She So Funny

I've been looking for a place to live since 

August 1st 

when I came home from touring with the rock musical

Date Me Do Me Dump Me

in which I played The Bar Owner.

I am so grateful to all who have extended themselves to me during this 3 month odyssey

during which it felt like I was having my own personal 

Mercury In Retrograde

Mercury Retrograde is not a crisis. It is merely an inconvenience, [unless your landlady has decided she wants to take over your apartment ASAP & you have to move & find a place within your budget, and THEN it is an incredible pain in the ass!] albeit one that occurs three (and sometimes four) times a year. Moreover, while its retrograde (Rx) period lasts for about three weeks, its stationary periods often create havoc in our lives, and the “shadow” periods that precede and follow it affect us as well.

... Debra Anne Clement  Italics mine!

This Saturday I expect to see a legal sublet, the monthly cost of which hovers near my budget. The owner has not asked me to fill out forms or even requested my credit score, which is                                                                    801!!!
By the way, during the past 3 months I've discovered that my 801 credit score plus my annual earned income combined with a                                                   

will get me a ride on an "A" train running on the "F" line to West 4th St. where it becomes a "6" train stopping at alternate local stations to 59th St. where it will then run express to hell. 

Today is Thursday. Let's see what Saturday brings.

 Rhonda Hansome is Carey the Casting Director in episode 2 of Black Actress by Andrea Lewis (Degrassi) and produced by Issa Rae (Awkward Black Girl) See it NOW, then tweet about @RhondaHansome

Posted by RHC at 4:02 AM | Labels: Andrea Lewis, Black Actress episode 2, Date Me Do Me Dump Me, Issa Rae, Mercury Retrograde, Rhonda Hansome | 2 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

My friend and co-worker, Richard, was nice enough to attend the poetry reading that I wrote about last week and tape me on his phone, so I could have something on line of me reading my poems.  How hard could it be?  Well, we saw each other at work on Wednesday afternoon.  After classes, we sat together and hoped it would be a simple procedure to transfer the videos to my email.  After he fiddled around for a while, this is pretty much what happened over the next few hours.

 

I don't know how to do this.  See if you find Kitty and see if she can help.  Kitty's here.  Do you have a Dropbox?  Then I can drop them in my Dropbox and send them to your Dropbox.  So I open a Dropbox account, but I don't know what my address is.  Maybe it is simply dropbox.com, and I'm making it more difficult.  I am a lost child in a community of installs, pdf's, links, upgrades, downloads, shared folders, external drives, sync-ing computers... Waaah!  I never really learned to program my VCR or which remote control controls the volume on the TV or the DVD player or how to forward a text.  Forget Dropbox.  I can put it on Picasa.  Can you get them from there?  I don't know.  I think I have a Picasa account too.  Why is it all so complicated?  Here sit at my desk.  You can look at the videos.  Oh look!  There's something to click on to upload it to YouTube.  I hope it works.  Kitty, I'll find out tomorrow.  I can't stand it anymore.  Can I get them off my phone now?  Yes, Kitty said they are now living on Picasa.  Did you see them?  Yes, Richard, I did.  This has been so exhausting that I didn't even mention that I saw them and like them and am glad I will eventually be able to put some on line.  Thanks for taping me. 

 

Then a few more tomorrows went by.  Yesterday (Monday), I faced it all again because I wanted to include some of the poetry reading here.   I ended up staying after work for more than an hour. 

 

Some of the poems are fun, some sad, some hopeful.  Here's a few. 

"Just Another Feminist Moment in the Neighborhood"  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLI_AN8wJRQ 

 

  

"1/3 Twinkie Too Much"   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaSnIS_GOvk 

 

A relatively new person in my life who was at the reading commented to me on my early life and specifically on the cousin in the Twinkie poem.  She described the cousin as a mean-spirited girl.  She does not know how much that helped me.  I realized what a huge part of my problem was in my development.  It wasn't each experience as much as it was how it got handled or didn't.  That cousin was always described as good.  It was based on politics (who the cousin was born to) and not on who she was.  Public image as opposed to a real personal relationship.  I was often compared to her as if she were a better person than I which was truly twisted.  I was born into a family war zone in many ways.  The older I get, the clearer it all becomes. 

 

Validation goes a very long way.  I have felt that since I was a child angels on Earth have appeared to help me through my hell.  This woman is very soft-spoken and intelligent, easy to be with and feel close to.  Those qualities remind me of my mother's best.  My mother was very different than most, and unfortunately she suffered much.  When she was able to be an active mother, she was so special and often so different than all the other women in my family.  I was lucky to feel/know her love though our togetherness was way too short and interrupted. 

