Kyria Abrahams's Blog, page 3

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

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The relief pitcher.

Lower East Side Nature Photography

The wild Houston Street hipster in her natural habitat.

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I went back and forth on what she's listening to on her giant red headphones and settled on this.

INTERVIEW WITH TWO NEW VAMPIRES

Originally posted on Street Carnage, here

If you haven’t bought your Halloween gifts to leave under the Halloween tree yet, why not consider a copy of  The New Vampire’s Handbook: A Guide for the Recently Turned Creature of the Night , written by five former Onion writers who go by the name of Action 5?I had the pleasure of interviewing Action 5-ers Joe Garden and Anita Serwaki at the Onion offices in Manhattan back when The Onion offices were still in Manhattan, that is. The paper has since moved to Chicago, but Joe, who was the features editor for 19 years, chose not to make the move with them.So please enjoy this video from a simpler time, back when Onion headlines were written on chalkboards on the walls of this room, and every Friday, comedy nerds and random actors who do voice-overs on Adult Swim shows dropped by to get snockered on cheap whiskey and precariously climb the roof.See that R2D2 toy on the bookcase behind us? He is now the entire Onion staff. Who knew! He did. Oh, he did.



(Intro and Outro music for this video was generously provided by Nathan Lofties of Magnificent Bird. They are going to be famous, but only with the cool kids, so go listen to their stuff so you can say you heard them before they ended up on that car commercial.)

Mod in Brooklyn

All photos by Kyria Abrahams, 2012

Model: Rachel Kay of modpoddaily.com

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QUOTES TO LOVE BY AND LIFE

Originally posted on Street Carnage
You may have noticed an odd trend on Facebook lately. It appears that fifteen-year olds are in the business of casually dispensing important relationship advice.Trickle-sweet musings about love and loss are placed over hazy Instagram photos, then marked with a tumblr address such as HPLyrikz or Kushandwizdom. There, a photo of colorful high-top Converse sneakers might explain to you how a “real man” treats his woman. A silhouette of a heart could tell you how to let go after a breakup. More often than not, Johnny Depp tells you it’s OK to be yourself.Thank you, 15-year-olds of the world. It’s so cool that you’re thinking about love.These photo-word-meme-quotes range from naive nonsense (“I’ll only date someone who has had their heart broken so they’ll know what it feels like and won’t break mine”) to horrible advice on how to guarantee you remain in an abusive relationship. (“I’d rather fight with you than make love to somebody else.”) But one thing they all have in common is that people inexplicably share the ever-loving shit out of them. Seriously. They go fucking crazy for them! And not just teenagers, either. Adults who have the emotional maturity of teenagers also love them.Put words in a sans-serif font over an emo photograph, and I guarantee people will share it without even thinking about what they actually mean. How do I know? Because I made a bunch of really dumb fake ones and put them on Tumblr and people started sharing them.This is the first one I made:Ridiculous, right? Except that within 15 minutes, two random teenagers (Natasha and Kaitlyn Renee) had already shared—without irony—the above image, which champions the idea that a woman should slump into a depressed tantrum in the corner and a man should love her unconditionally despite her otherwise monstrous behavior.I was both disturbed and victorious.So if you’re one of those sleazy thirtysomethings who is still trying to fuck 19-year-olds, take note. This is what you’ll be fucking. I don’t think for a moment it will deter you; I’m just exhorting you to enjoy that tight pussy before she starts cutting your name into her forearm and demanding you take her ice-skating in the rain in July.Please visit my Tumblr page for more kyriaabrahams.wizdom.

THE GUY WITH 11,000 PHOTOS OF MANNEQUINS

In 2005, back when only 17 people had Flickr accounts, I somehow stumbled across a page with 3,000 photos of mannequins in various stages of undress. As you might expect, the photos were a little “on the creepy side.”This past weekend, after attending an Ayahuasca ceremony at a Real Doll factory, I got to wondering: “Whatever happened to that serial killer mannequin freak from Flickr?”A search for “mannequins” these days, however, turns up nothing more than distressed shots of dismembered arms taken by art-school students. To find the link, I ended up digging through a drawer of hard-drive backup CDs from early-to-mid 2000 and opening a PDF backup of my 2005 Livejournal account. Yes! After an hour of sifting through bad poetry and references to men I never should have dated, I found him once more. Lars and the Raped Girl.Imagine my utter glee when I saw that his Flickr account is still active and this guy has continually been uploading photos of mannequins for the past seven years! Then, imagine my abject horror when I realized—holy shit—this Flickr account is still active and this guy has continually been uploading photos of mannequins for the past seven years!He’s now up to almost 11,000 individual images of mannequins, organized into 128 individual sets. Of mannequins.Only mannequins. There isn’t a single human being to be found among any one of the images, except for this one blurry wedding photo watching as a fiberglass Anne Bancroft acts out scenes from The Graduate.(I may or may not have embellished that image.)

Continue to Street Carnage to read the rest of this essay and see many more mannequins...

