Mixed Metaphors

 “When an idea first strikes you as funny, then you quickly realize its seriousness, and the funniness disappears, leaving you only with the feeling of how not funny it really is.” — Urban Dictionary

The past week there’s been a spotlight on Dave Chappelle’s new stand-up comedy performance, The Closer, streaming on Netflix. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I paid close attention to the early reviews and scathing criticism of his transphobic and misogynist material. At the suggestion of a friend whose humor I appreciate — which is often politically incorrect yet delivers a thought-provoking message — I decided to watch Chappelle’s The Closer.

I’m glad I did.

After watching The Closer, I had promised to share my thoughts with my friend. Here’s what I posted on Messenger:

I finished watching Dave Chappelle’s comedy routine, The Closer, this morning. I found it thought-provoking, boundary-pushing, smart, self-deprecating, challenging, and supported by his own lived experience, biases, and convictions. Comedy is not always pretty, politically-correct, kind to everyone, and should always make us not only laugh, but think. I believe he accomplished that goal. Some of his material was cringe-worthy and borderline cruel. Comedy is not church. It’s a different kind of preaching to a different kind of call and response chorus. I loved it!

Let me be more precise, I didn’t ‘love it’ as if I agreed or resonated with his hostile material about LGBTQ+ people and misogynist characterizations of women and their bodies, instead, let me simply say it was Funny, Not Funny!

It’s sparked a debate again about ‘cancel culture.’ Though I am an advocate of our LGBTQ+ community, including our trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary members, and I identify as a lesbian or BIG DYKE, the good news in response to Chappelle’s controversial material, is that we’re talking about it, both in support of free speech and in opposition of dangerous hate speech which can have deadly consequences.

 Now that I’ve jumped into the fray of the transphobic and misogynist comedy debate, I’ve made a decision that it might be time to return to the stage. I also have something to say on the subject.

Afterwards, I started thinking about my own amateur comedy career from the past and the original material I wrote for the stage. For the most part, with the exception of a couple open mic performances, including spoken word for the Madison Story Slam, I have considered myself a retired comedian.

A couple things factored into that decision. The first, I wrote a lot about my lived experiences as most comics do. I told stories about my life. The material was observational humor about my recovery as an alcoholic, dating and relationship life as a lesbian, and jabs at the dominant culture. As my life and relationships improved, I didn’t mine new material from my life. Being happy for the most part didn’t seem as funny as when I was struggling. Instead of storytelling and observational humor on the stage, I began storytelling and blogging on Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!

Dave Chappelle’s performance and comedy by women comics like Michelle Wolf, prompted me to take a look again and reconsider if I was ready to step on stage with some new material.  I am. I posted this update on Facebook:

I was, and continue to be, the class clown. I’ve used humor, including self-deprecating humor, to gain the attention and acceptance of my classmates, and as an adult, the same from my family, friends, and colleagues.

I’m a former stand-up comedian, spoken word storyteller, and I’m preparing to step on the stage again. I have new material to share. My new routine is entitled, Funny, Not Funny! and will riff on the culture wars, politics, COVID-19 and other viruses, and finally aging. Stay tuned, for better or worse!

The Back Story

I’ve been performing comedy to some degree ever since I was a young child — first as the class clown — sometimes funny — always attention-seeking — desiring to be liked by my classmates. It was a tightrope to walk, to not be too disruptive so the teacher would discipline me. I also strove to be a good student and the teacher’s pet. I did my best over the years to be as smart as I could about the content of my humor so the teacher would join in the laughter too, before I crossed the line.

As a young a baby boomer who grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a neighborhood full of young families with kids who were a year or two older or younger than me, we played outdoor games and my sister Roz and I, with help from our mother would stage backyard carnivals. From my reminiscence, Boomer’s Playground:

Summers, my sister and I became neighborhood impresarios, producing backyard carnivals with the help of our mother. We’d pitch a tent using blankets and quilts over the clothesline in the yard like seasoned roustabouts, set up a table for refreshments Mom made including: Kool-Aid, chocolate chip cookies, fudge brownies, and popcorn.

We’d enlist friends from the neighborhood to sell tickets, post signs on telephone poles and within an hour have a backyard full of kids. Word of mouth is how we communicated back then. It was the baby boom, and our neighborhood was busting at the seams with elementary-aged children looking to find Disneyland and become a Mousketeer in their own backyard.

Roz and I would stage a sideshow featuring magic tricks and display weird bugs and furry caterpillars in jelly jars. I was the featured act in our big top, the blanket hoisted tall in the middle of the clotheslines using wooden poles to lift it higher. I performed comedy routines, adaptations from Mad or Cracked magazines or original stories featuring a character I created, a combination of Lucille Ball and Charlie Chaplin, named Linda Binda.

Those were my first stand-up comedy performances.

Following is a snapshot of my stand-up, improv, and emcee career for the past 40 years:

• Lysistrata Feminist Restaurant Cooperative: I performed stand-up for the first time as an adult around 1980 at the age of 30. It was in front of a relatively small, LGBTQ+-friendly audience, I was nervous and my voice was shaking. I was a huge fan of Lily Tomlin’s and I was inspired by her 1977 one-woman stage show written by her partner Jane Wagner, Searching for Intelligent Life in the Universe. I wrote and performed a routine, Bag of Toys, which I revealed one at a time and told stories, which included my Sears Craftsman Massager! I didn’t perform again, until after I stopped drinking and went into a recovery program.
  

  Lysistrata Feminist Restaurant Cooperative

• The Lesbian Variety Show: I Got this Way from Kissing Girls. It was almost a
  

  Lesbian Variety Show

  decade later that I performed stand-up again, and continued for a number of years, until a misstep on my part caused a chain reaction that ended the Kissing Girls Production Company’s annual event (it’s a story for another time, or maybe, material for my new routine). Let’s just say, Rush Limbaugh was involved in a broadcast he did entitled, Check Your Penis at the Door. Yes, comedy can be provocative and have dangerous and unintended consequences. The following year at the annual Lesbian Variety Show I was the butt of jokes in a skit by a lesbian improv group, Flaming Dykeasauras, which sadly for me included friends. It requires a thick skin to me a comedian and I was beginning to question if I had what it takes.

  • Highlights from original comedy performances include, Sex Changes Everything, when I faked an orgasm on stage, next an original performance with two members from our Apple Island acting class, a skit about couples therapy, a sub sandwich, and three hungry lesbians. The final routine I performed at the Barrymore Theater as part of the annual Lesbian Variety Show was, Is My Next Girlfriend My Ex-Girlfriend?, when my ex-girlfriend was in the audience and we reunited shortly afterwards. Comedy can also yield positive consequences.
    

    Apple Island, Madison, WI

• Apple Island: A women’s performance, entertainment, and meeting space at 849. E. Washington Ave. in Madison, Wisconsin in the suite that Bos Meadery currently occupies. Lois Stauber transformed the loft-like space with the sweat equity help of the women’s lesbian community as the decade became the 1990’s. It was a smoke-free space before the city ordinances mandated it for bars and restaurants. Apple Island was home for meetings, events, fundraisers, concerts, music, comedy, women’s dances, and featured a small non-alcoholic coffee, tea, and cold drink snack bar with treats by Dessert Hearts, cheesecake, ice cream and more. It became a ‘third space’ for the women’s community at a time when people sought safe, alcohol-free, spaces to congregate and celebrate. I became both a consumer and member of the cooperative, and years later served on the board of directors. Following are some of my contributions:
  • I became a founding member of the Acting Out Performance Collective. We were students of S. Elaine Eldridge’s acting classes and produced and performed a series of improv and monologue performances. Eldridge and her husband Dennis Kern created and helmed Ark Improvisational Theatre, early teachers and mentors to Chris Farley and Joan Cusack. Acting Out produced shows featuring the repertoire of performers. In one show, entitled Permission Slips, I was the emcee/host of the monologue and skit performances. I handed out citations to the audience when they broke rules. I was dressed in a police uniform and was surprised when an actual Madison Policewoman arrested me for impersonating an officer (as a joke on me!).
  • Stauber asked me to emcee and help produce comedy performances as fundraisers for Apple Island. I produced a couple of programs showcasing some of Madison’s LGBTQ+ women comics. One show was entitled, The Apple Island Comedy Jam, another comedy review was videotaped and broadcast by Dyke TV.
• Emcee Gigs/GALVAnize Marches: I was developing a reputation as a go-to person for the LGBTQ+ community as a comic with emcee and production skills. I was tapped to co-host a fundraising event for the Aids Support Network and the Rodney Scheel House, Oscar Madison, a simulcast of the 1994 Academy Awards Show at the Barrymore Theater when Whoopi Goldberg emceed. I emceed with my drag queen co-host and I wore a tux. The drag queens, who performed during commercial breaks, helped me with subtle makeup for the stage (I never wore any), and adjusted my cummerbund and bow tie. I produced and co-hosted the post-Pride March entertainment for GALVAnize for a couple of years working with LGBTQ+ entertainers and musicians. One year, I ‘ate fire’ with the Madison contingent of the Lesbian Avengers. I worked with Luna Tech, the lesbian sound technicians and crew, to help produce the post-march entertainment.
  

  Lesbian Avengers, NYC

• Women’s Music Festivals: I attended the annual Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival as a festi-goer for a number of years. One year I performed comedy at the afternoon open mic. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival became controversial for its commitment to creating a womyn’s space for ‘womyn-born womyn.’ Another year, I performed comedy at the late-night café at the National Women’s Music Festival. I lost my job in Madison because I honored my contract as a paid performer and my employer wouldn’t approve my time off. Instead, the attorney for my employer said I ‘abandoned my job’, which disqualified me to collect unemployment. My employer was a gay man who was also a close friend, and as a result, we became estranged for many years. Gratefully, we reconciled a few years ago.
• Milwaukee Pride Festival: Also, in the early 90’s I performed comedy on the day stage of Milwaukee PrideFest at the Summerfest grounds. I wrote and performed a routine about the Lesbian Barbie Doll my friends gave me as a gift so I’d have something to play with when I was single. It was intimidating to perform in an outdoor venue with people drinking, milling around, and often not paying attention as an audience. My amateur skill set began to concern me.
• Café Montmartre Jazz Opening Act: Jazz musicians and lesbian friends asked me to be an opening act for them and an intimate and well-known downtown Madison restaurant and wine bar, Café Montmartre in Madison (in the location that is now, Heritage Tavern). As I was rehearsing my material earlier in the day, my girlfriend at the time was pressuring me to spend time with her. Other partners in the past quickly learned that the best way they could support my comedy was to give me space before a performance. Full disclosure, I was always anxious, stressed, and difficult to be around both the day before and the day I performed. Quote honestly, I was intolerable. We broke-up shortly after the performance. I bombed that night. I tried writing some political humor about President Clinton, and I was quickly heckled by some of the politicos from the State Capital who hung out at the café. after work. They were predominantly men, more politically-savvy, and aggressive than I was. I usually performed in front of primarily LGBTQ+-friendly audiences and was unprepared for handling hostile hecklers who were attempting to steal the attention of the audience, harassing me as they did it. Oh, my! I started questioning my future as a lesbian comic. I lost my girlfriend and an audience in the same night!
• Pink Party NYE 2000: On New Year’s Eve 1999, as the decade ended, and a new decade began, I was asked to perform comedy following a jazz pianist in the Starlight Lounge of the Madison Civic Center, now the Overture Center. The late-night entertainment was one feature of the annual Pink Party LGBTQ+ fundraising event and celebration which included an art show, dance, a performance by the Dairyland Line Dancers, drinks and appetizers, and the Starlight Lounge. Since it was the eve of Y2K, the audience was quite ADHD, wondering if their computers would reboot in the morning and if ATM’s would dispense money, and a laundry list of what turned out to be unfounded concerns. I lost the audience, though I was pleased with the material I had written. I confessed to my partner that night, that I was contemplating retiring from comedy. I did.
• QueerSpeak Open Mic: I returned to the stage briefly 13 years later to perform in front of a friendly LGBTQ+ audience at a QueerSpeak open mic. Many of the performers were members of an LGBTQ+ Narratives Activist-Writers Group of which I was a founding member. I wrote, and performed, a routine about aging, Everything New Is Old Again. I did pretty well however, I realized I didn’t have the capacity to memorize my routine and lacked the confidence I formerly had and the ability to improvise seamlessly. I used notecards that I could reference when needed. The audience was warm, friendly, and forgiving of my age-related reliance on cheat sheets.
• Madison Story Slam: Another three years passed when I stepped on stage again in 2017 and performed a monologue at the Madison Story Slam open mic at the Wil-Mar Community Center, The theme that night was Hungover and I told my story about my high school graduation night in 1968 when after graduation and dinner with my parents, I celebrated with my friends, ending up experiencing my first blackout. I passed out on the toilet matching socks that were hung to dry in the bathroom of the apartment attached to Leslie’s Continental Club. My friends found me with my panties at my ankles, laying on the bathroom floor.  Not pretty, yet definitely sobering. Gratefully, I’ve been sober for 35 years. The irony of the monologue performance, people were unsure of whether to laugh, or not. Yes — you guessed it — Funny, Not Funny!

Return to the Stage

First, if you’re still reading, thank you. I’m an admitted, sometimes long-winded, storyteller, and I hope my comedy journey was engaging enough that you stayed with me to the end and now ready for my new beginning and return to the stage.

Circling back to Dave Chapelle. Let me first restate. I experienced much of Chapelle’s The Closer routine to be politically-incorrect, transphobic, misogynist, hateful, dangerous, and over-the-top. At the same time, I believe that comedy, artistic freedom, and free speech should be protected, not cancelled. I’ve had missteps as a comic when I’ve written humor when others were the butt of my jokes, often the dominant culture. I’ve also made culturally-insensitive jokes. I did a routine once about being an aging, menopausal woman who was invited to be the heat source for a sweat lodge. I thought it was pretty funny, and so did most of the audience, until the next day when I received a phone call.

It was an indigenous, lesbian-woman who was both angry and hurt that I made jokes about a sacred ritual and she accused me of being culturally ignorant. At first, I was defensive, then I shut up and listened. She was right. In the end I realized, I could make jokes about anything I wanted to, but like most things in life, there are consequences, people of different cultures, ethnic groups, religions, political views and identities could be maligned and aggrieved. I now need to weigh the risk and benefit of my material and performances.

I can’t speak for Chappelle and Netflix and their motivations for presenting The Closer, whether for power, profit, or personal politics. I strongly believe that comedy, when it’s provocative and pushes against boundaries, serves a greater purpose. It challenges audiences to think, enabling discourse and debate. Some of the most groundbreaking comics, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, and George Carlin (see The Seven Words link below), are just a few of Chapelle’s predecessors who used language and performed material that was often racist, misogynist, crude, always politically-incorrect and thought-provoking.

As I shared at the beginning of this essay and reminiscence, I plan on writing some new material, to step back on stage, pick up the mic and riff on my life and the political environment and culture we live in. I’ll draw from my lived experience as an aging LGBTQ+ recovering woman, a feminist, social-activist, writer, and more. Some of the new jokes, I hope audiences will relate to and laugh, and if write smart enough and I’m willing to take risks, I hope the material will also challenge and cause the audience to think.

If I do my job as a comic with renewed passion, empathy, and intelligence, I look forward to sharing my new routine with you, Funny, Not Funny!

To read more about my stand-up comedy, spoken word monologues, thoughts about artistic freedom, cancel culture, and free speech, plus the debate about Dave Chapelle’s comedy performance, click on links below:

Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh, My!

Picking Up and Dropping the Mic

Everything New Is Old Again

It’s Never Too Late (to Learn How to Date!)

Boomer’s Playground

Hungover: A Madison Story Slam Baptism

The Seven Words

Additional Reading on the Topic

The Closer-Trailer

Netflix Standing by Dave Chappelle and “The Closer”

Netflix Defends Dave Chappelle in Memo: ‘Artistic Freedom Is Different for Standup’

Dave Chappelle’s Trumpian Claims About ‘Cancel Culture’ Are Laughable

Dave Chappelle Can Kiss My Black Ass

Ted Sarandos and Dave Chapelle Are Missing the Criticism’s Point

Cancel Culture Killing Comedy? 

Scientists Find That the Class Clowns Are the Smartest People in Class