Kelli has a class project due today — we all thought we had another week to work on it, but it snuck up on us real quick-like, and here we are:
“Why did you start performing as LeslieAnn?
Somebody had to do it. Seriously, it just seemed to me to be the safe time to cross-dress, but that isn’t true under the Rule of Trump, just under the Rule of Law, which we no longer have. Notably, I have not performed as LeslieAnn nor have I costumed up for photo ops since Trump stole the Presidency with a trick of the Electoral College, while losing the popular vote. Gender, Race, Religion and Intelligence are all presently under attack, and I wouldn’t appear in public as anything but white Christian if I could help it. It’s tough enough to face the prejudice as a Jew — add to that the homophobia and racism and you get “No Comedy Tonight” — signs that hung outside theaters under Hitler’s regime. Like Hitler, Trump has zero sense of humor. My aim in comedy is not to perform it, but to teach it. I had good teachers, like Frank Gorshin and Jonathan Winters, and comedy is a great path to wisdom. For some oppressed people, it’s the only way they can get in a lick or two while being beaten to a pulp by a large bully or an overwhelming mob of crazed zombies. For some great examples of this, check out Mel Brooks’ takes on Hitler, Jeff Dunham’s political rips, and Carol Burnett’s entire show all the time. Like I said, many comedians want to be saying something clever while they’re being driven into the ground by a bully.
“What is the meaning of LeslieAnn?”
Nothing in particular. I like the name because it’s unusual enough that it can be used as a single name, which is how I always bill an act — easy to remember. Don’t overestimate the intelligence of humans of Planet Earth. LeslieAnn is the name I used for several female lifetimes and one male lifetime on Planet Earth — remember, please, that for me, a human being is merely an avatar in a fairly small and simple 37th century Full-Immersion Reality Game called “Urthgame”, and if you don’t believe me, you can look it up in the Akashic Records, which is presently called “google”.
“What effect does cross-dressing have on a standup audience?”
Not sure if there’s any net effect. A male comic doesn’t have to win the women over separately, but a female comic does, because ALL females are automatically, organically and instinctively filed under “competition”, whether true or not, as an organic precautionary measure against replacement in a relationship, which is not necessarily always uppermost on a woman’s mind. The net effect is probably a zero-sum game, but if there IS any “net” effect, what they call a “takeaway” now, which to me means hot spicy food in a disposable napkin, it’s that there’s a definite point of view to being a woman that a man can’t automatically have, assume or understand, at least, not without self-training AS a woman, with the continual perspective of a woman, meaning taking into account all the things she needs to cope with. It doesn’t help that she also has to bang her head against the glass ceiling and try to manage a bull in a china shop with the manners of a hyena, if they’re in a “normal” male-female relationship, which by the way , is only recent — check out the sex lives of ancient Romans and Greeks. If you had been a homophobe then, you’d be speaking to the wind — there was no concept of “gay”, just “sex”, and that’s the main difference between humans and the lower animals like the ones who march with torches and chant insanely at political rallies. That should scare the hell out of anyone, and that’s exactly what they intend, to scare you. Bullies tend to threaten, but are always ready to run and hide.
“Do you think they are laughing at, or with, LeslieAnn?”
Hey, I’m lucky to get them laughing at all. In these bad times, any relief is welcome, but it’s hard to get people to relax, when there’s a guy with a red nose and funny hair with his finger on the nuclear button. They’re laughing WITH me when they laugh. You can check out the audience reactions on videos posted on youtube — please note that I’m one of the last standup comics who knows how to “time” a laugh, something that Gracie Allen, Carol Burnett and George Burns excelled at doing, which means knowing how long to wait until delivering the first line of the next “gag” — not “joke” — jokes are strictly for amateurs.
“Is it meta that you wrote as LeslieAnn, who writes about living life in drag as a boy? Is that the key to gender relationships in comedy?”
First of all, I have no idea what is currently meant by “meta” — I spent the better part of an hour trying to decipher its present meaning, but what I think you mean is, “Is the part greater than the sum of its parts?” and the answer is “no” — I think. Actually, I never thought much about it. Come to think of it, until now, it only fleetingly crossed my mind.
