Category: comedy

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do Well

breaking up photo

Breaking Up: Or, Who’s My Emergency Contact Now?

So, you’ve broken up.

You’ve taken their number out of your phone so you don’t text in moments of weakness.

When you drop your cat off at the groomer’s and they ask for an emergency contact you say, “I guess if I don’t come back, you have to set the cat free.”

Best case scenario: you came together, you challenged each other to be your best, inspired each other, then evolved so much you grew apart and mutually decided to uncouple.

Worst case scenario: everything else.

Here are some tips to help you deal:

Mourn Your Plans

Mourn the plans you made together. It could be that annual trip to Batfest in Austin, TX, it could be your aunt’s wedding in Boston, it could just be the new Iron Man movie. Notice and release your disappointment in each thing you won’t be doing together. You’re creating a new reality map in your brain without that person in it.

Unhook

Disconnect electronically. This might be the hardest part, because we all want to be supercool adult people. That doesn’t mean you need to see when this dude is out to dinner with a girl whose haircut is very similar to your own. He doesn’t need to know when you’re out at karaoke singing the Stevie Nicks songs that he used to hear in the shower. You don’t have to delete them, but certainly turn their feed off for a couple of months while you get your head together. Even though it sometimes feels good to dwell on the object of your affection, scratching that itch will just delay your healing.

Cut off communication. One of the hardest parts of a breakup, especially of a long relationship, is that you find that the person you used to get comfort from is the last person you should speak to. Talk to friends. Chat to family. Reach out to your pastor. Don’t talk to each other. Part of your job right now is to get this person’s smell out of your nostrils, literally and figuratively. Once you stop hanging out with them, you’ll stop saying things like “but we’re so good together!”

Clean House

Ditch the Knick-knacks: If you have stuff of theirs that reminds you of them, and it bothers you, put it away. You can even throw it away, if you want. If something is in your house that makes you sad, get rid of it, unless he gave you a couch or something, in that case throw a blanket over it until it doesn’t make you feel sad anymore, because that’s a nice couch.

Celebrate

Celebrate your freedom. You are now living an autonomous lifestyle! If you want to listen to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” thirty times in a row, nobody’s there to tell you that you can’t. You can watch all the movies they didn’t want to watch, eat at restaurants they didn’t care for, and operate as the ruler of your own domain.

Do take care of yourself- even if all you want to do is wallow in your misery and drink Scotch, it’ll be better for your body and brain if you get up and get moving sometimes. Make some endorphins to flush out the sadness!

Be Selfish- Take time for yourself. Make plans with girlfriends but you want to stay home and watch So You Think You Can Dance? Do it. A recent breakup is one of a few Get Out Of Plans Free cards. Use as needed.

Heal

Remember that you will heal. That’s what we do, as humans. Your emotions are just chemicals your brain makes. As badly as you hurt, next week it will be less, and the next week, even less!

The cells in your body are constantly dying and and being replaced by new ones, and those cells didn’t even know that guy! Someday soon you’ll see him buying wine at Von’s and hardly want to spit on him at all. Until then, don’t spit on anyone!

How About Making Yourself Online Dateable?

Online dating is part of the modern single person’s landscape. Everyone’s doing it, and most of us are doing it wrong!

There are certainly good things about dating on OKCupid, Match.com and Tinder- if you’re new to an area, if you want to meet people out of your regular social circle, or if, in the case of eharmony.com, you want to meet divorced Christian dads in the suburbs- but these formats have their own particular do’s and dont’s.

Here’s a list of common mistakes the online bachelor can avoid (to not kill chances of a possible date):

  • A Woman in Your Profile Pic- When I see a dude on a dating site with his arm around a pretty lady, I don’t think “Hey, she’s really pretty, I’d better step up my game”, I think “well, what did he do to piss her off?”
  • A Blurred or Cropped Out Woman in Profile Pic – Hey, I feel for you guys. Unlike women, who celebrate every dinner, haircut, and outfit with a photo session, guys only get pictures taken when they’re on a date with someone or when they are on a bass boat. Please try and get a decent selfie, or ask a friend “Hey bro, can you do me a favor? I need a picture of myself.”
  • Abs Pictures- Sure, he stopped eating bread and he does five thousand crunches a day, but when’s the last time he read something longer than the list of ingredients on a protein shake? A tendency to post pictures of one’s torso sometimes speaks to a desire to show it to many people.
  • Generic First Message. There are real studies saying it doesn’t matter what your first message is, and the best method is to scattershot HEY HOW ARE YOU to a hundred women a week, but I have personally never responded to a HEY HOW ARE YOU message, and can’t imagine I would do so unless it was sent by Johnny Depp.
  • LONG Opening Message, mentioning EVERY interest and hobby I have and their thoughts about it. This starts to feel stalkery. Wait, how did you know I’m eating a bagel? Are you watching me right now?
  • Talking Solely About My Appearance: it doesn’t seem like there’s a desire to find out about my personality, right?
  • Pen Pals- Once we’ve established contact, and written a couple messages back and forth, ask me out. I’m here for men pals, not pen pals! Also, if you live five hundred miles away, don’t message me- this is not a sexy chat service and I’m not coming to visit you in Pig’s Snout, Arkansas. Ever. Unless you are Edward Scissorhands or Captain Jack Sparrow. Then, anything is possible.