 

On a hopeful note, I closed the reading with this poem that I've been changing and adding to on and off for years.  "Creating a World..." (poem in progress)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVUlfek-cm4

 

 

 

 

Posted by Mindy Matijasevic at 12:00 AM | Labels: Mindy Matijasevic, poems, poetry, poetry reading | 5 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

“Be careful what you wish for.”  

That’s what my Mom said, all too frequently to my adolescent ears.  Her sage pearl cast my way.

 I didn’t have a clue.

Dear Readers, all three of you know the path of hot coals I’ve trod in my return to stand-up.  

You know that ‘back in the day’ I was in all the hot NYC comedy clubs: the original Improv, Catch A Rising Star, Comedy U, New York Comedy Club, Stand-Up NY and Dangerfield’s. 

Every night, yes I do mean EVERY NIGHT, I played a variety of (paying!) Long Island or Jersey gigs; when not in Vegas, Atlantic City, the Catskills or touring with major musical acts like Diana Ross, Anita Baker, The Pointer Sisters and Aretha Franklin.  

That was then.  This is now.

What’s happening now, you ask?

What’s happening besides the fact that my landlady is taking over my apartment and I need an affordable* place to live?  Well here’s the short list.  I’m still looking for: 

A manager, 

Paying gigs, 

&

A reason not to smoke crack with the alcoholic 

Mayor of Toronto Rob Ford

  

Be that as it may… 
This week I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of some fantastic sets while working out new material at Gotham, Broadway and Greenwich Village comedy clubs.   

AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO PAY $$$ TO GO ON STAGE!!!

Yes Dear Readers, if I don’t celebrate the small victories, I’d just lay crying with my face pressed to the bathroom floor tiles.  Which brings us up to today’s blog, 

‘Being careful what I wish for.’

I saw an electronic newsletter (is there any other kind?) circulating, which featured humorous recipes submitted by comics. Stand Up & Cook looked sleek, was funny and pissed me off because I had not thought of it as yet another social media way to promote myself and my brand.  Complete disclosure, I have no idea what my brand is and wouldn't recognize it embroidered in red on my chest.

Anyway, week after week I saw names both familiar and new promoted via 
                                              Stand Up & Cook 
and week after week I wondered and silently screamed, “Why not me?” 

And then I got the email asking me to contribute a recipe so I could be featured in the Stand UP & Cook newsletter.  Cue the angels singing, sun shining through parting clouds and a fleeting moment of gratitude. 

I did not create the newsletter. I Just submitted My Mother-in-law's Spaghetti. 

For your entertainment, click the link below for the post.

http://www.icontact-archive.com/-eBE1BTTRFbSgQPsaTDlY0657ZdylO_4?w=1

Find all the typos and win a prize!

First reader to reply on this site, this week, with the highest number of typos wins a

Super Special Secret Surprise 
Prize.

Thanks for being here for me, whoever you are.

*To be eligible for 'affordable' housing requires a yearly income of at least $22,000. 
I need $10,000 more income to inch close to that figure. Got any leads?  Call me!

Last week Rhonda Hansome was told she "is a phony, presents a false front to the world, needs to reinvent herself and meet someone who could really help her." Rhonda 

being extremely impressionable AND having low self-esteem has begun paperwork to change her name to Queen Shadenfreude.  Queen Shadenfreude will only entertain the intentions of a royal head of state, Fortune 500 mogul, or a high level drug kingpin. 

Posted by RHC at 9:15 AM | Labels: Mayor of Toronto, Rhonda Hansome, Shadenfruer, Stand Up & Cook | 7 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

On Saturday, November 2, 2013, I was one of three poetry features at a poetry reading at the Riverside branch of the NY Public Library.  The other two were Evie Ivy and Penelope Maguffin.  Both are women I know from the NYC poetry circles.  We decided to dress in black.  There's a kid in me who loved the idea of matching colors with the others.  I don't have sisters, so this was a nice taste of that sort of thing.  We are each seasoned, lived, and with lots to poem about.

 

 

 

When I look at the above photo, I find it interesting that we all have long hair.  Most of my adult life, I kept my hair very short. 

