In Chapelle’s new special he says “I can go onstage in Saudi Arabia and say whatever I want”. Yeah? I can’t. Man, you played a country where half the population is repressed and marginalized. Short memory. I have one thing to say to you: I aint gonna play Sun City. Nelson Mandela approves this post. (Don’t @ me with women’s horror vs. African horror. Go to Saudi Arabia and enjoy the stadium beheadings of women.)
Musings
My two cents. Sometimes three.
Met Gala 2025
Met Gala 2025. Fun with fashion. Who wore what? Having a smile at the costumes, not the people. If you’re offended, just scroll on by.
Colman Domingo rushed over from filming his new movie that takes place in a church, where he plays a confessional booth.
Really. Is there nothing duct tape can’t do? Bra by Home Depot.
In 21 days I will be turned into a butterfly.
Duvet by Eddie Bauer down collection. Queen sheets by Wamsutta.
This is the only outfit I travel with. No matter where, no matter when, no matter what country, I am dressed for it.
I am going to murder my damn cat when I get home.
Emo Philips and some chickens.
Rihanna makes sure she never forgets to bring her stadium seat to the ballpark.
You’re gonna be late for the cardinals’ conclave.
Ya gotta take your pants off the hanger first.
Dang. I should have gone for a three piece suit.
Catholic school uniform in Monaco.
The New York Mets have announced that Diana Ross will now be on standby as their new tarp for rain delays.
Sometimes your vagina wants to see the show too.
I’m dreaming of a tuna sandwich.
Are we there yet?
Mandatory Reporting: Five Things I Did For My Job This Week by Pete Kegseth.
1. Drank breakfast. Most important meal of my day.
2. Listerine lunch.
3. Texted “Cats That Look Like Hitler” to Karoline Claire Leavitt. Did not rape her. (Yay me!)
4. Tried to find Yemen on a map. We should rename it “Yeah man, America!”
5. Discussed military strike war plans against the Houthis (great Frat name!) in a group chat on an unsecured unclassified messaging chat/private server accidentally including a reporter, my barber, Fresh Direct, some guy named Frankie, Door Dash and Sushi Katsu Ya. No I didn’t. That reporter is a liar and a doody head.
6. (Extra Credit) But her emails!
7. (Extra extra credit) What’s the big deal? They’re so far away anyway.
8. (Extra special extra credit) I broke 90 at Bedminster despite bouncing off Ivana’s mound. You can’t fire me!
A Comedian in Italy – Fascism… Whaaaaaatt?
As an American ex pat in Italy, here is what confuses me about Italy’s recent electing of a far right party that traces its roots to fascism; In the US, the Nazis/fascists proudly proclaim themselves in their red hats with their guns and rallies, where they eagerly lap up lies spewed by a traitorous con man who grifts their money and for some reason is still walking free. In Italy, we’ve travelled north, south, east, west and met only outwardly kind, loving, helpful people. We moved here because of the PEOPLE. From old weathered men to young tattooed groups of guys, everyone stops to say “Buona Sera” as you pass. Everyone helps you with your language, packages, directions, car, everything everywhere. We have never gotten a dirty look or a brushoff in two partial years here. I’m not talking about tourist hot spots where it benefits them to be nice for profit. I am talking about us living here, when we’re in the hardware stores needing help, supermarkets, where we don’t know we weigh the produce ourselves and hold up lines at checkout, furniture stores, flower nurseries, outdoor markets, local restaurants, car mechanics. We’re shown only patience and kindness. Everywhere working people work, in local neighborhoods, where you would expect to see any evidence of dissatisfaction and anger, hate, prejudice, we have not. You put a Euro in the slot to get your supermarket cart unchained; when you come out of the market there is usually an immigrant waiting to “help” you unload your grocery bags and return your cart for you, meaning they get the Euro back. We and most people give them the carts, and always with a little extra money. When people ask us “Di dove sei?” (Where are you from?) and we answer “California” they beam in awe. Hollywood has done its job well.
If Italy was anti-immigrant, why offer one Euro houses to anyone who wanted to come here and help re-populate the country? Isn’t that the opposite of xenophobia? Italy is a Catholic country. The Vatican is here, the Pope lives here, yet abortion has been legal here since 1978. Divorce has been legal here since 1970. That is because there is respect for what the people want and need for quality of life. America is trying to be a christian country by outlawing the very things the most catholic country in the world protects for its citizens.
