One Funny Lady » comedy

Appearing on DNTO

deborah — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:01:19 +0000

Got a great gig on DNTO for CBC RADIO.February 29th 2012. Telling my cat with a can on its head story,. The premise of the show are true stories about a particular topic. Should be great fun. EVENT sold out. Same night have to speak to The Second City Theatre students about surviving the comedy business. Yes I am now taking my place as a comedy crone.

LIVE COMIC WALKING.

deborah — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:18:30 +0000

Most people can go their entire lives and not feel the need to tour a prison, but I’m writing a movie about prison guards.
Female prison guards, to be precise. I got interested in female guards because I am in comedy. In the world of comedy, men outnumber women about ten to one and I was interested to see how women coped in another primarily male-dominated system. As I started doing research, I quickly found not only that there’s a high percentage of females working in corrections, but that a good deal of them guard men. We all guard men in one way or another, especially after a few cocktails, but I was surprised. After countless interviews, I realized I needed to visit an institution if I was going to be able to reflect the culture.
I thought about going into Quinte Detention Centre, but there would’ve been too many of my relatives in there wanting me to bring them smokes. So I booked a tour in Millhaven, which is very simple, really. Like five degrees of separation kind of simple. I must admit, I had no idea what to expect. There wasn’t a brochure. No pictures. In my imagination, I thought it would likely be worse than a Kimmett family reunion, but not as bad as when my hometown lost a hockey game.
Yes, I am joking. I use humour to deflect fear. The more freaked out I am, the more jokes I make, then three days later, I feel my real feelings and freak out. So the day I went in to The Clink, I was hilarious, cracking jokes about what I should wear. Sporting a rack like I do, I don’t want to set anybody off, having the boys overcome by an avalanche of lust. (Yes, they were bad jokes.)
In the end, I opted for a loose sweater and jeans with a gel bra (because the underwire one could be used as a shiv). And then, to top it off, I put on four pairs of underwear, which I know logically wouldn’t have saved me, but it might have slowed things down while the big-necked officers came to save me.
As I drove up the driveway, the first thing I saw was a sign that said “Trespassers will be prosecuted and can spend up to five years in jail.” This is when I hoped they had received my request for the tour. When
55 LIve COMIC WALKInG: My TOur OF A FeDerAL PrISOn
LIve COMIC WALKInG: My TOur OF A FeDerAL PrISOn 56
I got to reception, I was greeted by my tour guide — a former female guard. She didn’t have a thick neck. In fact she was kind of, well … short. And very pretty. So I said, “Boy, you’re short,” which went over as well as you can imagine. And that was just the beginning of the stupid things I did and said that afternoon.
There are so many dos and don’ts when touring a maximum-security facility. Don’t wave at the guys with the guns in the tower. It makes them nervous. At security, don’t ask if they can check your IUD while they’re doing that body search. Don’t pet the drug dog. Just smile and let him sniff your crotch. Don’t be worried that he’ll bite you. He’s a drug dog, so he’s probably getting off on the smell of your J’Adore cologne. In fact, don’t wear J’Adore cologne to a correctional institution, because it won’t be just the dog sniffing you.
Don’t make small talk with the guys in jeans and T-shirts. They are inmates. They don’t wear carrot suits in federal. Yes, I said “carrot suits.” I know the lingo. And don’t say “carrot suits.” You sound like an idiot. When you see inmates wearing jeans that hang low like plumber’s butt, don’t say, “For God’s sake, pull your drawers up and get a belt,” because cons can’t have belts. And don’t call them cons. They might just be murderers or bank robbers, not con artists. And speaking of art, when you see ink drawings of Medusa all over a guy’s arm, don’t say, “Hey, love your ‘too. What gang are you from?” And don’t ask, “Are you holding?” Not even as a joke, because some chicks might suitcase drugs up their woohoo, but you’re not that kind of gal. Besides, you’re old enough to be their mother. Or grandmother. The inmates at Millhaven are younger than you’d expect. A lot younger.
When you see the cells, which are painted pale pink, blue, and green, don’t say, “Who the hell picked out these paint colours? Did Martha Stewart get loose in here and make them paint it the colours of Whoville?”
When I go anywhere, I develop an accent. Two days south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and I’m saying “Y’all want some grits, y’all?” Within sixty minutes of being in Millhaven, I was developing a swagger and
spouting lines like “Guard or cons, we’re all doing time. The only difference is I get to go home at night.”
And then I started comparing my job as a humourist to theirs. “Oh, you were part of a hostage-taking? That’s nothing. I worked with Mike Bullard.”
Just because I “died” on Mike’s show, it’s not the same thing. That metaphor won’t fly, because being a woman in corrections is front-line feminism. Some psychologists claim women are a calming influence on men. The concept is that a tough guy sees a woman, he’ll just be struck peaceful. He’ll fall into some estrogen-induced form of narcolepsy. (And if she has PMS, he’ll voluntarily put himself in solitary confinement.) I don’t know how it works. I do know that anyone in a uniform is seen as an authority figure. And authority is what everybody in there is buck- ing against. So, everybody has to find a unique way to survive. To be seen as human or not to be seen at all. It’s a delicate balance for women. And the ladies I met were tough, funny, and very serious about doing their jobs well. But here’s the thing: Working in corrections, whether female or male, is not an easy job. It makes that gig I did for the Buffalo Tow Truck Operators look like a picnic.
After my hour-and-a-half tour, I was released. As the gates opened, I yelled, “Live comic walking!” and everybody thought I was a riot. But three days later, the jokes stopped. I heard on the news that a guard had shot one inmate for trying to kill another. I finally got that I don’t have a clue how you walk off a day like that. I don’t know how impending violence plays on a psyche day after day, year after year, because I am not a guard. I am a comic who gets to go home at night. And hopefully, never go back in. — excerpt from new bookL http://kimmett.ca/products/the-reviews-for-new-book-that-which-doesnt-kill-you/