 

    

  I'm in the green with the shortest hair in the photo.  It was easy.  I could comb my hair with my hand.  But during my separation, the guy who cut my hair well had to leave for a job with a pension.  He left what he loved, as so many have, out of fear for his older years.  I began to let my hair grow.  And grow.  It is more work, but it is my chance to enjoy having long hair.  As a youngster, I didn't like my hair.  Times were different and less types of looks were considered attractive, and I was as brainwashed as any other Barbie-owning American child.  I must insert here that before having any Barbies and Kens, my dear mother, a unique individual, sent away for a Barbie-like doll with a different name, and her hair was coarse.  I remember having such mixed feelings about the doll's hair.  Yet I knew deep down that my mother got me a doll whose hair was more like mine and hers.  I had trouble liking it in the age of Dippity-Do, Sun-In, ironing hair, using juice cans to set it straight, and doing whatever to get it long, straight, and, if possible, blonde.  Such wasted energy on not liking what one has.  Now I enjoy my hair and the freedom to do whatever I want with it.  Every now and then, I entertain the thought of cutting it again, but when I see the photo of the three of us, I'm glad I can still pull off this long-hair look.  

 

The other thing that comes to mind when I look at us being introduced by David Elsasser, is WoMen In Black.  We send poems out into the world for those open to them.  The movie would be different than Men In Black. 

 

Evie suggested we rotate for our reading.  I liked that, and Penelope decided to jump into it with us.  It turned out so well.  Considering it was a library and not a bar, and I was totally sober, I had so much fun.  The mic was good, so I didn't have to project my voice.  I was able to speak in a conversational way.  I had dug up old poems and edited them.  I read very new poems also.  Some were sad, touching, serious, but most were funny at least in part.  So there was laughter and applause.  The rotating helped keep it alive and moving.  Evie, me, Penelope.  I've heard a lot of Evie's work in the past but much of Penelope's was new to my ears.  We each enjoyed the experience so much.  The audience was soooooooo appreciative.

 

One of the people who approached me after the reading asked me where I read.  I said, "Wherever I'm asked," but I'm not out there as much as I'd like, and I went on to explain that I also do comedy and have two jobs to just exist.  Her reaction is what I loved.  She said what a shame it is that such a gifted person has to work so much to exist and not work as much on her craft.  Later it occurred to me that the man I had a child with and gave so many monogamous years to never said such a thing to me.  As high as I felt from the wonderful event, I am so capable of sinking fast again.  So I've been actively re-running the reading in my head.  I work at feeling decent.

 

A man named Fred, who I have met a few times before at another reading series, came over to me and asked if men really are such jerks (I think he said jerks.  If not, it was something along those lines.)  We talked for a while, and I said that I like mature men and that it had little to do with age.  I didn't need to explain anything to him.  He understood already.  He's not incapable of imagining life as someone other than himself.  He even said how much he doesn't even realize until he hears a voice like mine.  I'm so okay with that.  He can't realize everything without hearing from us.  He hears.  He lets it in and doesn't argue the validity of my reality.  That speaks worlds about him.  Sooooooo, of course, he's married.  Add to that, he behaves like he's married.  I like that in a person. 

 

A co-worker and friend, Richard, came to the reading to tape me since I don't have any video of me reading my poetry.  He enjoyed the whole thing.  I won't see him until Wednesday, so I am not able to include a video here today, but I can share a poem.

 

Urban Goddess

 

She's an urban goddess

has a woman home

rounded, shaped as a dome

stretch marks

worn as badges

veins and bellies bulge

talking and singing and laughing

abound; spontaneous shimmies

occur.  A home

menstrual flow celebrated

welcoming fertility and maturity

women's periods   

like the phases of the moon

not altered but respected.

A home -- girls safe, clits

protected as they were

physically designed to be.

A home -- boys and men welcome

to love, not rule.  She's

an urban goddess.

Let her in.

 

 

(c) Mindy Matijasevic

Posted by Mindy Matijasevic at 12:25 AM | Labels: "Urban Goddess", David Elsasser, Evie Ivy, Mindy Matijasevic, Penelope Maguffin, poetry reading, Riverside Library, Women in Black | 6 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

In between camera set-ups, while working back ground (more commonly known as "extra work") on a film not to be named, I drifted into a conversation with fellow actors. I have no idea how the conversation started but that didn’t stop me from listening as an actress of Thai extraction described how she and her husband were pleasure driving their "not great looking car" through a very upscale Long Island neighborhood.