In the interest of fairness, here is a list of men’s online dating complaints that women can learn from:

  • The LIST: Women have a long list of what they DON’T want in a guy. “No fakes, no players!” What, you want someone who’s not a drug addict AND who has a job? Picky, picky!
  • NO Profile: Women that do not have profile info. I know you might be a private person, but no information at all makes it hard to start a conversation. “So…I see you have eyes! I do, too!”
  • Over-Accentuating the Curves –-If a woman’s photo accentuates her body, one assumption is that she is not interested in a serious relationship, and another is that she might be a paid escort.
  • And lastly, Misrepresentation- when women in person are fatter/older/less attractive than their photo.

Again, I understand this complaint. Who among us has not overrated our own looks? When we are picking out our best pictures of ourselves, sometimes we don’t recognize that because the picture is ten years old, we are posting pics of someone else who we used to be. I once had a long correspondence with a man who had deep brown eyes and long, wild hair whom I called “sexy werewolf”, and when I met him, he was just a regular, non-sexy werewolf with one great photo.

Clearly, nobody has mastered the online dating experience.

The truth is that I sometimes meet guys online that I find interesting, but when they make one of these errors, I delete them. I think of these as “dealbreakers” and an indication of deeper problems, and maybe they are, but sometimes I’m just dealing with men who hadn’t spent any time dating online. These are actually the people you want to meet: men who seek out and enjoy serious relationships, and stay off the market while they’re in them. The guys who stay online for years and years, perfecting their online presence and their patter, only pausing to occasionally list what bands they’d most like to see at Coachella, are confirmed bachelors who would sooner kiss a beartrap than give a girl more than a month of their attention.

What I learned is that: the only thing that online dating really makes you good at is online dating- especially in the case of free sites, whose goal is not to pair compatible couples up, it’s to keep everyone in the mix, looking at their ads and clicking, and generating revenue, so, the only real method to online dating is to relax, honestly be yourself, and accept some mistakes in the process of meeting real people!

– See more at: http://www.lovetv.co/how-about-making-yourself-online-datable/2/#sthash.ArBrhccH.dpuf

Why Are All My Comedy Heroes Scumbags?

 This article is based on my own opinions and extrapolations from nine years performing in comedy, and many years before that of being a woman.  If it annoys you or makes you angry, I’m not surprised, but nor do I really care.

When Woody Allen married a child he helped raise, it threw us for a loop.  Some people stopped watching his films, and many of us couldn’t enjoy them without any thought of his personal life.

Nothing prepared us for the Cosby allegations, spurred on by the comments of Hannibal Burress. Yet- the stories had been circulating for years.  There couldn’t have been a more shocking division of the private and the public versions of one man.

And now we have the Louis CK story.  Like Cosby, stories about Louis had been around: in 2009, I heard the account of two female comics being forced to watch him masturbate at the Aspen comedy festival.  They were advised it was in their best interest to keep quiet, but now, it no longer sounds like a one-time poor occurrence.  And let’s be clear.  It’s no Cosby case.  It’s not serial rape.  But nor is it a kink.  He’s not getting outed for having a fun little fetish.  It’s for subjecting women to his cock who didn’t want to see it.  Why do men whose work we enjoy and respect keep letting us down?

There are a couple of forces at work here.

One is these men think women are garbage, and that women comics are even worse than that.  Cosby apologists let us know that women were liars who wanted money and all the kind of great attention you get from being a rape victim, the same happened to #yesallwomen.  So, that’s part one.

Louis CK defenders are stating that the only way women comics get ahead is by having sex with people in power.

 A male comic friend of mine let me know that if a male comic asked me to go on tour, I should assume it’s because he wanted to have sex with me, because otherwise he’d just tour with a dude, like normal.

It’s irresponsible to say all comics have mental issues or depression or emotional problems or are full-grown man-children.  However, I have friends who never dated before they did comedy, and for whom road ass is part of the payment of road work.  So, that’s part two.

If I stopped speaking with every comic who had been unfaithful to his girlfriend or wife, who’d sent unasked-for dick pics, who’d been predatory to new women comics, who’d felt entitled to sex with their female friends in comedy, who’d shit on their comedian ex onstage, who’d punched their wife, who’d tried to have sex with an unconscious friend on their couch, who’d laughed with their friends about passing women comics around like jizzrags, who’d judged women for sleeping with male comics but had never judged male comics, who’d had different women in every town before Facebook made the world transparent, I would have about five friends.

Part three is that when people get more powerful, that does not lead to being a better person.  You feel protected.  You have representation, legal and otherwise.  Why would bad behavior improve?

So, I’m sorry.  There may be other scandals involving your heroes.  They are happening because women are less-than and famous men are more-than.  I don’t know what else to tell you.  Hopefully, this gets better.  It’s not going to change without women getting angry, but guess what?  I am angry.  Hey, thanks for reading!

