't eat indoors with other people at this time.  Too risky for me.  So I declined.

As I sleepily listened to my friend Steven’s message saying he hoped I wasn’t alone, I thought, no that’s fine. I’ve had Thanksgivings spent with a person who claimed to love me and made me miserable.

Being alone was fine.  It is COVID-free, and I do whatever I care to and eat whatever I feel like.  I can choose to not get dressed, watch whatever I want on TV, write, sleep, clean, whatever.  I'm not dealing with anyone else's hostility.  Of course it can be better, and I hope next year it will be.  But I wasn’t feeling bad about being alone.  I’ve been way lonelier when not alone. 

My best buddy and I spoke on the phone later that night.  I ate pizza.  He had oral surgery two days before, so he had Ensure for Thanksgiving.  But we had our 40+-year-friendship and laughter on the phone (aside from grumbling about everything).  I’d give up a fancy dinner for that any day.

 

 

 

 

Much love to CGG-M ❤❤❤

Half-baked, newly formed social media goals filled my head when I started writing here. Numerous sources said Blogging could be a quick route to Klout perks, career renewal, internet fame and possible fortune. Four years later I don't know the last time I got a decent Klout perk. Is Klout even still a thing?

I remember the 1st time I unintentionally circulated a fake story, I felt duped, bamboozled and awsomely naive.  After I fall for the number 1 quality of fake news, just enough plausible crap to confirm my biases, I become a re-posting machine. Believe me, it's not fun trying to remember on which social media platform (Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Periscope) I plastered a blatant falsehood, about cucumbers no less!



This week when I heard fake news bloggers generate $10,000 per month, blogging bullsh!t, I paused to examine my life choices.
The impact fake news had on this month's election, exposed the frightful state of my power of discernment; on life-support with poor prospects for survival.

I doubt I will Snopes fact-check everyone of the gazillion articles slithering the screens of my multiple devices.

I bought into the social media dream. Now I'm living the click-bait nightmare.

Comments under blogs like this signal interest to advertising $$$. However I've chosen to write on this site with a multiple step comment process confounding to my most ardent fan. Hail the efficiency and convenience of the digital age!

Enjoy our national myth of Thanksgiving as we assault Native American water protectors and their allies at Standing Rock. If that's not enough irony for you, our president-elect is Donald Trump. Need a laugh?

Hopefully this greeting will dispel 

the repulsion which is, for many, 

historically associated with 

              Thanksgiving...



Rhonda Hansome is a director, writer and actress. See her as Carey the Casting Director in Episode 2 of Black Actress.  

by Samantha DeRose








Well, it seems I've survived another Thanksgiving weekend of family, friends, food, and folly.  I'm not going to tell you about my method of storing leftovers on my front porch (weather permitting)... and I'm certainly not going to tell you about how I went out to the porch on Friday morning, fork in hand, donning threadbare pajamas, and how I devoured (a less-than-lady-like portion of) the gluten free carmel apple pie only to see my neighbors across the street looking in at me as I enjoyed my a.m. feast.  I felt like Templeton (I originally wrote Carlton but had the presence of mind to Google it because I knew it wasn't right) the Rat from Charlotte's Web after a night at the fair grounds singing "A fair is a veritable smorgasbord!"

Thanksgiving was at my mom's house...again.  I have to say, the highlight of every Thanksgiving is creeping my cousin, Sue, out with my mother's antiques.  Zelda in particular.  My mom is a collector of the absurd.  She and my dad used to own an antiques store and when it closed, their house became the museum of oddities that it is today.  Zelda is a dolly that sits atop my mother's china closet.  Zelda is the cause of many a nightmare.  Sue and I named her Zelda because she looks like the sister in Pet Semetary.
I don't know if you remember the movie, but the mother in the movie had a flashback of caring for her disfigured sister.  The memory haunted the mother in the movie much like the way that the dolly haunts my cousin and me.  Nothing like some good old fashioned horror on Thanskgiving.