“Can DRAG be considered transphobic?”
“DRAG was a term used on the margins of Shakespeare’s First Folio — it’s short for “Dressed As A Girl”, and that’s exactly what it means. At that time, around 1601-ish, it was against the law for a woman to appear in a theatrical performance of any kind, at least in England, which is where Shakespeare lived and worked and, yes, drag can be considered transphobic, in the sense that to other cultures, there was no automatic association with sex. It was an accepted fact that women should not be on the stage, and they weren’t. In modern times, particularly during the Shadow Administration of Joe McCarthy during the 1950s, Milton Berle made a fortune out of comedy in drag. In the 1960s, it was a staple of every comedy show, notably Laugh-In, the Carol Burnett Show, and M*a*s*h.
“In her two-hour special, LeslieAnn says that her sexual preference is “none of your business” and “busy”. Is it either, and why?
No, it isn’t either, and there is no “why”. It’s meant as a comment on social twittering. I call human beings “Birds on a Wire”, because they’re nonstop babbling about nothing, all the time. I really don’t care that you just wiped your ass or that you’re having fun dumpster diving for breakfast while texting a friend. I’ll often say things that are comedically true without being personally true, and I’ll typically take the hit for it — I’m indifferent to what people think of me. First of all, they’ll always get it wrong, but more importantly, this world has an expiration date. Anything that happens before that date is wiped out right afterward, so why get tied into a knot about something that will be gone without a trace within only a few billion years of local time?
“On page 374 of Volume One of My Life as a Boy, you say ‘I was working both sides of the Gender Coin in 1969’. What does ‘both sides of the gender coin’ mean?”
Gosh, if every clever quip you ever uttered were written down and analyzed, how would it come out? I guess I was referring to the fact that I cross-dressed in the sixties, back when it was a prison sentence in some place, and a death-sentence in others. I always took it to be dangerous, but you can be standing around doing nothing in a mall these days and get run down by a van driven by yet another hysterical zombie. Both sides of a coin seemed like a great visual, and that’s what I try to do, is put visuals in front of the audience. Don’t forget that the audience is composed of paying customers, and they’re paying you to make them laugh, to give them a few moments of freedom outside the oppressive force of Trumpism and all that that entails — keep in mind that this ugly mess has been there all the time. Trump’s rampage against the Constitution is aided and abetted by millions of mindless followers, and they’re all out to get YOU, and to take away your rights, your money and your home, and that’s why you need standup.
“Did LeslieAnn’s daughters avoid marrying narcissistic men?”
Sometimes, but just narrowly. Most relationships now are “chain relationships” and “serial marriages”, resulting in comments between spouses like, “Your children and my children are fighting with our children” and other such snarled-up life-complications. It’s impossible to avoid narcissistic men, because that’s how they’re trained to act and think, and the DNA is the basis for that — don’t expect too much from a man outside his tiny Male Box. He can be awfully smart, and yet millions of miles away. I recommend a little exposure to Jane Goodall’s work with dogs and chimps. Her 55-year study of chimps reveals so much about humans that you’ll wonder why People Magazine doesn’t have a companion publication, “Chimp Comics”???
“Why do you think that comedic audiences are more receptive to men dressing as women than women dressing as men?”
Wait a minute — women in the West have for years dressed as men and gotten away with it. Women can wear tailored suits, slacks, jeans, shorts, button-down shirts, men’s briefs and boxer shorts, and even wear them outside the outer clothing. Women can wear just about anything, as long as it emphasizes the attractive nature of the body which it adorns, and I apologize in advance for the dangling participle. Men are FUNNIER in drag than women, simply because it’s NOT accepted, and therefore cross-dressing has some shock value, although it has less and less impact as we travel into the 21st century. At some point, drag will be about as funny as Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone which, in a day of cell-phones, is meaningless and senseless, and the telephone will become even more distant with the application of cell-phone implants just behind the left ear, which will provide a constant monitoring of heartbeat, blood pressure and present location, sort of like an ankle bracelet in the brain, which is another reason you need standup.