STATUS UPDATE

deborah — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:53:05 +0000

You know its going to be a bad day, when the Dali Lama Unfriends you.

Irish Peasant Legs and Gas Leaking Everywhere

deborah — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:16:55 +0000

Photo by Flickr User lululemon athletica

Have to say after a busy spring of corporate speaking I’m glad summer is here. Cold drinks, family reunions and caftans. No, I haven’t worn a pair of shorts in years. I’ve never felt the need to push my bottom into a pair because, from the rear, it looks like two puppies struggling to get out. From that angle, it looks like my cheeks are chewing bubble gum. I’m not putting myself down. I’m very grateful for the legs I have. They are decent, stocky, Irish peasant legs, meant to carry rocks up a…..a famine hill. I’m fine with that. This year, I lost a lot of weight — 175 pounds. Actually, 172 were my ex-husband, but still, those three pounds were brutal. But as thin as I might get, I’ve finally accepted that my legs will never grow longer.

The reason I don’t care much for shorts is not because of the size of my legs, but the colour. There is none. I don’t tan up. Like paint chips, there is white and there is French white and linen white. But mine are white white. I have no pigment. I sit by one of those SAD lights and I may not be depressed anymore but I get sunstroke.

Refusing to wear shorts has held me back in life. I could never be a nudist. Other nudists would go snow blind. Nor, could I ever be a postal worker. I think dogs take one look at those Bermuda shorts and immediately want to bite them. Now cops are forced to wear shorts. I mean, was it not bad enough they put them on bikes? How humiliating it will be for them, wearing Bermuda shorts and cycling like little demons, chasing bad guys driving souped-up, vibrating cars. They’ll look like the Wicked Witch of the West, warning, “I’ll get you, my little drug dealer. You and your little pit bull, too.”

The shorts ban started way back in my childhood. As a teenager, I was the one at the beach always pretending I’d forgotten my bathing suit. “I’ll just wear my Levis.” And boy, those suckers get heavy when they’re wet. It’s a wonder I wasn’t found at the bottom of the quarry. One time, I wore pantyhose under my bathing suit, and when people came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re wearing panty hose,” I did what any self-respecting person would do. I denied it. “Uh, excuse me, I can’t help that my legs get darker at the top. And these webbed toes? Well, duck feet run in the family.”

