January 14, 2008

TRASH CATS! TRASH CATS!

Trashcats

I subscribe to weekly e-mail chain that lists some of the most bizarre events throughout New York.

This week, a particularly awesome ongoing event caught my eye:

Did you know you could make art out of dead animals? I am going to show you how to collect dead animals from the garbage in Chinatown to make your own personal taxidermy. This is the first NYC Chinatown Garbage Taxidermy Tour.  You will learn how to dig through the garbage for dead animals. You can make art out of these animals. I've found everything from sharks to frogs to plain old unidentifiable crap. Sometimes I find nothing interesting, but that is what makes it fun. You never know. RSVP is appreciated but not required.

So...a free event (held "rain or shine") where you dig through trash to preserve DEAD SHARKS?  This is totally the javelin event equivalent of The Hobo Olympics, and, uh...yeah, I'm game.

E-mail me if you want to go on a GARBAGE HUNT FOR ROADKILL!

[Chinatown Garbage Tour]

Jan 14, 2008 12:53:34 PM | Pushin' The Limits

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Im Not "Ur Gay," Fillin Ur Stereotypez [This was originally posted at Gay Men's Social Crisis] As a "comedian" (which, I realize, is as gross as it sounds on paper as it does verbally), I have very specific taste when devoting my patronage to a comedian or - better yet - "distant protege." To me, figures like David Cross, Michael Showalter, Dave Hill, and Patton Oswalt are the ones to watch: experimental, progressive mastheads of the alternative-comedy scene whose respective abilities to play with the medium has allowed for slow-to-build sea changes in domestic humor at large (see Flight of the Conchords, Adult Swim, and The Sarah Silverman Show). And yet, poor taste prevails. Nevertheless, despite the continued presence of talentless blowhards like Carlos Mencia, Dane Cook, and anybody associated with Last Comic Standing (Ralphie May is totes fat, LOL!), there remains a prominent gap between the alternative and the mainstream into which more offbeat comedians fit. And more often than not, these performers have the ability to still attract a wide audience which can, in fact, lead to a special on premium cable (which is nothing to scoff at, either). Whether you find them funny or not, you are very likely to recognize names like Jeffrey Ross (snarky humor), Lisa Lampanelli (bawdy humor), and Paula Poundstone (cat humor). When it comes to gay comics or "gay comedy," I usually have to turn away. Much like material based on race or religion, "gay humor" is - in my opinion - boring and cheap. (You are a man who dates men, and sometimes the dates don't work out well? What the WHAT?!) Hearing a gay comic give their takes on the unmistakably predictable attributes that affect daily life as a result of sexual preference become just as predictable as the hetero comics who sputter similar garbage, except that the gay comic usually feels compelled to pander to the audience, throwing "sassies" about blow jobs, meth binges, and Jake Gyllenhaal into the curriculum vitae. Now, however, we've gone one step further. Gay comedy has become a tool of the outsider, used, in fact, to build a gay niche. And it's worked. Recently, my personal hero, Rich of FourFour, noted his questionable distaste for Kathy Griffin: [When] people like Kathy Griffin refer to their gay friends as "their gays," [it's like she's saying] their sexuality makes them emotionally interchangeable. It's that myopic, old-person, but not bad-natured way of thinking. It's annoying...but at least it's not a condemnation to hell. That's something, right? When Kathy Griffin began doing stand-up, she was funny enough, and even landed a role on a passable sitcom that has since entered syndication. But it was her role on Seinfeld that cemented her status as an A-list tattle tail followed by her self-proclaimed hunger for fame despite possessing flying involuntarily low on the celebrity radar that earned her a wildly successful reality show, Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List and the consequential approval of Perez Hilton and Larry King (?). Personally, I find the show entertaining, but mostly when she's off the stage and at her most natural rather than when she's "putting it on." It's her contemporary stand-up routine, however, that really grosses me out. Juicy celebrity gossip is inherently unoriginal (especially when there aren't even pithy punchlines to accompany it), but Griffin now piles on the asides about "her gays/my gays/the gays," which I personally find insulting. Just because I make out with dudes doesn't make me "your gay," Kathy Griffin. I'm so not your gay, I'm somebody else's lesbian (ba-dum-BUM!). Rich likens her usage of such inane phrasing to the "myopic...[but] not bad-natured" act of collecting her "gay quota" (which she has done quite well), as boatloads of naive homos now fill her sellout crowds from coast to coast with no apparent clue that Griffin is - although likely without intention - swiftly affirming all her gay friends, acquaintances, and fans as hyper-generalized, one-note stereotypes. In the same way that Queer But Sexless Eye's Minstrel Show For The Hypnotized Masses did in recent years, Griffin is painting a picture of 'mos that encompasses cartoony homos: muscleheads, fairies, and their sitcom-borne brethren. Skip to 5:35 below, and try to tell me that her discussion of "breeders" and gay guys's signature "six-pack abs" doesn't feel even mildly strategized: Much like Margaret Cho (who fortuitously played up her "bisexuality" and healthy body image to garner the approval of "diva"-worshipping bois and grrls), Ant (an unbearably unfunny, poor man's version of Mario Cantone, who VH1 consistently employs as their Pansy of Choice), and Logo's Big Gay Sketch Show (think SNL with dykes, minus your laughter), Kathy Griffin's "gay-friendly" material is lazy, calculated, empty rhetoric that homosex'chal dum-dums and B-holes will continue to blindly support. Just Because I'm A Fag, It Doesn't Mean I'm A Bitch [FourFour] Footnote: For servings of gay-ish funny that is actually clever and original (and not SNL with dykes on a tight budget), I highly recommend Judy Gold, Becky Drysdale, Brian Fellows, and Scott Thompson circa Kids In The Hall.

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