“Do you think that since western audiences have been accustomed to men dressing on stage since the Elizabethan Age that leaves them more open to that form of transgression onstage?”
No. One of the most important things about comedy technically is the fact that people are ALWAYS acting as-if under threat, meaning that everything in the environment is tagged either “friendly”, “food”, “pleasure” or “dangerous”. An example would be this: I would double-down on the drag were I to comedically rip Trump, because as a latent something-or-other-I’m-not-quite-sure-what, he’s certainly homophobic, which translates to “fear”, which ALWAYS expresses itself as anger, resentment, hurt — anger is fear translated into action and reaction. A good comic touches on the fears and reveals them, exposes them to daylight, which has much the same effect on fears, superstitions and prejudices that it has on your average vampire. How a comic dresses has always been a factor both in branding and audience acceptance — take note that Lucille Ball never appeared onstage without her “Mickey Mouse” toon gloves, and Phyllis Diller always came on like a clown, which is to say, wildly exaggerated and overblown, but then you deliver one-liners and it’s transformed from circus to standup. It’s only as a clown that you will be allowed to say what’s really on your mind.
“Did acts like Milton Berle out of the Borscht Belt inspire you when you were younger?”
I saw Milton Berle in a live performance, and went to the theater to see broadcasts. Berle was “Mister Television”, basically the only show on television for the first two years of tv-land and yes, he was a big influence on everyone. There’s never been a comedian like him, and thanks to Berle, thousands of jokes were saved for posterity. Contrary to popular wisdom — an oxymoron if ever there was one — Berle did not “steal” jokes — you can’t steal a joke, because nobody knows who first said it, and because a single joke falls short of the required manuscript length to satisfy the copyright office. Milton Berle was not an “act” — he was, along with Sid Caesar, Carol Burnett and a handful of others, incredibly versatile and energetic and particularly brilliant and inspired, with writers who could turn out a weekly show, which amounted to literally learning a new one-hour or ninety-minute Broadway play every few days, including the stage blocking, line and lighting cues, entrances and exits, and “bits of business”, meaning actions onstage in view of the audience.
“Who are your biggest influences?”
All of them, about equally. I find treasures in every comic’s approach, even those less successful than others — there’s always something good to find. My personal taste in comedians runs to the story-tellers, but they’re gone now, all of them — the attention span is simply too short to allow a story to unfold. One-liners, short, snappy comments taken all the way down to the lowest common denominator are the 21st century comic’s stock in trade. Myself, I continue to tell stories and lose audience. If you wait long enough, it’s bound to happen sooner or later. Things change, people change. Okay, they don’t. Either way, it’s the comic’s JOB to find the humor in the situation, even if it’s Russians bugging the Oval Office, or National Guard troops firing on American civilians, which hasn’t happened RECENTLY, but a few moments on google will reveal incidents like Kent State, which shows that it CAN happen here. It’s the comic’s job to convey the humor of that and make it funny — pain is quite often the essence of what’s funny. One example is Mel Brooks’s answer to “what is comedy”? He said “When you fall through a manhole into a sewer, that’s comedy. When I get a paper-cut, that’s tragedy” and, come to think of it, he was right. Comedy is always something happening to someone ELSE.
“In the Two-Hour Comedy Special, there is a lot of talk abaout sex. Sex, women, and laundry. Women thinking about laundry gets one of the biggest laughs in the show. Why does this work? Is this sexist?”
I’m never afraid of “isms”, because I subscribe to none of them, and always reserve the right to poke fun at anyone or anything that I think needs a little taking down, including myself — no one and nothing is immune from my comedy, including good movements and great people, but they ARE comedy targets if they’re out in public. The whole movement toward justice and equal rights is long overdue, and I’m happy to see women taking it to the streets, thus bringing about the conditions for Thurber’s “War Between Men & Women”, which he did as a series of articles and cartoons back in the 30’s and 40’s — but a joke about a Sacred Cow of ANY kind can be used to attack or justify an attack on a comedian who is just doing the job, and I always struggle against “popularism” of any kind, robotic obedience to a concept in particular. It’s the job of the comic to remain in the Fifth Estate — humor is a form of journalism. Want to see some unpopular essays? Check out Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, Joseph Heller. Sacred Cows need to be turned into hamburger, and I’m just the chef to do it, too. Also, sex is ALWAYS funny, especially when it’s happening.
