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”.

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”.

Little Richard — Brushes With the King

Boosler and Little Richard at Florida Sunfest

Years ago, I was hired to emcee a three day music festival in Fort Lauderdale. I ran back and forth between multiple stages all day and all night. All the concert goers were seeing me constantly, over and over again, and I had to keep it fresh, so I did. Comics will tell you the crowd gets restless when waiting for the music act they came to see, so I had to be funny/honest; when an act was delayed, I told them I wished I would get off too, but we were all waiting for the music, right?

Sunday night, Little Richard was to be the closing act on one of the main stages. Anticipation was high of course. By now the audiences and I were old friends, so it was going well, but Richard just never came out, and the crowd was getting restless. So I turned it all into a bit, “I’m gonna run backstage to see what’s what”, and I’d bring them updates when I ran back out. “Ten minutes tops. Want to just talk to each other and I’ll come back to introduce him?” “No! Stay!” “Okay.” Ten minutes, twenty, thirty. Again, the crowd wanted answers. “I’m going backstage, be right back.” I did and came back out. “He’s coming! I actually saw him leave his dressing room and start to walk the hallway, he’s coming!!” Everyone clapped and whooped and I was so relieved. And then: nothing. No Little Richard. Nothing. “I’m gonna go backstage and see what’s what.” I went all the way back to his dressing room, passing a phalanx of Little Richard bodyguards in suits, all speaking into their walkie-talkies as I made my way down the line, one after another relaying the information: “Little Richard doesn’t like his pants.” “Little Richard doesn’t like his pants.” “Little Richard doesn’t like his pants….”

I went back onstage and said the only thing I could, “Little Richard doesn’t like his pants”… to the sounds of agonized groans. To this day when my husband yells to me “Come on! We’re gonna be late!” I yell back, “Little Richard doesn’t like his pants!”

 

This Little Richard story comes from John Brower

“Toronto September 13, 1969; “The Rock and Roll Revival”. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Gene Vincent and Bo Diddley, with a few other acts thrown in: The Doors, John Lennon with the first iteration of The Plastic Ono Band, Alice Cooper (who brought a chicken), Chicago and a few others I’m missing.

Lennon was a late addition, The Doors were booked to close, but outside John’s dressing room Jim, and Bill Siddons, were trying to explain to John that The Doors wanted him to close. Backstory, the Saturday show was a ticket sales bomb on the Monday, it was almost cancelled and everyone but John knew it. He had been signed on at the last minute and agreed to come only if they could play, brought Eric, Klaus and Alan White on drums. Siddons and Jim were afraid everyone would leave after John, who was incredulous and kept saying, “But you’re the headliners. I’m worried everyone will leave after you if we close”. Richard was within earshot in a narrow hallway under the bleachers and came over in his most regal and commanding presence and proclaimed, “I will close the show, the way it should be closed by me The King. You know that Mr Doors, you know that Mr Promoter, you know that Mr Lennon.”

The four of us stood speechless and I saw in Jim and John’s faces a reverence and respect that they most likely would not muster up for few if any others. Rock and roll had been called, claimed and owned by Little Richard. He was due on next and graciously agreed to do so but as he  walked down the canopy towards the stage, in his lilting falsetto he almost sang. “I am The King.” The Doors did close, no one left after John played and the rest is history. Richard gave a performance that many publications acknowledged owned the  festival and some said it relaunched a career that as we know never ended.

I have seen some things in my time but this moment of Little Richard getting Jim and John to almost bow their heads in respect and stand in star-struck silence was the best. You can see his performance and the other original rock legends in the doc Sweet Toronto by Pennebaker. It’s worth it to see Little Richard who knew that both John and Jim were in the wings watching, give a performance that left fans and critics alike on their feet the whole time and in the palm of the hand of a master.”

 

Twitter – Where Comedy Goes to Die

Twitter users seem to come in these flavors; outrageous or outraged, educated/helpful, smart/reasonable, idiots/trolls, funny. Being a comedian, I always tried to lead with comedy. Now after eleven years of providing comedy on twitter, I have been banned.