Of course, I did have the good fortune of having a touch of a stomach bug this weekend... which I consider a blessing after my glutinous endeavors.  Seriously, I am I the only one who gets overjoyed when this happens?  It's like a gift, I tell ya.  A GIFT!

Speaking of gifts, it's Cyber Monday.  Considering that I have no money, I have to say that I'm glad that online shopping has become a holiday tradition.  As a rule, I'm not a good shopper.  I'm the one who waits until Christmas Eve to do EVERYTHING.  I'm the one who gets angry when I hear people saying, "I finished all of my shopping in September."  To them I say,  "Go #$@% yourself, you overly prepared twits!  Does it make you feel good to shove that in the faces of us ill-prepared @-holes?  I bet your halls have all been decked with boughs of holly, your tree is trimmed (since the week before Thanksgiving), and you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the holiday joy!"

So, I'll click and I'll clack in my threadbare pajamas (I'll put them back on when I get home from work), I'll eat more carmel apple pie from the porch (the neighbors need another show), and I'll fill my e-carts with gifts that will only be returned or obsolete by the time they arrive at my house.  Of course, I'll procrastinate with wrapping until Christmas morning.  That's just me.

Let the madness begin, my friends.  Enjoy.

by Helene "Ole Waterworks" Gresser

Marvelous!  Writing this blog and interacting with the other She's has been a fabulous experience so far.  Some of us know each other from performing but a few of us haven't had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face yet.  I had the opportunity to work with a couple of She's (Rhonda, Helene, & former She, Maribeth Mooney) this past Friday night...and to our delightful surprise, Mindy came out to support the show.  We hadn't met Mindy, but I must say, it felt like we were old friends.  Meeting Mindy and working with the other gals just reinforced my feelings about this blog and our work as female comics.  I thinks it's really important to establish supportive connections, especially for women in this business.  Anyway, I left the show feeling very inspired and uplifted by all of the women who I saw.  (Guys at the show, you were awesome, too...except the guy who called me "a piece of shit" in Greek... after my tzatziki underpants joke).

On another note, it's Monday, and ya wanna know which days better than Mondays?  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Now, I hate to be cliche, but I really despise Mondays.  I'm probably the only one in the world who feels this way, I know, but I do.  When I worked in an office, Mondays were tolerable because my desk faced out the window and I had developed a napping system by which I'd balance by head on my left hand, right hand poised on the mouse, important report displayed on the monitor.  Back in the day, I'd be able to get a good 20-30 snooze time in at any given time of the day.  Now.  Not so much.  A classroom full of teenagers doesn't lend itself to napping, what with rules, regulations, and shit like that require teachers to be attentive.  This is my Monday today.   I took the day off on Friday and made the mistake of assigning essays (as test grades) which I am now grading.  In light of my blog last week, I asked the students to write complimenary letters to their favorite companies.  Some random samples: (Letter to Coke)  "And so that they can know drinking pepsi is a sin, and drinking coca cola is good for the soul."  (Letter to Hershey) "I am so addiced to it I even color my room brown and I even have a shirt that said to me Heresy" (To ConAGRA - makers of Slim Jim) "As you can tell, I like the original flavor of the slime jim because eating any pork is against my religion." (To Kelloggs) "pop trats is the best idea for a slight breakfast."  "Dear To Whom it May Concern"

Does that sound like fun to you?  It's definitely better than being called a piece of shit in Greek.  Shoot.  My students call me that in English (Spanish and Arabic).

Anyway, I'll get through this here Monday.  I just found out that one of my fabulous students was on Undercover Boss this weekend, so I'll watch it and that should be a nice break from grading those essays during my lunch.  The cool thing about this student is that she's a strong, hilariously funny, hard-working young woman.  For all of the whining that I do about the day job, Mondays, yada, yada... these kids keep me laughing non-stop, and that's what it's all about!  And...

Yes.  It's a short work-week.  Thanksgiving is upon us.  Enjoy, be thankful, laugh, and if you have some spare time, help me grade some papers (I have wine if it helps to entice you).