The West Coast Gets a Comedy SURPRISE!

promotional poster for surprise comedy tour virginia jones robert buscemi sofiya alexandra by josh abraham

SURPRISE! It’s a pop up show that changes locations and has a secret line up-
“Priceless Impromptu Moments”- LA Weekly


LA comics Robert Buscemi, Sofiya Alexandra and Virginia Jones are touring the West Coast with SURPRISE, LA’s finest mystery lineup, pop-up comedy show, starting in Santa Barbara, Humboldt, San Francisco, Eugene, Portland, and Vancouver, WA!

The Show:
http://www.welikela.com/best-free-comedy-shows-los-angeles/

Many thanks to the amazing Josh Abraham for the poster!

Put Your Hands Together!

Put Your Hands Together with Cameron Esposito and Virginia Jones    I had a great time on the legendary Put Your Hands Together show with Cam Esposito and Rhea Butcher, here’s the link for the podcast download and you can pretend you were there!

Punchline Punchout!

Fantastically funny ladies Amber Preston and Andy Erikson asked me to compete for BLOOD in their comedy show this week- I bested my very funny friend Sean Jordan in the category of Topical Jokes, which will never be useful again.  I submit them here in a last ditch attempt to make my mother proud.

Roseanne Barr revealed she is losing her eyesight, so her next husband might be worse-looking than Tom Arnold.  Basic dudes are lining up at her house as we speak.

The first “smart” baby onesie has been invented, and it detects periods of baby sleep and wakefulness and also the percentage of weight that is made of poop.

Abercrombie and Fitch is eliminating its shirtless models, and are thereby losing the last segment of the population that gave a shit about Abercrombie and Fitch, which is gay men who want to shop at a store that sounds like it’s run by Ebenezer Scrooge’s best friends.

Three more women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault, bringing the number to 39, which is 9 more than most americans have had consensual sex with.

Cadbury chocolate has released a new candy bar with seven different fillings, including fruit, caramel, nuts, and insulin.

I don’t know why anyone is surprised that teenagers are bruising their faces trying to suck their lips into Snapple bottles.  They’re idiots, and at least this takes a few minutes away from sending each other pictures of their genitals on snapchat.

There are questions about the timing of Bruce Jenner’s gender transition, but if you think about it, it’s perfect.  he’s well into retirement age and will no longer have to deal with wage inequity.

43 dinosaur eggs have been discovered in a construction site in Guandong, China, but the eggs have still not been buried long enough for Chinese people to eat.

Iceman from the X-men has been revealed to be gay, and all the other X-men just really like the feel of snugly tailored leather suits.

Apple’s new Apple Watch has been released and is changing lives, as everyone stops staring slackjawed at their phone and starts staring slackjawed at their wrist watches.

Unfortunately, There are now only 5 white rhinos left on earth, and only one of them is male.  In good news, that male rhino’s Tinder is blowing up.

The country of Greece, after years of economic instability, has determined it will default on its loans from the EU, using the same method of debt resolution as your drunk dad who doesn’t answer the phone anymore.

Today, 2000 people gathered in DC to protest gay marriage. they should just establish a tiny city in Montana called No Fagistan and be done with it.  Nobody gives a shit about them .

Swedish scientists report that the genome for the wooly mammoth has been mapped, leading to conversations about whether we should clone one, except for in a post- global warming environment, where the fuck would he live?  We can’t even keep our rhinos alive, you guys.

A new poll of  Millenials shows that they either want Jared Leto’s joker to die in a fire or that picture of a baby alligator in a raincoat will change their lives forever.

First post for LOVE TV

Well, the nice people at LoveTV are letting me write articles for them about love, sex, and dating, and then they did me the favor of decorating my article with stock photos, here of good-looking Asian models.  It’s called How To Date Today: A Guide For Every Generation.

Young Couple Kissing In Restaurant

“I went on a nice date with a man last week.  We spoke for hours, and I think we really liked each other.”

 “That’s great, Mom.”

“Shouldn’t I cancel the other two dates, because I like the first man?”

“No, mother, you can’t tell anything from a first date.  Meet the other guys and see what happens.”

My mom called a couple days later to say she hadn’t heard from that first guy that she liked, even though she really thought she would, and why would he spend so much time with her if he wasn’t interested in seeing her again?  That’s when I realized the real sadness of millennial style dating- explaining to your mom that she’s not allowed to develop feelings for people right away.  The first step of online dating is not setting up your profile, but building a turtle shell of indifference around your heart. 

The next week, my sister told me “That guy finally called Mom.  He’s pulled up outside her house.  I am totally spying on our mom.   Oh my god he brought flowers.  Oh my god she’s walking him into the house.”

 I assured her that it was just to put the flowers in water, and that she shouldn’t worry.  “Baby boomers don’t jump into the sack like twenty year olds with no body hair.  There’s only so much they can affect.  I think.”   But honestly, I don’t know for sure.