These are the hottest hack trends happening in LA comedy right now! Get on the hack comedy train, and you’ll get into all the hot shows and festivals!
Extremely Detailed Solipsism
Pretending To Be Mad About Small Things
ShockJock (90’s Nostalgia)
Fat Guys, Shirts Off
If I Yell It, It’s A Punchline
I Pooped In Public, A Closer
White People Interpreting Rap Lyrics
Homeless People Are Weird
That Time I Ate Too Much Pot
Hillbilly Philosopher (Nihilism in a Trucker Cap)
When you submit your comedy album to Pandora, like I did with my comedy album, Gothic American, they sort your tracks into little pre-written buckets for their algorithm- and the description of the tracks from my album, Gothic American, make a nice little poem about my comedy:
Female Experiences
An Amused Delivery
A Deadpan Delivery
A Sarcastic Delivery
A Self-Deprecating Delivery
Surprising Misdirects
Jokes About The Entertainment Industry
Humorously Dim-Witted Logic
A Wide Variety of Subject Matter
Liberal Political Leanings
Subject Explorations
Anecdotes
The glorious Nina Storm had me do comedy on her all-woman variety show, LA Woman!
I’ve been in a couple of LA earthquakes, and usually it feels like a big truck is driving past the building where I am. It rumbles and moves on. Then, my faraway friends and family start texting to see if I am still alive. I smile at their naive, not-earthquake-having ways.
The only earthquake that left a real impression on me was one that happened a couple of years ago, at a comedy show in a dress shop that my friend Brandie booked me on. Handsome nerd actor James Urbaniak was attending with his girlfriend. During another comic’s set, I felt the room moving and watched pictures swing on the walls and thought: Wow, I’m gonna die in the same room as James Urbaniak. But nobody died, and we had great earthquake chitchat and went home. Once we have an earthquake it becomes THE small talk for the next 24 hours, outstripping weather, traffic, and who got onto a Harold team on their first try.
The first big earthquake this week happened on the 4th of July, because God hates America, or at least, California.
I slept through it. I was awoken by many texts of friends asking did I feel it, and then talking about the biggest earthquake they had survived. I felt so left out. I wanted to feel the earthquake. It was like I hadn’t been invited to a cool event, just because I was sleeping in on a holiday. I couldn’t write a funny earthquake tweet, I couldn’t do anything.
At the fourth of July party, my friend Rick commented that he didn’t even know what to do during an earthquake, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t cuss and look for his pants. Everyone laughed. I felt so alone.
Got out of that party and went home. Couldn’t sleep, worried about not being in the cool earthquake club. At 3AM, my bed shook and I realized I was experiencing an aftershock. I was so happy, I stayed up until 5AM worried that I was going to die.
The next night, I was eating dinner when the earthquake started. I walked outside to check on my car, walking 25 feet on tarmac that was shifting in the most unpleasant way. It was all the bad things about being on a boat, no drinks or swimsuits but nausea and choppy water. I asked the dog why he didn’t warn me. He indicated that he still wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. He may have missed that day of dog school. It lasted maybe 90 seconds but it felt like a whole episode of BBC’s Sherlock. My car was ok. Rick tweeted that he had been caught by the earthquake without pants on. I think that Rick taking off his pants might be where earthquakes come from, so please, Rick, if you’re reading- keep your pants on for the next little bit, OK?
What do I look and sound like, at Flappers? I’m Virginia Jones, I was honored to feature for the amazing Jackie Kashian. This clip is from Flappers comedy club in beautiful Burbank, California.
If you notice anyone else who looks and sounds like me, let me know so I can fight them.
Or, Places Where Men Will Hit On You On The Internet
If necessity is the mother of invention, men are the inventors of using non-dating sites to meet women. It’s been happening since the first terminal user logged into a message board to ask A/S/L (age/sex/location, young people).
You can get hit on from social platforms because strange men think the tiny photo of you is cute, or, let’s face it, they just get it in their head that you’re a woman at all. For men, the world is your Tinder, just just gotta learn how to swipe!
Every couple of days, a dude will direct message me and say “Hi” or “Hello.” Has this ever led to sex, in the history of the world? I don’t know. I don’t think so.
I made a promotional page for myself (check it out, readers!) and got a creepy message asking that I tell the stranger on the other end “all about myself,” which was funny because that is literally what the page is. I ignored it for a few days, and then Facebook started nudging me to “keep my response rate up” by answering all queries to the page within two days. Finally, I wrote, “Hi! I’m Jack, Virginia’s manager. Thank you for your interest in her career! This page posts shows, podcasts, and other promotional info!” No response.
As creepy Facebook friends abate, Insta creeps abound! It took me a long time to find the little paper airplane that was my message inbox, but when I did I was rewarded with compliments from many randos, followed by some furious insults when I didn’t respond to those same randos.
A foreign friend was looking for cheap places to stay in the states, and strangers on Couchsurfing kept offering her “fun weekends”. I explained to her that these men thought she was maybe going to exchange sex for a place to sleep. She said, “But no women have offered me a space.”
She finally messaged back and forth with a man who didn’t overtly proposition her, but the day before her trip he said that he gave great massages, and ultimately she had to pay for an airbnb.
I was playing with a stranger, and asked where did I live. I told him it doesn’t matter where I live, I’m not looking to meet people on Words with Friends. I’m here to play some Scrabble. He ended the game, and I changed my profile picture to a friendly-looking dog. I still love Scrabble.
My sister was job hunting, and a man in her field sent her a message saying that they should meet for coffee and discuss her goals. She thought this sounded great and they made a plan. The day before their appointment, he offered to take her to dinner instead, and named an expensive restaurant in New York. She said she’d rather have coffee, to which he offered an introduction to an executive in her field. She looked up his Facebook profile and responded that perhaps he’d like to bring his wife to the dinner, and used her name. See? Facebook is still good for something.
My friend Lizzie told me, “On my way to work every day, I passed a massage parlor that seemed to be open all hours and looked suspect. I was very naive, and thought I would post a question about the business on Yelp. Did men really get full service at these places? Men told me. Boy oh boy did they want to tell me all about it. They wanted to know if I’d like to meet and discuss it. That was ten years ago. I still sometimes get messages about it.”
I was selling some used Adidas Gazelles on Ebay, they were worn but in good shape. Some messages about shipping and auction dates, and then I got one about the wear of the shoes and what I had used them for. The writer asked if I was a cheerleader, and if I ever wore the shoes without socks, if I had ever gotten the liners sweaty, if I could send them pictures of me in the shoes. I wrote back and said sorry, I’m just a regular lady and didn’t need to talk to foot fetishists too much, buy the shoes or don’t. That person never bid on them, and they sold to a kid in Kansas.
If you’re interested in dating your rideshare driver, the best thing to do is to go home and write it in a notebook and bury that notebook in the woods. Don’t turn in a fake lost item report and ask them out. That’s creepy and it’s a disturbingly popular go-to. Just go out and meet people!
My friend Amy told me she liked stalking friend’s burgeoning relationships on Venmo. If people are constantly paying each other for beers and pizza, she knew that they were probably dating. Sure, you CAN change the settings to private, but few people bother. However, she didn’t reckon that some people would follow it so closely that they would notice when her recent ex was buying a new girl pizza, and that she started getting dm’s from men she knew slightly asking if she was ok, and if she’d like to meet and talk- over pizza.
Extra creepy to get a DM on Nextdoor because I know they live near me!
Do all men do this? Of course not. But in an app-driven world, some people are ALWAYS looking for a special connection along with their food delivery, movie ticket purchase or money exchange!
http://voyagela.com/interview/check-out-virginia-jones
Today we’d like to introduce you to Virginia Jones.
Virginia, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I used to do drawing and writing and dance, and now I do comedy, and also all the other things. It was a relief to me to realize that these things are not in conflict-they’re all part of the same thing, being an artist. I am also fantastically up my own butt!
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am a standup comedian and comedy writer type person. It started by accident, like it was a bucket list “I’ve always wanted to do comedy” and then that became my whole life.
I hope people come away from my act with some kind of new idea or a recognition of a thing they hadn’t named. Comedy should communicate something or else why bother- I’ve seen people onstage that can generate laughter, but it’s like a trick? People walk out of the room exactly the same as they walked in, except full of nachos. I am the kind of pretentious little shit that wants comedy to mean something.
I think my jokes are mostly about unexamined social inconsistencies, and also about animals.
Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
I think the problems of an artist today are the same as they ever were- trying to be you the best you can while the industry wants the same five people, over and over again. I think it’s a great time to be a female artist, moving from being ignored to actively reviled. That’s cool!
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I have a record called Gothic American. I’d love it if you picked it up on Itunes, or, failing that, listened on Spotify or Pandora or Snapchat or Instagram or scanned a sticker from a banana peel that took you to it on Youtube or something. Is that something you can do? I have a website with dates and funny stuff on it. I like it when people show up to stuff. I’m very funny, I promise. I have a twitter account, but I’m bad at it.
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