“There is so much about gender roles and what people ‘traditionally’ think. You shatter a lot of this. Why?”
So you and I can walk unafraid on the street presenting whatever gender we feel like projecting that day, that’s why.
“Other men who perform in drag have reported sexual advances from straight men and even threats of sexual violence. Has this ever happened to LeslieAnn?”
No. I categorically have never had anything even remotely happen to me in public either during a performance, before or after, or walking on a street, in a mall or in a restaurant or theater or shop. Not once, not ever, but I don’t present as a sexual target, never did — have little use for social sex, but there is one other factor — not only did I once teach martial arts and self-defense and work as cadre in a U.S. Army training base, but I can literally drop a goat to the ground. I was one of those remote readers they made the movie “Men Who Stare At Goats” about and there were several women on the remote reading team when it was still being called “The Witches” because we did tarot readings for a few members of Congress, which is the real reason they shut down the Activity. Remote reading is one of my most important tools for comedy — you’d call it “instinct”, but it’s really a form of astral projection combined with telepathy, and everyone’s got the talent, but few have the skill to use it. Comics are often painfully telepathic, and ALL comedy comes from tragedy and pain — bathos and pathos, to quote several ancient Greek playwrights.
“What does LeslieAnn say about gender?”
Gender is just another popular and very passing fad. Eventually it will become a non-issue, as it was thousands of years ago. Remember when you were a high-school sophomore? Every social issue became a personal issue, something to bring into moot-court or debates, and what school-kid can resist a march, demonstration or popular uprising over injustices?
“Are you insistent on pronouns she’her for use in reference to LeslieAnn? Why or why not?”
I really don’t care what anyone does in relation to my name. I’m indifferent to local opinion, except in cases where it might help me improve or clean up my act.
“Are EJ and LeslieAnn like an Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton Kayfabe situation?”
I’m not sure. I only know Andy Kaufman by name and one single part of a performance. I watch a lot less television and rarely see movies than you might suppose, but I think you mean something like two separate and distinct personaes, either in contact with one another or not, depending on the level of separation. That’s not the case here. LeslieAnn is merely another name by which I go, and the gender specification is strictly local, not my own focus. There is no difference between me and my characters — like Mel Blanc, I can play several parts at once, which you can observe in my CD, “Enterview” where I assume many characters for the interviewer to try to sort out. If you truly want to see someone bipolar, check out God. Are there really billions and billions of people, or just one of us?
“What exactly is a ‘Yuba Blue’ girl? How does one attain that status?”
I’ll try to explain. One of my very best watercolor students is the mom of the present owner of “Yuba Blue”, a wonderful women’s boutique that used to be right next door to our gallery in Grass Valley, and my favorite slip-top is one of their “I’m a Yuba Blue Girl” spaghetti strap tees, which I like to wear during my local performance, because everyone knows and likes the shop, so it’s a way of giving a popular hangout a plug, but it’s also a funny line and, for a cross-dresser, it’s gotta be funny. How you become a Yuba Blue Girl is to buy a Yuba Blue spaghetti strap tee from them and wear it around your hometown. The bottom line is, the top fits me like a glove and it’s totally hassle-free and comfy, and that’s the real reason I wear it, and since it’s visible in the photos, I mention it from time to time.
“Do you perform as LeslieAnn in SecondLife? Why or why not? It is different in person?”
Yes, I do perform as LeslieAnn in SecondLife, but keep in mind that I do nothing to change my voice so, like Slarty Bartfast in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the name’s not important. It’s no different in person. Keep in mind that I’m always operating from behind the character, in the world but not of it, as it were, so to me, any manifestation is equal to any other manifestation.
Well, those are today’s answers to Kelli’s very thoughtful and well-considered questions. Ask me tomorrow, and I’ll give you a different answer.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby