6/30/03 12:58 am -- Enlarged for your pleasure!
So my friend Kristen is really hot and she bartends at this upscale bar that I've never been to 'cause the drinks are too expensive for me. Now I know some of you are thinking, "You're a girl. You shouldn't have to buy your own drinks." And to that I say, "What do you think I am, some kind of whore?" I'll keep my honor and pay for my own drinks, thank you.
Anyway, when I was at Kristen's house, she took out this bag filled with satiny Victoria's Secret panties and said, "This drug dealer who comes into the bar all the time gave me these panties. They're brand new and really nice, but I just thought it was creepy, so I don't want them. Plus, they're not cotton, and I don't need the yeast infections --Do you want 'em?"
Can you imagine? Did I want them? Of course I did! In fact, I wore a pair tonight to "Discotown!" (after washing them a couple times first). They had absolutely no impact on the show, except someone set off firecrackers in the stairwell and I thought we'd been paid a surprise visit by Charleton Heston -- he's a feisty old bat! So I delivered the rest of my "crowd warmup" from underneath the piano. Right then, or perhaps during one of Mr. Tacos' "piano pieces for three legs", my shiny *girljunk* was likely visible. That's no big deal to me, 'cause I did gymnastics as a kid and you get so desensitized to pervs staring at your crotch what with all the splits and straddles and shit. You just learn early on it's not your fault. You're just a 12-year-old doing gymnastics fer chrissakes, you're not a slut, and it's your teammate Bitsy Burke's dad (and also a few others) who've got the problem. That's why sports is sooo character-building. It gives kids the life lessons they really need, and we really should get better government funding for physical fitness programs!
Aaanyway, where was I? Oh yeah, free panties. The lesson of this saga is: if you're a girl in this town, you shouldn't have to pay for your own panties. If I don't have to, you don't have to. And if you do, then you're just a dumb whore. If you know anyone, and I mean anyone, it's almost impossible not to get free panties thrown at you like every day!
I personally won't spend a penny on panties. I will simply wait until someone gives the next batch to someone who'll give it to someone who'll give it to me. I'll wait for years, if it takes that long. Know why? 'Cause I'm a classy lady.
P.S. Rent's due tomorrow, and as usual, I'm a little short. So if anyone wants to buy the pair i wore to Discotown! tonight, does $20 sound reasonable?

6/29/03 1:37 am
Goddammit, I was just gonna go out for some nachos and pina coladas. Then I was gonna do standup at a midnight show.
But they didn't have nachos. So I ordered a burger & fries. And they didn't have pina coladas. So i ordered wine. And then I ordered dessert. And then I ordered a Mexican coffee, 'cause that's just like nachos. I was so fucking stuffed I almost fell asleep in the booth. When I'm done writing this I will surely pass out.
So I overate like a big pig and ruined my night. But I don't think overeating is an eating disorder. Not as long as you can throw it all up.

6/27/03 11:10 pm
There are two types of office ladies. Most of them are nice, normal people who enjoy a good laugh like everyone else.

But some office ladies are just bad news. They’re angry and mean, especially to new people. When they walk past, they don’t say hello. If they deign to look at you, it’s like you’re something they scraped off their shoe. Heaven forbid they should smile. And when they pass you, you feel the trepidation of a cruise ship gliding past an iceberg.

These women are usually in their fifties, and for some reason they’re either obese, or rail-thin and dessicated. But these things are not what makes them such a fright to behold. It’s the sour, pinched faces, and the light that’s been so thoroughly extinguished that their eyes look poked out.

Years ago in New York, I landed a sweet and much-needed temp proofreading gig at OppenheimerFunds in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. Great pay, business casual, free Starbucks coffee in the kitchen, even a window office overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey. And, most importantly, lots of down time where I could write my comedy shit.

There was only one catch. And that was another temp named Barbara.

My first day on the job was a Friday. I remember, because when the supervisor introduced us, Barbara said tartly, “Today’s casual Friday. You didn’t have to dress up.” I couldn’t have felt more chastised if I’d worn a bikini.

The supervisor was an overly tolerant, born-again Orthodox Christian hippie with terrible halitosis. Later, in private, he said, “You’ll have to excuse Barbara.” He always spoke as if he were in a room full of sleeping babies. “She used to be an opera singer and she’s a little temperamental. But she really doesn’t mean any harm.”

Yeah, right. It was obvious that Barbara wanted me dead. But the job was awesome. I was getting a flow going there: doing the job for which I was hired, and getting lots of writing done, too. The only down side was feeling the hatred from Barbara. In a momentary lapse of judgement (which was to happen often, due to his fundamentally un-corporate, hippie nature), the supervisor told me that Barbara had accused him of playing favorites. “All she has to do is flash those actress eyes at you, and you’re like putty in her hands!” Barbara had reportedly hissed.

“'Actress eyes?'" I said. "What is she talking about?”

“Oh, that’s just Barbara,” he sighed, as I ducked to avoid the breeze. “Always so dramatic.”

A few days later, he informed me that I wouldn’t be coming back. And, not only was Barbara staying on, but it was she who had successfully engineered my removal. Apparently, she’d gone to the department heads and told them that there wasn’t enough work for the two of us, and that I was using my time there as a personal study hall. Which I was, but so was she. That’s what temp proofreading gigs were all about! If there was nothing to proofread, you were paid to sit there and wait. That’s what made it so beautiful – unlike other temp jobs, you didn’t have to pretend to be busy. Barbara knew that perfectly well. But she wanted me out of there.

I was livid. What goddamn right did she have? Never in my years of temping had I known a temp to screw over another one so hard. I never thought that showbiz shit would happen in the dowdy world of temporary employment.

Then again, she was an opera singer.

I sputtered to the supervisor that this was devious, malicious, and unfair. He just sighed, clasped his hands together like a minister and said, “Oh Rachel, you don’t understand now, but one day you will. Barbara is just jealous of you. You’re young, happy, and about to get married. Poor Barbara has no one. She sleeps with a teddy bear! So don’t waste your energy being angry with her. One day, none of this will matter.”

He said this in the hallway of the 33rd floor, now just empty sky.

6/27/03 2:10 am
When I was eight, we moved from central Milwaukee into the suburbs and joined the temple out there, Temple Shalom. And instantly I was plunged into a whole new world of Snobby Jews.

To make a long story short, it was all about my mom. My mom was a blond-haired Pentecostal-turned-agnostic (how could she not?), who converted when she married my Jewish dad. But once we moved to the suburbs, I got a lot of shit from the kids that my mom wasn’t Jewish, so my brothers and I weren’t Jewish either; even if my mom converted, she wasn’t born Jewish, so we weren’t real Jews, blah, blah, blah.

These kids were total asswipes. They were shallow, rich and mean, and I never felt good enough to be one of them. I saw a black kid at the temple once, and wondered how on earth he handled it. As if in response, I never saw him again. I hated going to temple, hated Sunday School, refused to go to Hebrew School. My parents, bless their hearts, let me do gymnastics instead -- a nice Jewish sport.

The only good thing about the temple was Rabbi Ron. Rabbi Ron was the young, hip new rabbi. Relaxed and always smiling, he was warm and friendly -- even to me. At Sunday School services, he played acoustic guitar and, obviously influenced by black gospel music, encouraged us kids to “jazz it up” by clapping and syncopating, so most of the prayers ended up sounding like Marvelettes numbers.

"Sim (clap-clap), Sim (clap-clap), Si-i-i-m Sha-a-lom,
Sim (clap-clap), Sim (clap-clap), Si-i-i-m Sha-a-lom,
Sim (clap-clap), Sim (clap-clap), Si-im Sha-a-lom, tov-a-uv-a-ra-cha-a-a-a-a-a!"

This was the only time I stopped feeling crappy. I could only imagine how much fun it would be to belong to a black church. While Rabbi Ron had us rocking out, the cranky old fogey rabbi, Rabbi Schwartzman, would sit in his tapestried chair like the Pope, with a look on his face that said, “Oy! Again with the schvartzer music.”

But I could have been wrong about that. I was just a kid, and my perception was skewed by a terror of cranky old fogey rabbis. To me, the look on any old rabbi’s face said, “Oy! Again with the [fill in the blank].” You see, the rejection had taken its toll. I was gun-shy of my tribe, a tribe that wouldn’t let me in. And when I looked into Rabbi Schwartzman’s eyes, what I saw looking back was, “You shiksas killed my people.”

But that was my own trip. For all I know, Rabbi Schwartzman might’ve thought I was a fine Jew. Maybe he actually dug Rabbi Ron’s ecumenical, Afro-Jewish gospel music.

But probably not.

6/26/03 12:33 am
The great American early 20th-century avant-garde composer Charles Ives spent his whole life working in the insurance industry by day, and composing at night. His music was ignored – unless you counted the musicians who, when Ives hired them to perform his symphonies, would refuse to play them, or deliberately play the wrong notes. “Most of his music had been written without prospect of performance, and it was only towards the end of his life that it began to be played frequently and appreciated.” (Grove Dictionary o' Music)
Ironically, Charles Ives became filthy rich from his visionary innovations at his day job, like inventing estate planning. No kidding.
I, too, have started working in the insurance business. But unlike Charles Ives, I’m just a temp, and in no danger of becoming a multimillionaire. Unless it can happen from endlessly photocoping – yawwwn – contracts while daydreaming about my favorite article from the last issue of Cat Fancy.
As an excuse for my lack of commercial success as an entertainer, I'd like to think that I'm the "Charles Ives of Comedy".
But it's more accurate if you substitute "Charles Ives" with "M.C. Hammer".

"Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity." -Charles Ives

6/25/03 1:36 am
We interrupt this diary to bring you a Public Service Announcement from the World's Funniest Drag Queen (and the person who came up with the name "Discotown!"), Jackie Beat:

"The love that dare not speak its name rips off its top, climbs up on a table
and screams its frickin' lungs out...
WeHo Award-Winner for "Outstanding Entertainer"
JACKIE BEAT mocks your "chosen lifestyle" in GAY SHAME 2003!

"If you like your Homosexual Comedy chockful of cheap cliches, offensive
stereotypes and eyebrow-raising 4-letter words, then you'll just adore the drag
stylings of Miss Jackie Beat! Did someone say "Poop?" Tee hee.

"What better way to celebrate the fact that you prefer to have sex with your own gender than to stare slack-jawed at a mack truck in sequins with a five o'clock shadow? Remember, drag queens threw the first bricks at Stonewall -- so come throw a brick at large 'n' lovely, thick-ankled, equestrian-featured Jackie Beat this Gay Pride!

"JACKIE BEAT'S GAY SHAME 2003! Sunday June 29th. Doors open at 9PM, show at 10. Only $5! At FUBAR, located at 7994 Santa Monica Boulevard, in the most annoying city on God's green Earth, West Hollywood!"

Now, to recap. Here's what you do this Sunday night:
8 pm: Go to Discotown!
10 pm: Go to Jackie Beat's Gay Shame 2003.
Just follow these simple instructions, and you won't have to whine to your coworkers on Monday morning about how your weekend sucked big donkey dicks.