“The police pulled us over for no reason and asked why we were there, because we 'didn’t look like we belonged in that neighborhood.'  I told him we were just looking, and he handed me a no seat belt summons. I said, ‘Why you give me a no seat belt ticket when I am wearing my seat belt?’ He said, ‘Oh sorry, just take the ticket to the judge and I’ll explain everything.’  When I got to court the judge made me pay half the fine.  I said, ‘I did nothing wrong, why do I have to pay anything?’  ‘Come back to court if you want to fight it.’ the judge said."

  No one promises life is fair 

A person using a legal gift card, legitimate credit card or a bundle of hard earned cash, to buy a ridiculously expensive designer item, may be subject to being detained, searched, publicly interrogated and hand-cuffed by police or in-store security, have the purchase questioned and confiscated with no explanation or apology.

"How could police on a life alert call hurl racial slurs, taser and then shoot to kill a senior citizen after he assured them and the life alert operator (on the line with him) multiple times that he was fine?

68 year old ex-Marine Kenneth Chamberlain was killed by police responding to his life alert going off accidentally.

On the set I entered the conversation, saying the actress' experience reminded me that for a person of color you can never have the expectation of being treated fairly, like in the Kenneth Chamberlain tragedy.  That's when an actor vigorously denied any comparison. When I presented him with this article, he responded "You were not there, that's just one person's opinion."

At that moment I started laughing because I realized I was not dealing with reality or even facts, I was dealing with perception.  Indeed, "It's just one person's opinion." 

I'm still laughing and shaking my head.

What do you think?

By the way, speaking of my head, I just cut my hair...

See you 8 PM Thursday Nov. 5th at Gotham Comedy Club

Make your reservation now! Lady is the discount code:

212-679000 or online

Posted by RHC at 8:17 AM | Labels: Gotham Comedy Foundation, Kenneth Chamberlain, Rhonda Hansome | 6 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

This Friday, November 1, 2013 will conclude the exhibit, On Equal Terms, honoring our tradeswomen, an installation by multi-media artist Susan Eisenberg.  I was so impacted by the lives, artifacts, stories, and art.  I hope you get there before it goes on its travels throughout the country.  It is free and showing at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center, 107 Suffolk Street, NYC, 2nd floor.  F train to Delancey or JMZ to Essex.  Walk to Suffolk.  Make a left.  Susan Eisenberg, author of several poetry collections, will give a poetry reading on November 1st at 6:30pm.  Susan was among the first women to achieve the status of union electrician.  Though these women may have gone to school for the skilled trades, they ended up becoming soldiers, some fallen, all heroic, in a very active, unfair, and vicious war.  All for the crime of wanting to make a living that could realistically support a family outside of poverty and do the work they enjoy and in which they are trained, skilled, and talented. 

 

If you go, you get to try on a hard hat.

 

 

http://www.csvcenter.org/event/on-equal-terms-a-mixed-media-installation-by-susan-eisenberg/

 

The exhibit got a beautiful review here: 
http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/10/women_in_construction_35_years_after_affirmative_action.html

 

 

Another soldier and survivor of the battleground called "work," Melinda Hernandez, who led me on a tour of the exhibit.  Here she is explaining how the women represented in this room died.  Many were from job-related "accidents."  If you hear the stories, you can decide for yourself about these "accidents." 

 

 

 

 

 

.....

 

On Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 3pm, Evie Ivy, Penelope Maguffin, and I will be the featured poets at the Riverside Branch Library, Amsterdam Ave. near 65 St.  The reading includes an open mic, so feel free to bring something to share.

 

Posted by Mindy Matijasevic at 8:00 PM | Labels: Melinda Hernandez, Mindy Matijasevic, On Equal Terms, poetry reading, Susan Eisenberg, tradeswomen | 6 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

Hello Dear Readers
Yesterday I cut off all my hair.
I'm still looking for a place to live & a bra that fits properly.

This Is A Really Short Blog

I'm not out Shopping While Black for a $38,000 purse or a $15,000 belt at Barney's where I'd be detained or arrested for using my own credit/debit card for some outrageously priced designer merchandise made by a  poorly paid 10 year old child laborer.

I MC'd in the Vintage Lounge at Gotham Comedy Club (& got paid) last night.  I'm on my way to an early morning call on set right now. Look for me in the background when watching TV or any movie shot in NYC.

Please  RT #CascadingGlitches @ RhondaHansome

Come see me at Gotham Comedy Club on Nov. 5th.

Love you
xo

Posted by RHC at 3:25 AM | 2 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |