BIRDSONG BOOK OF DREAMS: Mirth, Madness, Magic Markers

For a few years now, each morning, without fail, I’ve been trying to recall my dreams from the night before.  First I write down whatever plot-lines I remember, then I start drawing any images that come out of that.   Eventually I started getting more into it— coloring them, etc.  Now?  I have a full-blown addiction.  To drawing. With magic markers.  And white out.  And nail polish.  Glitter pens.  Stickers of ponies.  It doesn’t really matter to me as long as it looks cool.  I start them in black Papermate Flair® felt-tip pens, and then switch over to the magic markers, etc. for color.  Since I draw in pen, mistakes can be a problem- so I use USPS Priority Mail address labels to cover over any mistakes.  (They’re free!  And plentiful!) I tried using the white-out but the magic markers don’t work on top of white-out.  They hate it. White-out is their kryptonite.  And all of the above could not be done without the aid of an entire pot of strong black tea.

BLOODY MARY!

I’ve tried & tried 2 convince Tampax® 2 hire me as their new spokesperson, but they just won’t bite.  Picture it— There’d be an awesome commercial campaign with me doing a big song & dance number, dressed in an all-white cotton unitard, surrounded by a chorus of hunky guys all dressed in red, singing this song…

BLOODY MARY IS THE GIRL I LOVE (BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM)!

BLOODY MARY IS THE GIRL I LOVE (BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM)!

Getting To Know One of Reno’s Finest…

Trust me when I say that you’ll want 2 keep watching thru 2 the end so u can enjoy the totally 80s early-MTV style music video fantasy dance sequence.  (OBNOXIOUS BRAG: I put my own costume together for it, as did the lovely Miss Rachael Harris. This brilliant and wack web-series is the brain child of the equally brill-wack Michael Weaver.  And his dog.)

Thnx 4 Bein’ Such a Jag-Off.   Ya Jag-Off.

My loving, yet gently castrating response to Adam Carolla’s lame “anti-lady” comedy stance.

splitsider:

robdelaney:

The New York Post published an interview with Adam Carolla on Sunday in which he said, among other things, “dudes are funnier than chicks,” and, regarding writing for television, “they make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff.”

I disagree,…

Rob Delaney. Hell yes.

Thank you Rob Delaney.  And bless you. You know, I was ON the Adam Carolla podcast not too long ago, and it’s nice to know what he was secretly thinking while I wasted all that time talking about kittens and baby’s breath and french braids.  REALLY, Adam?  I expected better from you.  What woman is denying you the sex you so richly deserve that is causing you to hate on a whole gender so?  We can remedy that right quick, I’m sure.  So just say the word.  

Below is a piece I wrote years ago that is (sadly) still relevant.  The last jag-off who flapped his gums about how unfunny women are that got any traction was our beloved pussy-hating Christopher Hitchens. He vomited out a piece in Vanity Fair called “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”  What follows is my response, in which I defended him most vehemently:

IN DEFENSE OF THE FUNNY MAN WHO WROTE THE BIG ARTICLE
By Mary Birdsong

I’ve gotten so sick of my lady friends complaining all week about that funny man who wrote the big article in Vanity Fair (“Why Women Are Not Funny”) that I have to come to his aid. This guy knows comedy. I can’t remember the last time I read such a hilarious critique. And so chock-full of the gut-busting comedy of Kipling! Nice. Kipling slays me. Always has. I hope other ‘zines start printing articles like that in their pages. Articles like “Why Latinos Are Lazy,” “Why Jews Are Cheap” and “Why Colored Folk Should Be Kept Out Of Pro Ball.”

Wait one second. I’ll be right back.

Sorry about that. Somebody emailed me a photo of their baby and I had to stare at it for a couple of hours. I’m totally here now. What was I saying? Oh, right. I remember…

I want to say thank you to the really funny man who wrote the big article. (I can’t remember his name, but I do remember the name of my friend’s really cute baby— it’s Nate.) I want to thank him for taking the weight of the laugh-starved world off my shoulders. I used to feel so guilty that I wasn’t funny. Ashamed, even. But after reading that really funny man’s article I now see that IT’S NOT MY FAULT! I’m just a woman. A woman who can’t think of anything but babies. And sometimes religion.

Hold on one sec.

I got distracted again. I was looking at my cup of coffee and I swore I saw the face of Jesus in it. (Don’t be jealous, guys, but this shit happens to me ALL THE TIME, because like the funny man very wisely pointed out, my sex is the “rank-and-file mainstay of religion.”) But this particular religious vision was a false alarm. I think the milk was just bad and it sort of curdled into what looked like my savior. 

What was I saying? Was it something about babies? I love babies. Almost as much as Jesus. Oh, right! I remember.

The funny man wrote that you never hear a guy brag about his girlfriend, “…and man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.” And that’s so true! My boyfriend is unusual ‘cuz he doesn’t mind if I make him laugh— in private. But when we first dated I made the mistake of making him laugh really hard at a party in front of people and he bitch-slapped me in the car on the way home. He was totally right. Now if we’re in public and I think of something funny I just write it on a post-it and tell him quietly after I say my prayers at night. 

The one thing I found disappointing about that funny man’s article is that the only women he interviewed were Nora Ephron and Fran Leibowitz. Everyone knows they’re definitely not funny. So how can he interview them but not include women who’ve at least come close to being funny- I’m talking of course about comedy legends Brooke Shields and Lea Thompson. Hello???!!? (The word “hello” should be read like a gay guy would say it. I think that’s HILARIOUS when people do that.) I’m glad he didn’t interview unfunny women like Sarah Silverman or Tina Fey or Amy Sedaris.

And I love that the funny man also had the balls to admit that women “have the world at their mercy.” I’m so sick of hearing my gal pals whine about how women only earn 75 cents to every dollar a man does, and that women are 50% of the population but own only 1% of the real estate. So what??! We can STILL get laid whenever we want. And that’s power, my friend.

Oh, and the data he referenced from that study at Stanford (in which 10 men and 10 women were shown 70 black and white cartoons to rate them on a funniness scale) totally supports his theory. It proves men are TOTALLY better at laughing at black and white cartoons than women are. That’s pretty much the same thing as doing standup or writing comedy. I bet Kipling was awesome at laughing at black and white cartoons. I’ve been trying to find a decent comedy club where men stand on stage and show each other black and white cartoons. I’d pay like… fifty bucks for that. 

And I have to find out when the funny man himself is going to do standup comedy next. He said he is an “occasional standup performer.” On what occasions does he do standup? I bet he kills on Guy Fawkes Night or some other neato England-type occasion. All I know is if I do get to see him do stand-up, I hope he does a “Depend” joke. You see, unlike most women, who’s “appetite for talk about that fine product known as ‘Depend’ is limited,” I love a good adult diaper joke. I get so frustrated with the lack of good “Depend” jokes these days. I wish Lenny Bruce had lived long enough to write a really good “Depend” joke.

And when he wrote “The placenta is made up of brain cells that migrate southward during pregnancy and take the sense of humor along with them.” I suddenly I had this huge epiphany. Actually, “epiphany” isn’t the word I would’ve used, but only because I didn’t know that big word. I didn’t know how to describe what I felt, so I asked my boyfriend for a big word to match the facial expressions I showed him. Have you ever seen the movie “Nell?” It was kind of like that. And my boyfriend finally told me (after I agreed to suck his super-massive black cock) that the word I was looking for was “epiphany.” And he was right! (He’s super smart.) My epiphany was that a “vag” is just a funny-sucking black hole.* 

I looked up the word “vag” in the dictionary, just to be sure. And you know what? It wasn’t in there. “Vag” was nowhere to be found. But it did give a definition for “vagina,” which was:

Va-gi-na n. an unfunny orifice that bleeds “boring juice. ” 

In conclusion… oh, sorry. Hold on!

I couldn’t resist. Just now I had to forward a mass-email to a bunch of my best gal pals. It was this awesomely sweet poem about kittens. And friendship. And how to avoid getting raped in supermarket parking lots.**

* My boyfriend watches the Science Channel a lot, and I don’t know what black holes are, but I do know that men are really really scared of black holes and super massive black holes. Scientists keep calling them “evil” and “terrible,” which is interesting because I had a really boring dream last night where I kept calling a black hole “God’s vagina.”

** Seriously, one of the great tips in this email on how to not get raped in a parking lot is to never wear your hair in a ponytail. Putting your hair in a ponytail is basically like wearing a rape-handle. (Aren’t footnotes super neato? I want to open a children’s shoe store someday and call it “Footnotes.” Wouldn’t that be so cute?)

Oh my god this is so weird but my vagina is talking. What’s that you’re trying to say, oh “eery” canal? It’s saying:

“Tell the funny man who wrote the big article that it is too uncomfortable for most men to laugh at women’s jokes. The act of laughing at someone’s joke is an act of recognition. An act of empathy, of compassion. It is putting oneself in the joke-teller’s shoes. Women rarely have a problem projecting themselves into the joke a man might tell. Women are accustomed to empathizing. They’re quite used to reading the word “HE” and translating it to “SHE” in their pretty heads. They are equally as comfortable wearing workboots as they are high heels. But for a man to put himself in someone else’s shoes? When those shoes are 3 inch strappy heels with pink rhinestones on the toes, a man has a hard time laughing because he’s too busy worrying that he might be gay. Unless he is Eddie Izzard, or one of the many awesome, self-aware men in the world, who are quickly growing in number. So… maybe the question we should ask is not ‘Why are women not funny?’ but instead… ‘Why are men bad laughers?’”***

Wow, vagina. You sure are chatty. I didn’t realize my orifice had so much to say. Or that it had a British accent. (I wonder if my vagina is a lesbian? I bet she is. Dyke!)

My boyfriend told me that the really funny man has said a bunch of times how he’s super excited about the war in Iraq, so I think he’ll like this Kipling gem: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.” 

Women— the original cut-ups.

*** The author of this piece accepts no responsibility for the opinions put forth by the orifice. And besides… they were shamelessly plagiarized from a comic named Sheila Head.

THIS TUESDAY JUNE 5TH AT I.O. WEST (HOLLYWOOD BLVD, LOS ANGELES) SEE MARY BIRDSONG AS 99 CENT WHORE IN KATE FLANNERY’S SHOW: THE LAMPSHADES, as part of the L.A. Improv Festival.  http://wp.me/p1SDxB-1J

CUPCAKE* OPRAH!

And it was on that day… that very special, cake-changing day in Pastry Case Land, that the Sprinkle Sisters- Angel & Marzi- were sitting around in their cozy studio loft gossiping.  They lived on the middle rack of 2369 PoppySeed Lane’s oven- it was electric!  An oven of the future!  And they were proud of that.  As they exchanged gossip in the comfortable 375 degree heat, they grew anxious about their latest romantic escapades— stories of woe, in which they justified the abhorrent behavior of “bad boy” banana bread, and shrugged off the awful apathy of apple-sauce muffins.  They picked apart the male species of baked goods for so long that they worried they might actually get burnt on their bottoms.  

So to lighten the mood, they decided to watch a little tv.  They’d finally gone out & purchased a HUGE, fancy new flatscreen tv like the other gals in their 9 X 12 stainless steel baking pan had done months ago.  It was nearly 3 inches across, and 2 inches high!  And what luck, they thought, when the very first tv show they happened upon was… Oprah.  Ahhhhh, Oprah.  Oprah was their favorite.  Oprah was the perfect program to christen their new tv.  They were giddy with delight.

But 10 minutes into the show, they realized they weren’t emotionally prepared for this particular episode. Not at all.  It was a double episode on—

UNDERBAKED CUPCAKES.

Underbaked.  Beaten and battered.  They related on such a deep level, and realized that Cupcake Oprah had hit upon a term that, for the first time ever, put words to how they’d felt for so long:

UNDER-BAKED.

Both single, both over 40 calories, and still baking, Angel & Marzi looked at each other and wept vanilla frosting tears.  And at the end of the show, they held sprinkles & drew up a contract in which they vowed to each other:

THE CUPCAKE’S BILL OF BAKING RIGHTS!

1) Never again shall we let our cakey insides be thought of as little more than half-baked, goopy batter.

2) Never again shall we chase unavailable crullers or mean-spirited muffins,

3) Never again shall we strive to gain the approval of disdainful, domineering donuts by heaping more & more multi-colored sprinkles on our cupcake tops.

4) Never again shall we shed our little paper soufflé-cup dresses to bear our fluffy bodies at the slightest cupcake-come-hither glance from a cocky slice of key lime pie.

5) Never again shall we support some Cinnabon a-hole hanging out at the mall, still living with his ex-wife “until he’s finished writing his screenplay.”

Thank you, Cupcake Oprah! For giving us our dignity back, and topping it with delicious, self-respecting, cream-cheese frosting.  And from that day forward in Pastry Case Land , there was no more baking at 375 degrees for the Sprinkle Sisters.  No more sitting on that hot, un-greased, stainless steel baking sheet in their little metal jacuzzis, waiting for an oven mitt to come rescue them, deus ex machina style!

“We’re done baking,” they cried.  ”We’re cooked!  Do you HEAR that, you controlling old kitchen timer?  We’re done inside, you tick-tocking old schoolmarm!  We’re really done! So go on— Put a toothpick in us & pull it out! We dare you!  We don’t care WHO pokes us! Our cakey centers won’t get stuck to those toothpicks when they come out.  No matter how many times that oven mitt from hell stabs us with tiny wooden daggers, we will be delicious!

And they really were.  They were done.  Inside and out.   And they were ready for life to eat them all up- crumbs and all.  

Thanks be to Cupcake Oprah.  

*Cupcakes pictured above, courtesy the 17th Street Café pastry case, Santa Monica, CA.

Come see me do something I rarely get to do in public!  SING!!!!

I’ll be on hand with DRAWING HOPE at this glamorous, one-night-only Hollywood benefit to support survivors of rape and sexual abuse.

Drawing Hope is a charitable organization that – through art – serves survivors of abuse and other life struggles. Drawing Hope helps survivors connect with their own strength, see their beauty and embrace their freedom.

Click HERE for a full brochure about the event and
how we help survivors of rape and sexual abuse

The Mark
9320 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
March, 18 2012

An unconventional approach to the serious topic of rape and sexual abuse

6:30 - 7:00pm | Reception and Red Carpet (for VIP ticket holders)
7:00 - 8:00pm | General Reception
8:00 - 10:00pm | Dinner and Program