MANBOYS I HAVE LOVED

Originally published on Street Carnage





I don’t trust people who marry their high-school sweethearts.It’s not a sweet childhood romance; it’s disturbing and a bad idea. If you marry your high-school sweetheart and still claim to be happy years later, it means neither one of you has changed significantly since high school.I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be tied down to any life decisions I made during a period of my life when taking out the trash was a punishment for not making my bed as opposed to a normal adult activity.“Happy anniversary, sweetheart! I still love you just as much as I did when I first laid eyes on you, back before I’d ever driven on the highway alone or had my own bank account!”My own high-school sweetheart was a Jehovah’s Witness skater boy named Mark. He picked me up after church and took me to Shepard Fairey’s half pipe in a damp factory in Providence. Mark left me alone with a dreadlocked albino and his filthy yellow dog while he and his brother failed to land a single kick flip.OBEY didn’t exist yet, but there were “Andre the Giant Had a Posse” stickers pasted up on telephone poles all around the city. Who knew that 20 years later, this very same factory would house a magical golden monkey named “Fepard Shairey” who shits $1,000 bills and answers only to the voice of Barack Obama? But I digress.The point is that I was an idiot. I had terrible taste in boys and no concept of what a relationship was. I dated Mark because he made a mix tape, wrote me love notes, and wanted to buy me cat’s-eye sunglasses. I didn’t want a boyfriend, I wanted a gal pal.The criteria for the quintessential impractical teenage girl crush are as follows. A man must be:1. Non-threatening
2. Incompetent
3. Obsessive to the point of stalking
4. Have a childlike fascination with something useless (like trains or astronomy)
5. Have girlish features (high cheekbones, no body hair)
6. Metrosexual/Gay clothingWith these six points in place, I don’t think I would be out of line to say that every girl under 16 is a secret lesbian. Girls want to love someone who can’t love them back, someone they have to take care of. They want the underdog, the nerd, the drifter, the mysterious stranger. They want to save and fix and coddle, and in return, they expect obsessive, 24-hour love and attention.Basically, girls want a doll, or a baby, or a cat to put in a bonnet. At 16, it becomes a doll with a dick. But not much else has changed.Here are five manchildren I wanted to make magazine collages with while listening to The Cure and eating chocolate-covered cherries.
CHRISTIAN SLATER IN UNTAMED HEARTUntamed Heart is a completely re-fucking-tarded movie about a drifter/orphan with an implanted baboon heart who falls in love with Marisa Tomei and then dies in her car. Whoops, spoiler alert. He dies! Sweet Jesus, did I love him.In the above unintentionally hilarious clip, a very flat-chested Marissa Tomei combs Christian Slater’s wet hair for two whole minutes while he stares at her rack and talks about how he pushes people away. Red flags, but she thinks it is cute! Fast-forward to 2:20 to see him cop the most awkward titty grab this side of a newborn kangaroo. I cannot stress enough how long she spends combing his hair.Eventually, they take off their 90s jeans to have sex, but instead of getting a boner, he weeps in her arms while she rocks him back and forth like a fucking newborn baby. Then she says the most unhealthy words ever uttered in the history of film: “I’m going to fall in love with you, but YOU DON’T HAVE TO LOVE ME BACK.” No, Marisa Tomei, no!Untamed Heart is a terrible message about love wrapped inside terrible dialogue delivered by terrible actors. I was smitten.Incompetent Man-Child Rating:
Nonthreatening—9 /10 (Baboon heart prevents much physical action)
Incompetent—6/10 (Saves her from a rape, but is stabbed in the process)
Obsessive to the point of stalking—10/10 (He watches her sleep. He watches her sleep!!)
Childlike fascination with something—?/10 (Don’t remember and won’t watch again)
Girlish features, very little body hair—4 /10 (Has some chest hair since he is 24, after all)
Dresses gay—N/A (Barely can dress himself due to severe mental retardation/baboon features)
JOHN CRYER IN PRETTY IN PINKDuckie is what every teenage girl wants, the quirky nice guy who understands you without you having to say a word and also wears bolo ties! Duckie lip-syncs to classic blues records, has a fabulous Flock of Seagulls-meets-Danzig pompadour, and would do anything in the world for Andie. I loved him because he was artsy, but in retrospect, my gaydar was highly underdeveloped. Ducky obviously likes penises.“I live to like you!” Duckie says to Andy, which is disturbing, and should not be considered a good thing by anyone’s standards. But to a virginal teenager, ego-stroking and obsessive pining is exactly what makes a man attractive. Little did we know that once our parents stopped paying our rent, a man who follows you around town and says things like “I would have died for you” is when you call the police.Duckie is a classic character, but in reality, he’d be a pretty awful boyfriend. Let’s be honest—he probably cries every time you go to the bathroom.Incompetent Man-Child Rating:
