subvert w heather gold. Happy New Year hungover people.
January 1st, 2009Nothing says "I love my baby" like a KFC portrait
December 31st, 2008
This was on the wall of a KFC by a highway in the Midwest. Finger lickin' memories.
Please don't divorce us.
December 23rd, 2008
thanks to the Courage Campaign for organizing this Flickr set Send yours to pleasedontdivorce[at]couragecampaign.org
WATCH subvert w/heather gold. morning headlines sans bs
December 22nd, 2008Got questions for future shows? Post em here.
tags: "Bernie Madoff", "closeted Scientologist," Toyota, economy, guilt, "Dick Cheney" , "Hannukah miracle"
Obama picks Rick Warren (Yes on 8) for inauguration
December 17th, 2008Obama is clearly making as many symbolic efforts of inclusion as he can to govern from the center. Picking an evangelical preacher like Warren is part of that.
I find Warren's support of Prop 8 cowardly and morally reprehensible.
And, like many queers, I am tired of being the one who has to "be bigger." We know what it is to put up with ignorance and self-censorship to be "part of the family."
But here's the problem we face: we want a democracy that recognizes each of us as equals under the law. We say we want all difference acknowledged. We are not fundamentalists. This means we are always going to be stuck "being the bigger person" when it comes to dealing the evangelical and fundamentalist world within the democratic process.
If we really believe there is room in our democracy for us and them to both exist and be treated with dignity and be different, then our leverage comes from showing up without censorship. We can't make it an "us or them" game and then claim our goal is democratic inclusion. Not because of how we feel about the immoral politics and "theology" of evangelicals like Rick Warren, but because of our own integrity. Because of what we stand for. We have to find as many ways as possible to make clear that they are wrong. To make our lives, our relationships, our marriages-illicit as they are now- as visible as possible.
We have to make clear to Obama that our consideration matters too. We've got to make it politically necessary for him to consider us. You can't be mayor of San Francisco without that. We need that to be the case for our President. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. So we've got to find some way to be at the inauguration. To be visible. To be part of the America that includes everybody. We are part of that everybody and our families and children and love is too. But having Obama as our President, even with the greater amount of inclusion he may offer LGBT Americans clearly won't be any kind of short cut to our equality.
I don't think we'll be able to convince Obama to drop Warren. I get the political and even moral effort he's trying to make by including those who lash out at him. They've lashed out at Obama too (eg. on abortion) not just at us queers.
I don't know what the answer is yet. Maybe we are at the inauguration andwe protest at Saddelback Church. The protests are really about us being seen.
We already got a pretty big punch in the stomach the night of Obama's election. The promise of a nation for everyone, even coming from his own lips, is still hollow. So perhaps we need to accept that our "family," even the "cool cousin" like Barack who seems pretty liberal isn't always going to make us comfortable or acknowledge all of our lives.
We're going to have to do this the way we did it with out own families. Or I can speak for myself, with my own family. Everyone hasn't been as fortunate to see their family make the change from those who reject and insult you to those who see and accept you and your relationships as mattering. There was a period of not speaking. Then once I was able to be happy and clear about myself and my relationship, I knew I would never pretend and erase myself just to make my family comfortable. That's what queers have been doing across the country for ages. Well we have a few cities to live in. Thanks.
Ironically, Obama is a pretty good teacher of how to get acknowledged by Obama. People threw the kitchen sink at him while he was campaigning: calling him a "terrorist," "socialist" and any other projection they could come up with. He knew the whole time that there wasn't any truth to it but he did not react AND he did not back down or be less of himself. This is a definite insult. It's not his intention, but it is.
Let's do what he would do. Acknowledge that. Name it for what it is, and then continue with our reality and achieving our goals.
And our goal is clear. 100% equality and dignity under the law across the United States at every level. Nothing less. This land is our land too.
So maybe we go home for Thanksgiving. And maybe the homophobic cousins will still be there making their fucked up jokes. But we are 100% ourselves and we are fabulous and we are sitting at the damned table just like they are. And we do not cede 1 inch of ourselves. And eventually, the cousins may hear themselves because everyone else sure does.
-cross posted at EqualityCamp . Register now for Jan 3rd.
truth inside lies- Dusty Springfield Can I Get a Witness
December 16th, 2008
It took a dyke in drag to sing black soul to allow white kids to feel they could move minimally.
Other than the bubbling honesty of the tune and the voice..what other shred of honesty is in this?
Maria Bamford: Greatest Living Comic Authority on Depression (Comedy DSM I ) Buy tix now for January 19th consult
December 15th, 2008
Above: the greatest living comic authority on depression: Maria Bamford
BUY TIX
Who: host comedian Heather Gold ("Cookie"), guests Maria Bamford (Comedy Central's Comedians of Comedy), SF favourite Will Franken (Good Luck With It), and Cynthia Levin (Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn)
What: The Heather Gold Show@SFSketchfest: Comedians on Depression at SF Sketchfest
When: Monday January 19th, 2008. 8-9:30pm,
Where: Eureka Theatre 215 Jackson St San Francisco CA 94111 and podcats online at heathergold.com/show
Tickets: $15. Way cheaper than therapy. Available at sfsketchfest.com or 866-468-3399
I've wanted to do this show since I looked in my wife's psychology textbook under depression for information and it had a picture of Drew Carey and just said 'Comedians are depressed.' So now I'm consulting comedians. Only the best. These are the cream of the crop. It will be neurologically impossible to be depressed during this show. We may even cure a few therapists before the night is done. I hear they need help.
Who knows more about depression than comedians? Maria Bamford (Comedians of Comedy, Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, Variety's Top Ten Comics), Will Franken (Good Luck With It, Best SF Comedian), Cynthia Levin (Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn) and surprise therapy guests join comic and host Heather Gold and you. Is it possible to be a comic without first being depressed? Are there Americans who aren't depressed? These and other fine answers await your participation at Comedians on Depression. Will not cause drowsiness, bloating or leakage. Cheaper than therapy.
great singers/great comics: getting post-snark and getting heard
December 14th, 2008I just read one of those lists magazines and blogs and VH1 like to make. The list always makes it easier to contain stuff. Not make life and our troubles and even passions seem like a tidal wave drowning us.
But I read the article: 100 Greatest Singers of All Time in Rolling Stone because I wanted to drown, no, swim in the joy of great singing. I wanted that feeling. That moving feeling of going someplace else altogether and being right HERE in my self. Finding my Self through the honesty. Safely held through the notes. But how to get that through words? I'm a comic and while it's often said we all want to be singers, all we got are words. Where are the notes to hold us?
I was rewarded by some words in the very second piece. Billy Joel said this about Ray Charles, "When he sings, he's not just singing soulfully. He is imparting his soul. You are hearing something deep within the man."
I liked that bit so much I put the magazine from the coffee shop with me. I wanted to touch some of that.
It's where I want to get. It's what I'm working for. It's what I love and admire in the performers who've inspired me.
Over and over in these pieces you hear the same things. Jackson Browne says John Lennon "always told the truth," Bono says Dylan could "sing the most melancholy tunes and not succumb to sentimentality," Booker T Jones says Otis Redding's range was limited but it was "all intent….all emotion…[t]his guy is definitely not singing for the money." These singers are "believed" and often more than that…felt. They make you feel.
They break down all that not wanting to feel people do. They give it company. And, I realized for the first time today, they don't just comfort you by holding you, putting it out there just the way you feel it so you feel recognized. Seen. ("Yes, yes that's it's exactly Aretha. I'm feeling that thing.") Nope, they are doing it with you, more than you. They are feeling that feeling 100% without some little string of irony holding them down to the ground and protecting them just in case someone might judge or criticize well, then they could always comfort themselves knowing they didn't "really mean it."
There's no apology and irony in great singers. They're not hiding behind the combover of snark. Any irony that comes only comes from the shame you feel about the world outside that's making this piece of absolute truth washing over you the opposite of whatever we're all forced to live with out there: a popular lie held in place by fear.
All comics want to be heard. All comics want laughter. But you can easily trade the latter for the former. And if they can't see you. If the very reason you get on stage in the first place is that the genuine you is not seen, not reflected back, except in some deep song, well then you're gonna get up there and make these people see you.
I learned so much playing with Margaret Cho not long ago. Because her heart is in it. "She's not singing for the money." She's not hiding behind a wall of snark. She will take the room as far as they think their "edgy" asses will go, and then push them farther. And she's got so much to go through to get the whole picture seen, to get all of her heard. And her fans love her that much more because she does that and she sees them. And she does it without notes to rest in.
Another comic performing that night who's deservedly busting out, Ali Mafi quietly asked her backstage about playing audiences who dropped their love as soon as he came out to them. This was no complaint, so a how to. Cho didn't miss a beat, "You've got to be funnier. You've got to make them."
There's no apology or irony in great comics. And comedy right now is populated by the alterna white boy snark which is a post all in its own for another day. The laughs are there to be sure. But what about the soul? What are you imparting?
I've been thinking about Cho's advice it ever since I heard it. More you. Less fear. The closet isn't gonna help. It's the laugh and that's gonna come from the truth. The truth getting bigger, not smaller. The truth that everyone, not just you, can recognize. It can make the impossible happen. It can get people over themselves. Out of themselves. To wail like Mary J Blige, to not back away from the truth even though you're speaking it in words, like Richard Pryor.
But the only way there is to do it as your Self. That's the constant search. That's my aim. It's a high high aim. I'm sure I'm failing it all the time now. But I'm not gonna stop trying.
great stand-up advice for any comic, or frankly, any creative person
December 13th, 2008Right here via Jackie Kashian via Vanda.
While we're at it, go see Jackie Kashian. All the smart chick comics I know dig her. I'm looking for chances to do it myself.