This election is a total surprise to us and a horrible face for Italy to present to the world. It doesn’t seem to us to be the real Italy and yet, it must be. Where were these many many voters? Who are they? I guess time will tell. I hope we don’t have to move again but we will if we must. It is very sad. But move where? With long time far right candidate Marine Le Pen coming in just behind Emmanuel Macron with 21.3% of the French vote in April, it seems like the whole world is moving to the right. Yet at least, unlike America, civilized countries still apply the law to criminals in their government. Silvio Berlusconi ran in this Italian election and got 7% of the vote. In 2013, at age 76, Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud by the Supreme Court of Cassation. His four-year prison sentence was confirmed, and he was banned from holding public office for two years. When will America deal with its most dangerous traitor since Aldrich Ames? Why will an insurrectionist, unbelievably, possibly be allowed to run for president again? More than anything else; more than Mitch McConnell being America’s dictator, holding up legislation the majority of Americans support, more than fake christians hiding their hateful politics behind a bible whose tenets they have no knowledge of, more than women and marginalized groups having to re-fight the old fights, it is the spectre of TFG going unpunished, going free, continuing to spread his poison and wield control of the crooked, America destroying GOP that keeps us living happily far away. The GOP is America’s fascist party. The Nazis rounded up the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, asocials, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Soviet soldiers. The GOP with their illegitimate supreme court appointed by a traitor/insurrectionist and stacked by an illegally stonewalling Mitch McConnell is hell bent on turning America into a christian country, governed by the bible. They have already done more harm to the US than anyone can imagine Italy’s new government getting done with the time they will have in office. Do you know what it’s like to walk past a schoolyard full of children playing, yelling, laughing, knowing they have zero chance of being shot today? Do you know what it’s like to go to a theater, a mall, a concert, and have zero fear for your life? To drive on the highways and not fear being shot through your car window randomly? No you don’t, not any more. Okay, so some of our boxes from America “fell off the back of a truck”. Ya gotta pay some dues to your new country. We live with peace of mind every day. This election robs some of that, but all we can do is wait and see. In comedy and dictatorships, timing is everything.
Louis Anderson – If You Never Saw Him Live You Really Missed Something
Another great has passed, and though we will always have his body of work to enjoy, there is nothing like seeing a master comedian at work. If you never had the chance to see Louis Anderson weave comedy gossamer live on a stage, you really missed something.
Comedy can be many things, but in my forty-nine years as a comedian I have never seen anyone do comedy the way Louis did. He gently, unhurriedly, delivered the most poignant, incisive, empathetic, hilarious, honest comedy I’ve ever seen. He was so gentle the harsh truths of his and all our lives didn’t sting. But they certainly hit their mark. He took his time onstage, as if spontaneously thinking of what to say next, yet the show was so beautifully written, so well reasoned, it surprised and delighted at every turn.
Louis could play anywhere, because his act was so human, so humane. He could probably do the same show at a retirement home he’d do to Hell’s Angels and get a standing ovation in both places (okay, maybe not a full standing ovation at a retirement home). We worked outdoor, out of control, wide open county fairs together back in the day. Open air stages in the bright sunlight of late afternoon. Motorcycles speeding by right in front of us, laughter, eating, running, shouting, music; I don’t remember but I think the money must have been great for us to venture into that comedy hell. And yet there was Louis, as quiet as ever onstage, having faith that they’d come around, lean in, start to listen, always triumphing in the end. He emanated vulnerability, the seeming opposite of much comedy, but it made people love him.
I loved the show “Baskets”, where Louie played Christine, a character based on his mother. Not a moment’s hesitation for the audience to suspend disbelief. His Christine was so real, so believable as a put upon woman dealing with two sons and romance and life, and never once gave us a distorted parody of what someone who had no idea of women’s lives thought a woman should be. What a heart he had! There was a scene at the end of one of the episodes where Louis as Christine puts on her black bathing suit and all alone, walks into the water, finally enjoying the relief of it, looking at the lights, breathing out, and I cried my eyes out. I wished she was my mother.
He was so full of love, onstage and off. He never walked by a panhandler without giving, he never left a waiting fan without an autograph or photo no matter how many he’d already done. He kept in touch with friends and went above and beyond. The last time I saw Louie was right before the pandemic when our mutual friend Doug Kleiman took me to New York’s Cutting Room to see Louie’s act. That show blew me away. To have been in comedy that long and still come up with a show as strong and stunning as in the beginning is no easy thing. I was floored. He was fantastic.
Please don’t say to me “Sorry for your loss”. We weren’t close friends, but part of the comedy family where we all seem to keep tabs on each other. With his voice silenced, I would say to you rather, “Sorry for our loss”.
NY Post, August 16, 2021 –Jean Smart, Elayne Boosler, Hacks
CINDY ADAMS
The stars are preparing for the Emmy Awards
Funny Jean Smart very smart for playing wisecracking lady comic in “Hacks.” Now Emmy nominated she cites a few other female funny gals she’s fond of.
Jean Smart: “I’ve always loved watching comedians, Roseanne Barr was hilarious, loved Phyllis Diller as a kid, I remember Ellen DeGeneres’ first appearance on the Johnny Carson show and of course Joan Rivers, especially the early stuff. But of any woman I think my character is closer to Elayne Boosler in terms of rhythms and things like that. I like playing a comedian without the real risks of being a stand-up.”
Your intrepid tale teller and humble hilarity hounder found Boosler, a ‘Tonight Show’ regular over the last 30 years vacationing in Italy. It was late there. She was still funny.
Elayne Boosler: “I am thinking of suing Jean Smart. I cannot believe she is using my name to further her career.” Bawdy Boosler guffawed and then got serious. Elayne Boosler: “I can’t believe she even KNOWS my name! I am beyond fatutsed–that’s flattered in Brooklyn–that she knows my work and beyond that, that it has even one teensy molecule of contributing to the outstanding character she plays on one of the best, funniest and most enjoyable shows ever.”
Also Emmy bound, Smart’s also smart costar Hannah Einbinder. She was already a comic. On the show she’s brought in to punch up Smart’s punchless punchlines. Elayne Boosler: “I think the dynamic between Hannah Einbinder’s character as an ‘alternative’ comedian, and Ms. Smart’s character as a comedian, is brilliant. I look forward to having my name mentioned at least eight to eleven more times. Not many people know this, but Ms. Smart also based her character in ‘Mare of Easttown’ on me. I am thinking of living in Italy. I would only come back to hand Ms. Smart her Emmy for Hacks.”
By the way, schlepping to Italy, was Boosler visiting ruins? In a small local cafe sipping espresso? No. Her very ciao Bella behavior. Elayne Boosler: “I just finished watching Friday’s Mets game.”
Come back Elayne, the Mets play on TV here too.
Tea With Paul Mooney
When I started performing at The Comedy Store in 1976, Paul Mooney was already a star there, leaving audiences exhausted from laughter. I remember so many of his great bits. They were always funny first, but also always packed with cultural awareness and justifiable anger. Paul was a justice crusader his entire life. He was funny, smart and fierce; scary if you didn’t know him and sometimes scary even if you did.
One day I ran into Mooney down my street at Ralph’s grocery store (comics are always amazed to see each other in daylight). I invited him up the block to my house for coffee.
“I don’t drink coffee.” (And remember, he really liked me.)
“Well how about a cup of tea?”
“Oh, you wanna bring a black man up to a fancy white neighborhood to see a fancy white people’s house you think he’s never seen before?” That was Mooney’s first response to everything and anything you might say to him.
“Paul, let’s go to the movies.”
“Oh, you think a black man never saw a movie before? He needs a white lady to get him into the movies?”
He agrees to come over for tea. In those days, I drank only one kind of tea. I thought it was the most special delicious tea I’d ever had. So Paul’s sitting at the kitchen table and we’re talking, and I’m boiling the kettle and putting the cups on the table. And he’s talking and I put the box of tea on the table and go back to the sink, and I realize I don’t hear him talking any more.
“Paul? Paul?” He’s nowhere to be found. I hear his car pull out of the driveway. I don’t know what happened. Then I see it. There on the table is the box of tea: “Plantation Mint”.
The Apocalypse: It’s the Pits.
I love tv shows about the apocalypse, the dystopian future, contagions; the end of the world. Since I have been staying home to stop the spread of Covid, it’s become all the more real. I have no trouble believing flesh eating zombies exist. I can buy into space creatures, time jumping, intergalactic wars, islands disappearing and reappearing, dead characters showing up again, erudite chimps and Fish Men. I love it. And just when I am IN 100%, a fierce woman in a desolate landscape raises an arm, and BOOM! Her shaved armpits break the spell and ruin the whole construct. In the midst of all that Emmy winning great dusty deconstructed set decoration, they are startling. I can’t get past it. It’s like that Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones.
Somehow, no matter how many years we’re expected to believe it’s been since the world ended, or the cast has been stranded on an island, or in space, no matter how dirty people have become, or how many zombies are banging at the gates, women on tv still shave their pits… What are they shaving with? Clam shells? Covid has kept women like me home indoors for a year. I have running water and fifty kinds of soap yet I’m sure I’m not the only woman who now ignores her Lady Schick. And I’m not even fighting for my life in hostile territory with murderous predators at my heels. I have leisure time.
I can accept everything else; Zombies all wearing jeans because it seems the world ended on casual Friday. Fine. New fair Hollywood hiring practices that put overweight women four years into the apocalypse despite there having been no food for the last two. I’ll buy it. No candles in the apocalypse despite there having been five Pier I stores in every city in the world. Why aren’t the suburbs buried ten feet deep under Cinnamon Arugula wax? But okay. Still buying. Everyone on tv knows how to start a generator with a shoelace and a toothpick. No doctors survived but any grocer can take out a bullet, sew you up and you’ll be just fine. Why not? I love it! Even the women’s hair, except for one fine character whose hair looks like mine at home these days, is all pretty awesome. Symmetrical spiraling curls. Soho worthy cuts that definitely demand product long since discontinued. Shiny curtains of gossamer tresses. All teeth are whiter than white. Sure, I can go there. But no hairy pits? How fragile do you think we are?
And this my friends is why we need more women behind the cameras in Hollywood. This pits business is all because men can’t handle the truth. Men will show the Real Housewives getting their tushies bleached and waxed on tv, because, well, tushies! But hairy pits? No, man. You want ratings like in the old days? ONE show where the women have hairy armpits would be written about non- stop for a year. They’d all win Emmys and they’d raise their arms in an apocalyptic salute and get a standing ovation from the whole world. Especially Italy.