Nonthreatening—4/10 (See: Duckie Takes a Stand wherein Duckie tries to beat up a 49-year-old James Spader in order to stop him from appearing in Crash.)
Incompetent—5/10 (Actually has a day job, even if he does seem to work during school hours)
Obsessive to the point of stalking—9/10 (Yeah, it’s pretty much the plot of the movie)
Childlike fascination—4/10 (Bolo ties, Otis Redding)
Girlish features—10/10 (Looks exactly like Jon Cryer, but even younger.)
Dresses gay—9/10 (Brian Setzer swallowed a hipster and shat out Duckie.)
JULIAN SANDS IN ROOM WITH A VIEWFucking hell, I loved this movie and I loved Julian Sands in this movie but the whole thing is a box of shit. I loved it because Julian is blond and obsessed with Helena Bonham Carter and because there was Victorian shit all over the Victorian screen, and there was also opera involved (very grown up, OK?).Helena Bonham Carter can’t be with Julian Sands because she loves him, of course. Meanwhile, she is engaged to Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis) but can’t admit she doesn’t love him because then there would be no story. Also, considering the trajectory of Daniel Day-Lewis’s career as opposed to Julian Sands‘s, she made the wrong choice.But Julian really loves her, and as such, he has to convince her to love him back because that is what normal, healthy people do. So Julian pleads with Helena in this manipulative fashion not to marry Cecil:“He doesn’t love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.”So Helena decides that she must immediately go to Italy to escape him. Like you do.The story is awful, and the characters are just melted neurotic piles of teatime and goo. In retrospect, what I thought was romantic (to push away your true love and force him to chase you like a little boy with Down syndrome giving away free hugs) is actually really obnoxious.In the above clip, Julian Sands has a “creed” (Beauty, Joy, Love) which he repeats from up in a tree as his enabling father explains it means “the eternal yes.” I don’t know, either. These people don’t have jobs.Anyway, it kind of makes sense that E.M. Forster was homosexual, because this story is super-gay.Incompetent Man-Child Rating:
Nonthreatening—10/10 (Is Victorian)
Incompetent—9/10 (Not sure if he really does anything or even has a job)
Obsessive to the point of stalking—8/10 (The title of the movie is Room With a View, AKA an empty room with no curtains for stalking you and watching you undress.)
Childlike fascination—6/10 (He makes question marks out of the food on his plate—don’t ask.)
Girlish features, very little body hair—8/10 (His pubic hair is as blond and fine as a newborn baby’s.)
Dresses gay—10/10 (See also: Is Victorian)
JOHNNY DEPP AS EDWARD SCISSORHANDSEdward Scissorhands is the quintessential art-schoolgirl crush. He toddles about like a newborn Goth, terrifyingly wide-eyed. He is completely incapable of taking care of himself. Edward Scissorhands is everything a girl with no self-esteem wants in a boyfriend: a useless ghost pet! He can’t really manipulate the landscape of reality due to the fact that he doesn’t have hands. That’s where the ladies come in.In all of the bedlam, Edward somehow manages to accrue enough funds for a bitchin’ leather cat suit. How is he getting his money for his clubbing outfits, since he cuts everyone’s hair for free? If he’s like every other Goth, he gets it from his parents. But this Goth is different; his parents are dead. And so there are unexplained plot holes.Look, a straitjacket alone is almost $250.Unfortunately for most Goths, Edward is capable of sending you into PTSD panic attack if you’ve ever been raped at knifepoint. That leaves a small minority who are ready to open their hearts to a useless zombie with no capacity for hatred or anger. And they are all pictured dancing in the above video.Incompetent Man-Child Rating:
Nonthreatening—10/10 (Is Edward Scissorhands)
Incompetent—10/10 (Is Edward Scissorhands)
Obsessive to the point of stalking—10/10 (Is Edward Scissorhands)
Childlike fascination—10/10 (Hands made of scissors)
Girlish features, very little body hair—10/10 (Is Johnny Depp)
Dresses gay—10/10 (Is Edward Scissorhands)
THOMAS DOLBYSteampunk-styled computer nerd musician with sexy lips. OK, I can’t really disagree with this one. Sometimes you get something right.

PSYCHOS NEED LOVE, TOO

Originally published on Street Carnage

Marriage proposals are hot commodity on the Internet these days.On YouTube alone, there are 602 results for the search term “!!!Best Marriage Proposal EVER!!!”, and that’s not even including “!!EPIC Marriage Proposal!!” or “!!Greatest Marriage Proposal of ALL TIME!!” or the hundreds that no doubt misspell the word “marriage.”In the past, a marriage proposal was considered “epic” if you dropped the ring in a glass of champagne. It was especially epic if she swallowed the ring and choked and died. But in 2012, you can’t get married without a choreographer, a complete Broadway cast, a video editor with 7-10 years’ experience using Final Cut Pro, and a stable of thoroughbred horses dressed like Lady Gaga.Here’s a typical proposal video I picked out at random (one of 602, single ladies!), in which waiters bring out four plates of something that appears to be melted ghee or lemon jelly with the words “Will. You. Marry. Me.” sloppily written on each individual plate in chocolate or meat or blood or something.My favorite part is how she’s checking her iPhone when the lemon meat crème brulee proposal butter plates come out. Classy and attentive!I’m not a picky romantic, but I really hope my boyfriend doesn’t propose to me via a series of plates. (If you’re reading this sweetheart, I would prefer the proposal to take place at a family-style restaurant, spelled out across the front lawn using hundreds of roast chickens and bowls of corn.)Meanwhile, a marriage proposal is considered an “!!EPIC FAIL!!” if the woman says no and is caught on camera doing so. Even more embarrassing is when you accidentally get a boom mike in one of the shots.Personally, I don’t see what’s so awful about saying no. It’s actually quite kind and unselfish to let someone move on if you don’t want to commit to them. Plus, not getting married stops horrible things like this from happening, but I’m sure they love each other and are nice and will have white babies or whatever).With that being said, I believe I actually have found the one !!!!!!EPIC WORST MOST EMBARASSINGLY BAD WEDDING PROPOSAL EVER YOU WILL LMFOA I DARE YOU NOT TO LOVE THIS!!!!! most terrible wedding proposal in history.This rich Russki named Alexey Bykov faked his own death in front of his girlfriend Irina in order to prove to her how “meaningless” her life would be without him. Clearly a modest and self-assured man!Like a Dostoevsky character without the interesting qualities, Alexey Insecurenicov Sociopathilov (Douchenozzledov) covered himself in fake blood and hired a film director as well as actors to pretend to be paramedics and pronounce him dead at the scene as his girlfriend watched in horror.Because when you really love someone, you need to scare them into loving you back. That is just how love works!(Then again, what did we expect from a country whose president is planning to don a fake beak and fly with cranes?)Thankfully the Super AIDS of terrible proposals was caught on video HERE.Fast-forward to 46 seconds to see a conflict-shaken Irina practically diarrhea all over her thighs as inappropriate “celebratory” fireworks go off on a lawn. Alexey actually has to place her in a bear hold in order to stop her from fleeing, like you do in all good marriage proposals. After a jump cut (during which I assume he plied her with vodka and pills) she inexplicably agrees to marry this psychotic imbecile. She will now be subjected to a lifetime of STDs he picks up from Russian trannies while on “business trips.”What we, the viewers, don’t know, however, is that this wasn’t Alexey’s first big plan for how to propose to his girlfriend! In reality, he had conceptualized for years before settling upon the perfect romantic scheme to steal his loved one’s precious heart and give her PTSD.Here are some of the other ideas Alexey had before he settled on the car accident.
SAW TRAP OF LOVE“Hello Irina, I want to play a game,” says a strange voice, which later turns out to be Alexey’s fourth-grade teacher.Across the room, Alexey hangs limp and bloody from an open iron maiden.“Up until this point in your life, you have passively enjoyed being loved by Alexey. Now, it is time for you to put your FINGER on what it is you really love about him. Hidden inside your knuckle is the combination to stop the iron maiden from closing. Are you willing to lose a piece of yourself in order to save him?”Irina uses a tiny guillotine to chop off her finger. Inside the stump where her ring finger used to be, the phrase “Will you marry me?” is written on the bone. Alexey jumps out from inside the iron maiden and yells “Surprise!” He places the ring on the finger stump and takes an overjoyed Irina to the hospital to reattach her lost digit. Three weeks later, she dies of staph infection. Fireworks go off!
THE WEDDING RING FACTORYAlexey drives Irina to an abandoned wedding ring factory, where he promises to “make all her dreams come true.” Once inside, a group of Haitian refugees with AIDS rape her for three straight days without respite. As Irina defecates on herself, the assailants force her to dig through her own feces. There, in a pile of her own waste, she finds a diamond ring and a note that says “Spend the rest of your life with me.” The Haitians then launch into a choreographed dance number set to Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as an overjoyed Alexey bursts into the room, having videotaped the entire staged prank for YouTube. Three weeks later, she dies of a staph infection. Fireworks everywhere!
IF YOUR EYE OFFENDS THEEAlexey suggests a romantic picnic, during which the couple will take art supplies into the country to “sketch beautiful butterflies.” Once there, Alexey pushes Irina face-first onto two pencils, blinding her for life. After reassuring her that she is still beautiful (but only to him), he proposes to her with a piece of chalk that he claims is a million-gazillion-dollar diamond. She gladly accepts, knowing that she is unlovable now. She cannot see the fireworks, but they are beautiful. She dies.
PROPOSAL AT SEAIrina has always wanted to visit Kenya and pet a real giraffe, but it looks like this Russian beauty is in for the ride of her life because she’s about to be abducted and sold to Somali Pirates! They use her body as a human bridge in order to cross over to another boat, but when they seize control of the crew, Irina discovers the ship’s captain is none other than Alexey, who lights off fireworks as the pirates sing “That’s Amore.” Then the pirates rape the both of them and throw them into the sea.
MY FEMININE SIDEConvincing Irina that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body, Alexey fakes undergoing a lengthy sex-change operation, then proposes to her as a woman. The only catch is that the now feminine Alexey wants to marry her as a man. He pays for her to have her breasts removed, then he breaks up with her because she is ugly and has no boobs. Fireworks!
(As an aside, typing in the phrase: “!!Totally Normal Marriage Proposal!!” brought up zero exact matches, except for this awesome conspiracy video which claims that Beyoncé’s baby isn’t real, it’s a doll.)