On March 24th, in the midst of a raging pandemic where social distancing and home quarantine were our best bets to prevent even larger scale death and illness, ImpeachedSCROTUS declared he “wants the churches opened up and raring to go by Easter”. Many of his supporters celebrated. Most reasonable people were horrified. Twitter, rightly so, exploded in rage and incredulity. I too was incensed, but so tired of feeling incensed by his daily insanity, and I didn’t want to add to the vitriol. Suddenly, my darling Andy Kaufman tapped me on the shoulder and I realized I could go completely in the opposite direction and it would be sublime. I do love satire. I tweeted:

“Listen libtards, u’ve got it all wrong. This country needs to stay strong & show the world we know what’s best! I agree with r president & encourage every #MAGA supporter to lock arms, get out there & go back 2 work together asap! @realDonaldTrump #NotDying4WallStreet #HugMitch”.

It could not have been any clearer that this was satire. “Libtards” is what the “right” calls us on twitter, so coming from a known comedian with forty plus years of democratic activism and material, it was funny. In case it wasn’t clear enough, the hashtags were there as a confirming wink. Yet liberals attacked. When you’re that incensed, you cannot see. The comments were hilarious, the threads so entertaining, I doubled down to the point of ridiculousness until people “got it”. The “right” continued to tweet “no one was going to prevent them filling their churches”, “God was bigger than Covid”, the virus was “a hoax”, etc., and I went right along with them, tweeting:

“Put on those red hats and spit in each other’s faces, just to show the world we are men and we are not afraid. Ha!”

I mean, could you get any sillier? Yet those are the two tweets, posted on March 24th, for which I was banned on April 6th. I had posted seventy subsequent tweets, so someone had to comb through those and work pretty hard to “find something” on me. But what? Those tweets were clearly comedy from a comedian and echoed exactly what the “right” was tweeting.

Twitter gives you no specifics, just cuts you dead and says you violated their rules. The only rule I could find that they, unbelievable as it is to me, might have applied, is against “encouraging self-harm or suicide”. Yet ever since, against the recommendations of every medical professional in government, The Impeached has incited his followers to “open up the country”. Hundreds if not thousands of people left their homes weeks ago and gathered closely together, most without masks or protective gear, to demand cities re-open. The coming weeks will no doubt reap the deadly results of this reckless “encouraging of self-harm or suicide”, yet SCROTUS’ and the republicans’ twitter accounts are doing just fine.

Everyone is trying to define comedy’s place in the new world. Twitter told me to delete my tweets to keep my account. I would never sell out my comedy heroes or comedy that way. Twitter deleted my tweets anyway. And yet, I remain banned, over nothing. All comedians should chafe at censorship that is ignorant at best, arbitrary at worst. We should all object to the hypocrisy of a platform that bans the comedy so needed today, but freely allows deadly misinformation, incitement of harm and encouragement of hate while claiming it doesn’t. I am thanked every day on all other social media for providing laughter during this awful time. So if this banning badge of honor means I have to find a two bedroom to share with Captain Crozier, then I am proud to do so.

 

 

“She Was Asking For It. What Did She Think Was Going to Happen?”

“She was asking for it.”

“What was she doing there?”

“What did she think was going to happen?”

I get it, sometimes it looks bad. But you cannot know the innocence and hope in the hearts of not –very- experienced- in- the- real- world young women wanting to succeed, who believe in goodness.

When I was starting out in 1973, as I’ve said before, we didn’t have a term for “sexual harassment”, we just called it “going to work”. That’s the way it was. I worked as a hostess in what was then the New York Improv in Hell’s Kitchen. In those days, before the big comedy boom, it was just a dive, often almost empty when the weather was bad.

I started to discover comedy that related to me, something I had never before imagined. The young comedians working there, mostly male, were lifetime comedy fans. I was new to the idea, and they kindly turned me on to Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, and all the great comedy album kings. A comedian there at the time, Bob Shaw, and I would take the train to his Brooklyn apartment in Carroll Gardens, and laugh into pillows while our bodies almost broke open, having to keep it down while his wife slept, so she could go to work early in the morning and support his dream, as did many of the comics’ wives/girlfriends at the time. I remember us almost bleeding out to Firesign Theater. Such a treat, and then when the sun came up and his wife woke up for her job, we’d all get café con leche. She went off to work and I took the train back to my apartment to sleep until work that night.

Celebrities often dropped into the club, sometimes famous comics came in and went onstage. For several nights, David Frye had come in and performed. I was a twenty -year -old, raised by the Taliban in Brooklyn. I left high school at sixteen because why even pretend? I was just accidentally discovering comedy, but recognized Frye from the Ed Sullivan Show from when I was a child. He was one of the premier impressionists in the country, his take on Nixon putting him squarely on the comedy map. This was exciting for all of us aspiring comics. Sometimes we all went to the Brasserie together if someone with more money than we had invited us. It was a fun, lively, midtown late night spot, always filled with interesting night birds and good cheesy eggs and toast.

Before I became the Improv’s hostess, Danny Aiello, the actor, had the doorman job for several years. I took over, but he still hung out there a lot and we became friends. One night around two a.m., when I was about to leave, Danny said David Frye wanted to take us to the Brasserie. I was always the last comic out, being the hostess/hostage, so no one was really around to go, except Danny and I. Danny assured me we’d have fun, and I loved going there, not to mention being a little star struck. We went and we ate and we did have fun. Then Danny took me aside, and told me Frye had lots of never-before-seen comedy tapes (etchings?) that were historical, hilarious, amazing, and rare. He suggested we all go up to Frye’s place and watch. Remember, most of us worked all night and slept all day; three a.m. was the perfect time for a social engagement in our world. I just had to make sure: “Danny, you’re going to stay and hang out too, right?”

“Of course!”

So okay. We enter one of those grand, large, pre-war apartment buildings. We go up in the dark wooded elevator. Frye opens the door on a large, dim, clearly moneyed home. I turn to Danny again, “You’re staying, right?”

“Honey of course!”

And with that he pushes me in and runs out into the elevator and disappears. Frye heads straight to the door and locks it. He’s coming at me and though he was short and older, he was also stocky and scary. I needed to get to the door he was blocking and get out, just so I could hunt down my good friend Danny and kill him. He comes at me, grabs me and pulls me down on the couch, holding me firmly on his lap. “No!!!”

“Well just sit here until I come.”

“No!”

And I push off and make it to the door and get out.

Can you imagine if I had been raped and tried to convince anyone I was not “asking for it”? I’m in this guy’s apartment alone at four a.m., I don’t know him, I thought I was going to watch comedy tapes. Yeah, right. So that’s how these things go, we really think good people are going to help us.

By the way, if every woman had a dollar for every time a horrible guy said, “Just (something) until I come”, we’d own the world. In the early days of my working at the club,  I was couch surfing, no actual place to live yet. I always made it very clear I needed a couch or floor to sleep on, and I was not coming over to have sex. Most everyone was decent and honorable; the bartenders, the wait staff, the comics. One guy who became a successful Hollywood writer, Marty Nadler, had other ideas. I sat down on his couch and to my surprise he sat down right next to me. “You can’t stay here for free.”

“But you understood..”

And with that he humped my knee until he came in his pants. Four a.m. on a subway to nowhere or wait until it was over, those were my choices. Then he wordlessly went into his bedroom.

And so here’s the worst of it. Of course the sex part is horrible, but just as bad, these guys then keep you from getting work. I have no doubt that to protect themselves from you possibly shaming them, and wanting to keep you out of their sphere after shaming themselves, they preemptively paint you as a nut, a liar, a whatever, and you are never given a chance to read for a part, or become a successful part of whatever business they are a highly esteemed member of; your profession. That is the glass ceiling, covered in jism. That is some of how and why women are kept down. I have a million of ‘em #metoo, but for another time.

When I Shoved My Pinkie Up Florence Henderson’s Nose

Everyone is writing the most glowing, loving and funny tributes to the now late, dear Florence Henderson. It’s what she inspired; love, fun, joy, and admiration. Florence was truly a “gamer”, a “good sport”, and she proved that a woman could be sexy and alluring at eighty two years old. Here is my most fun memory of us together:

In the nineteen seventies, one day Florence Henderson and I were two of several guests on the “Mike Douglas Show”. She was a gorgeous, petite woman, and was so encouraging to a new comic; me. At the end of the show, they had us all come out, sit on bar stools, and sing a closing number together. Being a silly comic, I spread my arms wide for the last note. With that, my pinkie went up Florence’s nose, and I knocked her backward off the bar stool. Needless to say, the mortification was unbearable to me. I thought I was done for. The show ended, Florence got up laughing hysterically. Not only wasn’t she upset, she spent the next half hour reassuring ME. And then we went our separate ways, after I apologized for sixteen hours.

Several years later, I was to entertain at an industry event, and I knew Florence was going to be there. I hadn’t seen her in a few years, and I kept hoping against hope that she wouldn’t remember what had happened. Suddenly, there she was. Florence Henderson: beautiful, dressed to kill, perfect, stunning, gorgeous, regal, surrounded by beautiful people. She saw me, she came toward me, and in front of all her admirers, stuck her own pinkie up her nose and, laughing heartily, said to me, “Remember? Remember? Hahahahahah!!” While everyone around her stood there gaping, we laughed until we cried. And that became our greeting every time we saw each other for the rest of her life.

May this wonderful human being, who spent her life making the lives of others better, who understood the insecurity and the humanity in all of us and who strove to honor it, who always saw the positive, now rest in peace.

Muhammad Ali Flash Mobs Fifth Avenue

At least twenty years ago, while I was walking along  Fifty Seventh St. in Manhattan, stopping at Fifth Avenue to wait  for the light so I could cross, I saw the most amazing thing. Across Fifth, a limo pulled to a quick stop. A beautiful man in a gorgeous suit jumped out and stood, looking around him. Within ten seconds, like dropping a huge dollop of honey in the middle of an ant colony, people on the street immediately started crowding Muhammad Ali. I saw paper and pens and pencils go high up in the air (no cell phones then), all shoved in his direction. He was smiling to the shouts of “Ali! Ali! Champ! Champ!”, and just started signing away. No announcement, no bodyguards. Cars stopped, traffic jammed. A police officer made his way to the center of the crowd to shake Ali’s hand. After five minutes he waved, jumped back in his limo, and was gone.

What a great time to be The Greatest. He might have just invented the Flash Mob. He didn’t have to check twitter to see how he was doing. He didn’t have to check Wiki, or IMDB, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or his Facebook fan page, or be isolated by virtual reality. His reality check was to check reality. He went headlong into it, saw he was definitely still trending, and with a big smile, The Greatest went about the rest of his day.

A Day in the Park

What a gorgeous spring day. Muriel and I had agreed to meet in the park, as usual. I was late, as usual. I had been held up by an hour of phone calls back and forth to lawyers, dealing with a horrible woman who was threatening to sue me, based on nothing. One great thing about America, anybody can sue anybody for anything or nothing, and you have to deal with it. I was pretty worked up by this point, mulling it over and over on my twenty block walk to our spot in the park. By the time I got there, steam was coming off the top of my head.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Argh!! This c**t is driving me crazy!!”

“NO! No no no no no no no. Never never ever say that word. Ever!”

“Muriel, I never use that word. But she really is a c**t.”

“Stop it! Don’t say it again.”

“I know the difference between a bitch and a c**t, and in this case this is the right word.”

“I don’t care what she did to you, there’s no place on earth for that word. Don’t ever say it in my presence again. I’m not kidding.”

“I’m a writer. You don’t think I chose that word carefully?”

“You’re not funny.” She starts to scooter away, angry. I run alongside.

“Okay. I’m sorry. But sometimes it’s the only word that fits.”

“Never. Do you want a tissue?”

“No thanks.”

“A hard candy?”

“No.”

“A Band-Aid?

“No.”

“Well, that’s all I have.”

Cut to:

What a gorgeous fall day. I go up to Muriel’s apartment, because she can’t come to the park. Her scooter has been dying in the street for months. She’s been dangerously stranded more than once, definitely relying on the kindness of strangers to get her home. She needs a new scooter. Medicare has been stalling her all summer. She has been a virtual prisoner, under house arrest, missing the most gorgeous weather in New York City history. It’s unconscionable that a system set up to serve the elderly literally leaves them trapped in their apartments months on end for no reason except bureaucracy. Or maybe stupidity. They don’t know or care if she has a support system. For all they know she could be down to eating cat food. Or kale. It’s not right.

“What’s the matter?” I ask.

“Argh! I still can’t get my scooter.”

“This is still going on? I can’t believe it.”

“They’re waiting for me to die. They look at my age, and they keep stalling. They think if they can avoid paying for a new scooter long enough I’ll drop dead.”

“What can you do?”

“I just spent SIX HOURS on the phone with a woman at Medicare. I decided I was not going to hang up until I had a DATE for that SCOOTER to be delivered here. SIX HOURS!!!”

I had never seen her so angry.

“My God. Six hours for real? How? What did she say for six hours?”

Nothing!! She kept putting me on hold!! I was on hold for four out of the six hours!!!!! But I wouldn’t go away!!!! And she kept STALLING me, and coming up with all kinds of EXCUSES, and leaving me on hold again and again AND AGAIN!!!!!!!…….

“Wow. Was she a c**t?

“ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!!!”

 

 

 

Rescue, Trump, Clinton, Comedians, Charity

(Though animal rescue is the jumping off point here, my Tails of Joy website is for being uplifting and rescue-y, and this post is more put-downing and comed-y).

We received this email on our Tails of Joy contact page today:

To: Tails of Joy

From: (Oh Peeps, I wish I could)

Subject: Trust/etc.

Message:

Hey Elayne,

I moved out of CA. I’m in AZ now. I wanted to let you know that I had to remove myself from your Tails of Joy group and also you in general, which deeply broke my heart. I realize you are a public figure but you aligned yourself with Hillary Clinton a few months ago. That’s cool and your choice to do so. But I am a deeply political person and my roots lie elsewhere. I cannot trust you nor your organization or anyone that does this, either side, your organization is supposed to be for the betterment of dogs and I wanted to trust your organization to take care of my babies when I pass and also give money. Since it is so deeply opposing to me in many ways, I do not trust you, nor your organization and therefore felt unsafe leaving my most precious assets, the only thing I have been given to by Jesus here on earth, my dogs, to take care of.

I still think you are a funny comedian but moved on and got out of watching comics. They tend to only support Dems and slam and massacre Republicans or Trump fans and that is so beyond insulting it’s shameless on all of your parts.

Take care and good luck with Hillary and Bernie and all of the other things you hold dear and therefore so does your organization.

I have my babies in trust with organizations that will take care of them and there is no political bullshit.

NAME (If only I could)

And (pets names)  – Marley, Abby and Jasper

—————————————————————————————————————-

(I sincerely believe her pets did not give her permission to use their names on that.) Okay, so..

Dear (OH how I wish I could)

We were so happy when you contacted us months ago about including Tails of Joy in your estate planning. To that end we spent lots of time on the phone with you, answering all your questions, educating you about rescue, helping you explore all the different ways you could truly make a difference in the lives of desperate animals about to die. Then today we received your email. This will be my only answer to you, now and in future.

Intelligent grownups learn to work together for the greater good of their callings despite any private ideological or political differences, which never come up in, or affect the life saving work of, the world of animal rescue. Congress can’t do it, but rescuers can. I wouldn’t vote for Sarah Palin, but I’d save her cat.

By example, there are several rescue groups I have spent years working closely with, saving lives, helping each other, and socializing. One night our work went long, so I made some dinner and we started watching the 6 o’ clock news together. My greatest ally and dear friend from one of the rescue groups made a comment during the newscast, which led me to say, “Wait a minute, you’re a born again Christian? Anti-choice and everything?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “What a great tribute to us that in all these years of saving animals it never came up!!” And we fell down laughing. As I am a public figure, she certainly knew my views, but we accepted each other totally as dedicated fellow rescuers, spending our lives and our money doing something much bigger than nurturing a small-minded, selfish world view; thinking only of “me” and “mine” and trying to control others. We continue to work together in a spirit of friendship, love, and charity. THAT is what honest, decent people who are dedicated to a cause do. It’s called walking the walk. Animals about to die in the pound don’t care who you vote for, they just need rescue, medical help, love and kindness, and that’s what we give them, every day. What have you done for Jesus lately?

For twenty years, Tails of Joy has supported and given out “Little Guy Grants” to small rescue organizations across America. That includes Arizona, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, and dozens of cities all throughout the republican strongholds of the south and midwest. I never stopped to ask the rescuers I was giving checks to there who they were voting for, what their religion was, or if they thought poor women who already had six children should be forced to carry a seventh after being raped. It didn’t matter to the sick and desperate dogs and cats about to be killed due to lack of space, or crawling bloody in the road after being shot with pellet guns, or who had their jaws blown off after firecrackers were taped into their mouths and exploded. In Ohio, it’s legal to shoot a dog if he is chasing a sheep or another dog. He doesn’t even have to reach him. If you want to follow him home and kill him, though he did nothing, that is legal too. You are allowed to “pursue a dog for a reasonable time“. I don’t like that law or the state government that made it, or the people who voted that government in. According to you then, I should turn my back on homeless animals in Ohio. But I don’t, because the rescuers there are saving lives, and that is what matters. I have no personal litmus test for helping rescuers rescue. I am a true rescuer, and nothing else about me has any bearing on the amount of lives Tails of Joy has saved for decades. Animals are non-partisan. By law, non-profit organizations are also non-partisan, though somebody ought to tell that to the church.

How ironic that the word “spiritual” is part of your chosen email name. I will chalk that up to your clearly great sense of humor. Yes, I am a public figure. You knew exactly who I was as my views have been open and public for forty three years. If I have suddenly “broken your heart” because you “just noticed” my favoring some political party (a party which also “rescues”; the poor, the under-served, desperate women, ailing seniors, hungry children, newly-arrived-to-America human beings, etc. etc.), I call bullshit.

When someone tells us he/she is considering a bequest to Tails of Joy, we listen. Until you, every donor I spent hours on the phone educating and working with did indeed kindly leave Tails of Joy money to continue our fantastic work. After one conversation with you I said to my treasurer, “There’s nothing here”. But because every rescue organization is always in such great financial need, he convinced me to continue phone calls with you, though I knew better. How many animals died while I listened to you prattle on? The only animals you care about are your own. We have re-homed the orphaned pets of hundreds of people who died having made no arrangements for their future, left no money to care for them, and probably never donated a cent to a rescue group during their lifetimes. We don’t punish the animals for that, even if their previous owners watched Fox News. And I never, ever made any one of those dogs or cats vote for a Democrat. That’s their business. I’ve spent endless hours and dollars trying to help save elephants, despite their links to the GOP. I hope it’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio you have left your dogs to so they can continue living in the bubble to which they have become accustomed.

Tails of Joy does not vote. Tails of Joy does not campaign or endorse. There is not one whiff of politics or partisanship on the scores of pages on Tails of Joy. But here is the difference between rescuers and dilettantes. I won’t be voting for Donald Trump. But if he is elected, I would do everything in my power to help him make his time in office successful for the betterment of our country. You seriously need to make an immediate, sizable donation to Tails of Joy to get right with your maker for wasting so much of our time that would have been spent doing the Lord’s life saving work. It’s what Jesus would want, as you so well know in your generous, intelligent, open heart. You are a miracle.

lily

                                    Rescue fundraising for elephants with Lily Tomlin

 

 

All the Peeps in the World

Peeps

Anyone who has ever seen me perform knows I love Peeps. In my “Live Nude Girls” special, I pledge my eternal love to the delicious bringers of sweetened smiles. That special aired on various networks for many years, and for years, fans brought Peeps to my shows; in their original form, in hilarious “art” pieces, even in the form of home made Peeps jewelry. And then one amazing day, cruel fate gave me everything I could have ever dreamed of Peeps-wise, and I couldn’t accept.

I was playing a college in snow covered, freezing, okay, kinda dreary, Elmira NY. It was one stop on an extended tour, on which I travelled with only carry-on luggage, as the shows were fly- and -perform -same -day. Waiting for luggage after each flight was not an option. Delayed bags could mean a missed show. Luckily, I have my packing needs down to the point where I could vacation in Europe bringing only a manila envelope. I walked into the college dressing room and Oh Joy of Joys!! I could not believe my eyes. The “Just Born” company, makers of Peeps, headquartered nearby, had filled every square inch of the room with boxes of Peeps for me! Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, inch by inch, step by step, quickly I turned..

What to do? I didn’t have enough time to make them into an edible wardrobe to bring along (believe me I thought about it). But I couldn’t walk out on the mother lode of all Peeps. I had promised to visit a retirement/medical rehab facility the next day on my way to the airport, a cheery visit for the residents. Wait. Wouldn’t it be great to show up with a colorful truckload of their favorite childhood candy to brighten up their snow bound, age bound last rest stop on their highway of life in Elmira? Yes. Yes it would.

I hired a truck and got to the home the next day with plenty of time before my flight. I had the orderlies help me bring in carton after carton of Peeps. The residents’ eyes lit up. Restricted diets don’t often leave much room for days like this. These elderly, frail people looked as happy as little kids, watching this glorious Peeps feast unfold. They couldn’t wait for the boxes to be opened. And open them we did, pink and yellow bunnies and chickies flying in a fireworks of color, sugary powder, thick marshmallow. Box after box being passed to eager elderly people with dry constricted throats. Such anticipation! And then, the choking began.