Writer & Columnist • Santa Barbara, CA
Listen, I love me some vulgarity — and it ain’t tough to find. Streaming services are flooded with hilarious-if-raunchy comedy specials.
But I have mad respect for comedians who slay — who, in fact, leave entire theaters full of adults wiping laugh-tears from their cheeks — without ever dipping into dirty.
Clean comedy is harder. And honestly, that’s why Tig Notaro does it.
All I ever really wanted to do was to make people laugh: Strangers in the PTA meeting at my son’s new school. Colleagues in a supposed-to-be-serious work meeting. The poor lady doing my mammogram. I especially love it when readers tell me they snorted so abruptly at the local café while reading this column that latte foam spewed from their nose. Propriety be damned, I sincerely believe it’s always the right time for humor.
Except … maybe … right now?
Lately, in the face of political, social, and environmental crises, my life’s goal feels sort of futile. And worse than futile, it feels indulgent. Who wants to giggle and guffaw when every day’s news is more sobering than the last and the Amazon is burning, you guys? What could possibly be the value in wisecracking and wit slinging when we could be (should be!) phoning our senators, marching in the streets, shoveling money to sane candidates, maintaining a consistent “self-care” wine buzz and educating the shizz out of the next generation so they don’t wind up screwed and humorless like us?
I spoke recently with comedian Katie Goodman, who brings her Broad Comedy show to the Planned Parenthood Central Coast Action Fund’s Politics, Sex & Cocktails fundraiser on Saturday. Katie’s troupe of five feminist funnygals travels the country performing benefits for orgs like PP and the ACLU. They dress up in breast costumes while singing “Boobs Look Funny When You’re Having Sex,” don Russian accents for a bit called “Pee Tape Prostitutes,” and take Republican lawmakers to task with the country ballad “Get Out of My Vagina.”
You find the wildest stuff at Whole Foods. Goji berry juice. Ancient Egyptian Kamut flakes. A dried “sea veggie” called agar agar. But the most intriguing thing I’ve ever had there was a frank and funny discussion about feminism with my friend Kimmie Dee.
A stand-up comedian, Kimmie is opening for outrageous comic Doug Stanhope on March 5 at Velvet Jones. We bumped into each other in the produce section, and she told me about the show:
“I’m gonna do it,” she said, glancing nervously at the female shoppers plucking perfect pomegranates from the bins behind us. “I’m gonna throw women under the bus.”
The phrase left me immediately, mischievously, exhilarated. There’s something about standing in a market full of shockingly conscientious goods that makes me want to be bad — and every woman knows that sedition to the sisterhood is bad bad bad. Women’s rights have come a long way, but have we yet earned the right to rag on other women?