And bad taste in shorts did run in the family. Thinking of some of the relatives who wore shorts gives me bad dreams.

I still have nightmares about Cousin Garney bending over trying to start an outboard motor, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, gas leaking everywhere . . . and not from the motor. He used to stand there wearing black socks and penny loafers. He would be decked out in his short shorts (the kind with no net pouch) or outright commando, if you get my drift.

I can be walking along a street in the dead of winter and suddenly get a flashback of Grandma Mary wearing her pink hot pants and blue pantyhose with white shoes. To church. She’d go up the aisle every Sunday flirting with the men who took up the collection. She always insisted on traveling to the beach in the same getup. For those road trips, she’d also sport her massive sunglasses and jam cotton balls in the side in case rays of sunshine tried to sneak in. In those days, there was no air conditioner in the car, and she would never let me roll down the window because she was afraid she might gulp wind. Apparently, if you gulp wind, you could blow up! That, and she didn’t want to get dirt in her hair. Not her hair, her wig. She had no real hair of her own. She had a closet full of wig heads. If she ever sent you in there to get something, it always seemed they were talking to you.

I don’t want to inflict that visual on the younger generation. So I sit here in my Mrs. Roper caftan that I got at S&R’s closing sale. I’m grooving to the sounds of Edgar Winter. For some reason, I feel a kinship to the man. And yes, I may be broke but it’s summertime and the long and short of it is this: If I’m not good to myself, who will be? As it says in the books, you need to put your own oxygen mask on first.

Unless you’re with my cousin Garney, who’s a smoker. Then that would be cruel. (FROM NEWLY RELEASED THAT WHICH DOESN”T KILL YOU…get yours under SHOP

Ways to Survive Zombies and Adult Kids coming Home

deborah — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:16:00 +0000

Zombies Coming Home - Photo by Flickr User Eric.Parker

You shouldn’t say you miss your grown-up kids because within minutes of speaking such a sentiment the gods will bring them home on the Coach Canada bus.

A few weeks ago I had just finished saying how nicely my son had turned out. How he was quite the lovely young man, how he’s grown up and stopped visiting friends in his boxer shorts, how he’s stopped scratching body parts at the dinner table, how he’s stopped asking his girl friend to pull his finger. I was saying how good he is with money and how he can make soup. A man that can make soup is a good man in this day and age. But then he came back home on the same weekend he had decided to quit smoking. Now I do want him to quit, believe me. I wish he hadn’t started. But he was trying to quit in my home, on an island, without the patch, without the gum, without bringing me a three-day supply of Atavan. He tried this last Xmas and well there was no fa la la la that time either.

For the first day or two he slept and ate and said it was good to be able to breathe. The kid is apparently addicted to oxygen. And then there was the deep breathing phase, and the breathing turned to yoga – strange bird poses in the middle of living room. A leg would unexpectedly swing behind him. He walked in the woods happy like Cinderella. I expected to see little blue birds buzzing around his head. And then he started lifting weights. Me. Without any warning he’d lift me up and try to bench press me screaming in a Scottish accent, “How many stone are ye woman?”

As the nicotine leached out of his system the emotional outbursts started. Think of the terrible twos with a terrible two that could bench press you. He was like someone who had Tourettes where he just started swearing and freaking out for no reason. ‘No. I don’t want to do the dishes.’ ‘No I don’t want to go to bed. No. No. No. But not as cute as a two-year old you could distract… or slip a Gravol into his sippy cup.

Then the cranky stage got replaced by the ridiculous question phase. The following exchange is a sample:

“Mom, Mom. Mom. Hey mom. Was I a bastard? “

“No Son. You certainly were not a bastard.”

“But you and Dad had to get married. “

We didn’t have to get married. We chose to get married.”

“Because you were having a baby. “

“No we had you and then got married. Remember I told you I had to breast feed you in my wedding gown?”

“I see. So, I was born out of wedlock?”
“Well technically, yes.”

“So am I a technical bastard!!”

“What, are you from the fifties kid? You’re not a bastard. How many times do I have to tell you?”

The whole night was full of tangential bursts and non-sequiturs.

“Mom, tell me honestly. Do you think the Ninja Turtles was a better TV show than Power Rangers?”

“I don’t know. They were both better than that flipping Little Mermaid we watched a million times. Where was that girl’s mother? I will tell you where. Dead.”

An hour went by.

“If you were forced to sleep with Sailor Moon or Pink Power Ranger who would you pick?”

That’s easy it would definitely be the Pink Power Ranger. Sailor Moon is under-age.

“ Do you think Polly Pocket or My Little Pony was the worst toy ever?”

“Pogs were the worst toy ever with Crazy Bones coming in a close second.”

I made some supper and he ate half a side of beef, which I served on purpose. I thought all that red meat would put him into a drugged out coma, but all that blood seemed to just wake him up.

“How would you survive a Zombie attack? Would you shoot them with a gun? Or stab them with a knife?”

Let me say, I don’t believe in Zombies. They are right up there with aliens as far as I am concerned. They better not come to my house in the middle of the night dripping their alien goo all over my clean floor. As for sticking a probe up my arse, well that just makes me cranky thinking about it. I don’t think you should give aliens or ghosts or Zombies any sort of encouragement. Because I am sure it’s like the law of attraction. If you start believing in them they start believing in you and before you know it you’re on Connell Four at Hotel Dieu because every time you see a meat thermometer you burst into tears.

By the way, the reason I knew about the Zombie thing is from Facebook. In fact when I YOUTUBED the “How to survive a zombie attack” there are many handy tips. And it has over a hundred thousand hits. While Jane Jacobs’ thoughts on urban sprawl and how we can survive as a human race has only 688 hits. Go figure.

In honour of surviving the family relationship I played along with the Zombie thing.

“I’d kill the Zombie with a knife because I don’t believe in guns.”

“That wouldn’t work mom. Zombies have strong lower arm strength and would take it out of your hand and you’d be dead.”

“Why did you give me the knife option?”

“Calm down, Mom. Calm down. I was testing you. I need to assess your chance of survival.”

See this is the thing about my son, he likes to have a plan. He always got up and needed to know the schedule. He always wanted rules, which I wasn’t great at. I remember one day after I had been out for the night, the army called my house. The woman from the recruit office asked for him.
“Is master Brendan there?”

“No. He’s at school.”

“Well, he called last night about joining the army.”

“He’s in grade six.”

When I asked him about why he wanted to be enlisted said he needed discipline and his father and my methods were too willy-nilly for his standards.

So I knew if we were going to get any rest we needed to get the Zombie plan in place.

“All right. I’d splash them with water then like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

See, I am an improviser. I was thinking outside the box but it just made him very hostile.

“If you’re not going to be serious about this, we’re not going to play.” By this point he was trying to light the pencil in the toaster.

“Play? This is supposed to be fun?”

“ No I mean it Mom. Smarten up. Or, I’m not even going to talk to you.”

“Really? You promise?”

I excused myself and put myself to bed before I did some serious damage. As I was drifting off to sleep I heard a voice drifting up from the TV room.

“If you don’t shut your mouth I am going to stick a cigarette up your butt.”

No, it was not an alien from another planet. It was the shrill sound of my daughter screaming at her Zombie-loving brother.

As they hissed back and forth “Screw you. No, screw you.” I thought wow it’s great to have the tittle tattle of big people in the house.

The next day he bought the patch and I Googled Jane Jacobs, making her hits on YouTube 689.

As for the boy, to date he has kept the Export A’s and Zombies at bay! (THIS IS ONE ESSAY from THAT WHICH DOESN’t KILL YOU–GET YOUR COPY TODAY!! UNDER SHOP