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Today’s Resource: Young Frankenstein

Friday, January 28th, 2011

I’m promising myself I’ll find and post one thing every day that makes me happy.

Ah yes, back when film comedies had women who really did comedy in them.
Comedy perfection, every one of them: Teri Garr, Madeleine Kahn, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and my higher power, Mel Brooks.

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Teena Marie -Work It

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

This is some funky sh4t! Bless You Tube, I’ve not heard this song since I played it on my mixed cassette that I bought in 1988. Man I love this song. And how is it that both Teena Marie and Taylor Dayne died so young? It’s like the Gilda Radner, Madeleine Kahn one two punch of the white girl funk genre.

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127 Hours, loss, and tequila bar wisdom

Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

photo: Chris Applegate

I saw the film 127 hours last week. It made a big impact on me. (I liked it a lot more than Social Network. It’s a very interior film and will take you as well as a virtual thing can, to a place of feeling what matters about being alive to you. Log line: a climber cuts off his own arm to survive. Spoiler below).

I was in a bar last night and found myself talking with someone very tall visiting Toronto from Vancouver. Did I mention that this bar’s specialty was serving just tequila and making mid-town professionals comfortable on a night off? It wasn’t really my scene.

I mentioned the film. This woman sharply zeroed in her energy and delivered the pinnacle scene to me: “I made that boulder. I made this moment. This boulder has waited it’s entire life for meâ€¦” She hasn’t seen the film but a friend did and he told her about it. This friend saw the film a few days after this happened to him:

He’s someone who she’s known to always have chronic sinus congestion. He is always sneezing and his voice sounds dulled by all the fullness. She saw him recently and he sounded clear. Completely different. No congestion and he told her he hadn’t sneezed in two weeks. What happened?

He ran into this homeless man he would often chat with and the man turned to him and said: you’re dying.

And he realized he was right. he remembered that he’d told himself since he was young that he wouldn’t live past 35: what’s the point. And here he was 35.

Of course it’s someone unexpected, a homeless man, a fool or someone else often dismissed that delivers what we feel as prophecy. Without the contrast with our expectations, how do we learn?

It shook him up and he realized he had a choice to make. And he made it. He wanted to live. Inexplicably the congestion and sneezing went away. He saw 127 hours and he realized he too had made his boulder and it had come in the shape of what reached him.

And the woman telling me this story said that he sounded different. Now you could hear his voice so clearly. And some of it was a clear head and some of it was something else. A kind of presence. He was completely there and he wanted to be.

I l ost the use of a bit of my left hand after an accident in 2006 and ended up a very reluctant plaintiff in close to instant karma as I explore in my current show in development The Law Project. That show had been entirely focussed on how bad law school and law suits are. Then the accident happened. My jokes were analysed by lawyers. I was not allowed to blog or videoblog or tweet about it because it could all be used against me in the suit (brought to pay my medical bills). I was forced to contain the entire experience. And in some other profound ways, the experience changed my life dramatically for the better. Among the thing’s I learned: I never wanted to be hurt again to take care of myself. I’ll share more of the lessons as The Law Project is unveiled.

I’m once again dealing with loss, wondering about the learning.

And if Ralston can climb with one arm, I can find a way to try to do it again with 8.5 fingers.

What loss did you create in your own life?

Did it teach you anything? How?

The Original Portlandia: My Vagina Is 8 Miles Wide

Friday, January 14th, 2011

“Maybe you’re just not enough for me?”

Sing it out girls. over and over.

The upcoming film Portlandia has tune called Dream of the 90s and its video has been making the rounds.

It reminds me of the earlier and even more heart and vaginal-tastic video by Storm Large.

While we gigged in San Francisco around the same time and performed at the Dyke March, I lost track of Storm when moved to Portland.

Thanks to @taradublin for reconnecting me to Storm’s work.

Storm, I’ll be in Portland this year. I’ve never felt so welcome.

(She’s apparently going to be in a new musical by Randy Newman. Soul baby.)

((tags:: art, sex, feminism, Portland, Storm, vagtastic)

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Hot F+ck You Sign Language Video

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

1. Man this chick is super cute.

2. I think that this is a mostly deaf audience and what could be better than having your tune/performance get them clapping along?

3. this song has been in my head since I first heard it a while ago. Good luck getting it out. Perma-groove.

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Heather Gold at Moo Jew with Zach Sherwin and Jena Friedman

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

((tags: #Christmas
#Chineserestaurant
#Jews
#comedians ))

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Great documentary film recommendations

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

If you like documentaries and wonder what some good recommendations would be here’s a great list.
I complied it form the suggestions made to pal Jesse Epstein, a wonderful documentary filmmaker in her own right (see the hilarious Wet Dreams and False Images) and founder of indie filmmaking network Shooting People who was looking for good introductory films for some students on Facebook. Here’s the list her friends suggested. I’m guessing many of these suggesters are documentary filmmakers too:

No Lies
David Holzman’s Diary
Dark Side of the Moon
Brother’s Keeper
American Movie
In A Dream
The Cove
Boys of Baraka
The Life and Times of Alan Ginsburg
(the 2nd DVD includes interviews w Johnny Depp and Patti Smith)
It Might Get Loud
Bueno Vista Social Club
Man on Wire
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Hoop Dreams
The Thin Blue Line
Super Size Me
Mad Hot Ballroom
Spellbound
Born Into Brotherls
Food INc
Dogtown and Z Boys
The Fog of War
Sicko
Salesman
Grey Gardens
Harlan County
Seventeen
Capturing the Friedmans
Both seasons of This American Life
Obstructions
Breaking the Waves -lars Van Trier
A Portrait of Idi Amin – Barbet Schroeder
Control Room
Nanook
Medium Cool
Roger and Me
Operation Filmmaker
Some Kind of Monster
Anvil
Short films by first time filmmakers:
The Foster Parent of Iron

The Mighty Quapaw

The Rest Haven

Aurelia – Mother , Teacher Survivor from South Africa

Jikeleza

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
and my personal favourite film of all time:
Paris Is Burning by Jennie Livingston

Anything by:
Barbara Koppel
Werner Herzog
Errol Morris
Maysles Brothers
Fred Wiseman

Suggestions: Michael Green, Nara Garber, Matthew Kohn, Rosemary Siciliano, Rebecca Richman Cohen, Kasia Kowalcyzk
Mary Kerr, Randi Cecchine, Beverly Seckinger, Adam Schartoff, Melisse Seleck, Chandler Griffin, Nadav Zohar

((tags: doc, documentaries, great documentary recommendations, films to watch, best docs, Jesse Epstein))

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The first time Gram didn’t recognize me

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

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Press: What a CT Xmas Needs: Jewish Comedians w Chinese Food

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Looking forward to returning to play Moo Jew this Dec 23rd in West Hartford CT with the super fun Jewy hip hop comic MC Mr. Napkins Zach Sherwin. Can’t wait to dig into my memories of Jewing up the Whiffenpoof’s appearance at the Greenwich Country Club.

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Downtown NY Artist Hannukah Joy

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

New York, NY

My #
We lit the 4th candle last night at Sandi Dubowski’s (http://tremblingbeforeg-d.com)
wonderful annual Hannukah bordello. He and Amichai Lau-Lavie (http://storahtelling.org) gave a wonderful performative blessing.

“the Maccabees were Jewish freedom fighters with anger management issues with their oppressive with their otherwise hot Hellenistic oppressors.”

((tags: Jewish, Hannukah, road trip, LGBT, Amichai Lau-Lavie, storahtelling, light, freedom, darkness, USA, Canada, border))

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