New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo Park

I didn't plan to take portraits of people at the Ren Faire on Labor Day, I planned to eat a turkey leg and watch some jousting. Once I started walking around, though, I knew I had to document the people at this event.

The only way to get a decent photo of a stranger is go up to that stranger and ask them for it. So, that's what happened.

Personally, I don't have a problem walking up to someone and asking if I can take their picture, because I always have a good reason for wanting it. There's something about them I think is cool. If you're afraid to approach someone, you probably don't want their picture for honorable reasons.

I'm not into the stalkerish "telephoto from across the room" style photos. They seem sleazy. Were you hired to catch someone cheating on their wife? Then why are you safely spying on them with a zoom lens? Talk to people, have a conversation, exchange email addresses, and above all, give them the chance to refuse having their photo taken. After all, who wants to feel like a creepy stalker at the end of the day?

With that being said, here's a few of my favorites.

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1 in 4: Hecklers, Rape Jokes, and the Comedic Process

(A conversation with Ted Alexandro, Jon Fisch, and Kurt Metzger)
[image error] I'm gonna tell you something straight off the mothafuckin' press. I ain't comin' for no foolishness.

Lately, there has been a major communication breakdown between the people who write jokes and the people who are supposed to laugh at them. The feminists have stopped laughing and started blogging. Comedians are left dangling limp microphones between their legs, faced with the ultimatum to either apologize or start trending on Twitter.

What once was an art form and a refuge for the counterculture is now turning into a service industry. Audience members demand 100% satisfaction or they’ll send your jokes back in the mail like slingback pumps from Zappos. Entertain them, or they’ll leave you a one-star Yelp review for not having enough callbacks. Comedy goers have done everything from throwing a wine glass in Tammy Pescatelli's face to demanding that Daniel Tosh be fired from Comedy Central. 

Says comedian Ted Alexandro: “Live comedy has a different dynamic in which people think of it as a conversation. If you go to a ballet or a play and you see a rape depicted, you’re not going to interrupt the performance. But comedy kind of breaks that wall, people think they’re in a one-on-one conversation.”

Take, for example, the infamous “cookie blogger” whose friend heckled Daniel Tosh by yelling out “Rape jokes are never funny!” and storming out of the club.

Oddly, the blogger claims she and her friend had no idea who the comedian was before seeing his performance — presumably because he is not a cookie. She was not aware of the host of the most popular show on Comedy Central, yet she still took it upon herself to later transcribe pieces of his act and present them for all the world to judge.

The last time someone who knew nothing about comedy sat in an audience and wrote down what a comedian said, Lenny Bruce had to go to court for saying the word “tits.”


Daniel Tosh's objectively unfunny rape joke, which no one could possibly laugh at, ever. 

“Being at a comedy club is really akin to looking at a painting or listening to a piece of music, it’s not for you to respond,” says Alexandro. “It’s something to be experienced in the moment. It’s supposed to make you feel. You should think to yourself: why did I feel that? But don’t interrupt a person. You’re not going to go to a museum and yell out while looking at a painting: ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing in this painting!’ because someone else next to you is having their own experience.”

What has emerged here is a confusing three-pronged argument:  Is it okay to heckle? Is it okay to tell a joke that offends women? Do rape jokes actually encourage rape?

While comedians are interested in preserving their art form, radical feminists are convinced that rape jokes cause rape.

“Every time a man tells a rape joke he is participating in and adding to a global ideology which states that sexual violence (and sexualizing violence) is normal, biological, acceptable, funny, or not that big of a deal.  Every time a man hears a rape joke and says nothing, he is complicit – he is lending support to that culture.” — Exerpted from: A Man Is A Rape Supporter If...

What the feminists are missing in this scenario of “comedian as rape supporter” is that many standup comics are some of the most sensitive and empathetic people you’ll ever meet. That is, if a comedian is joking about rape, there’s a good chance he’s joking about it because he’s upset by the fact that it exists in the world.

But the main problem with this kind of stodgy, academic analysis of rape jokes is that it has absolutely nothing to do with what is actually happening on a comedy stage. Nor does it take into consideration why human beings like to tell each other jokes. In the end, the writer just comes off like some kind of retarded Vulcan with a pussy tighter than an unopened jar of gravy and a closet full of penises.

“It’s not cut and dry,” says comedian Jon Fisch. “These guys could very well be on your side.”
 
“When I joke about a difficult topic, I'm coming from a place of deep engagement with that topic,” says Alexandro. “It’s an exploration of: 'How can I say something about this in an indirect way?' In order for it to be funny it has to be an indirect route. We’re not giving a speech, but, hopefully —  in a context that is funny — a perspective is revealed that, in some way, advocates for that issue.”

 
Ted Alexandro on abortion, because he hates babies and people and is an all-around bad person.

“[Rape jokes] are not funny. They are about power, silencing, and privilege”  says Kim Rippere, who is probably the kind of woman who attaches a creepy significance to blow jobs. 

Meanwhile, blogger Martin S. Pribble, who in no way has a faggy name, claims: “By perpetuating things like “rape humour”, we are bringing rape up from “one of the many undesirable things humans do” to the realm of “acceptable”.

Somewhere along the line, people seem to have lost the ability to separate social commentary from advocacy and approval.

I asked Kurt Metzger if he’d ever joked about a painful topic. “Of course,” he said. “All jokes are based on pain. Even the clean ones.” 

“Why did you choose to joke about something painful?” I asked him. “What was your motive?” 

“So I won't get depressed and kill myself,” he replied. “I remember the day my dad died. I called my friend Amy Schumer. I go "Amy, my dad's dead". She was quiet for a second, then she goes, "Jesus, really? That's crazy. I'm at the zoo eating an ice cream cone and I just found a hundred dollars on the ground!" And it made me laugh so hard. That's when I realized there is no such thing as too soon, there is only too late."  



Kurt Metzger on “The Nasty Show,” where he discussed only wholesome, proper topics such as Scrabble, knitting, and playing the flute. 


 * * * Separate from the issue of appropriate material is the mode of communication the Tosh protester chose: heckling.

And the fact that Tosh’s alleged comeback (I say ‘alleged’ because there is only one account of what he said, and it’s right above a recipe for Nutella cake) came as a direct response only after this woman chose to heckle him. 

“I think to make it about you by yelling out and interrupting a performance really, to me, demonstrates more about the person and where you’re at,” says Alexandro. “Like, perhaps you’re still grieving something. But you’re really being disrespectful to a room full of people who are out for a communal experience.” 

Says Fisch: “I looked up the definition of heckler: "Shouting to interrupt a speech with which you disagree." There’s already two angry words in there: shouting and interrupt! As someone who has been heckled, this brings up a lot of stuff... being heckled, it can turn a switch on you. It flips a switch that makes you not a performer any more, it makes you just a person up there. Maybe Tosh said something he regretted, maybe he didn't.” 

I asked Alexandro how he would feel if he knew he told a joke that had accidentally offended someone in the audience. 

 "It’s my hope that I’ve done enough work on myself that what I express on stage now is what I mean," he told me. "It comes from a loving intent. Like, I’m introducing this because I care about it and I mean it. So, in that case, I don’t really care if someone is hurt by it, because that’s not my intent." 

Says Metzger: "I want people to laugh and I feel genuinely bad if I really hurt someone. However I have no mercy for phony political outrage, which is usually what it is." 

Blogger Elissa Bassist comes very close to almost understanding what’s happening in the mind of a comic, but stops short at actually connecting her final analysis to the creative process. 

"Tosh was more than “just kidding.”," she writes. "He was angry. His “joke” was reactive to the so-called heckler who called him out in front of an audience. He used humor to cut her down, to remind her of her own vulnerability, to emphasize who was in control.” 

True, you do need to remind the audience of who is in control. Only it has nothing to do with misogyny and everything to do with directing your environment as a performer.   

Jon Fisch compares controlling your audience to an experience he had while working in a psych ward. 

"I’d been working there for about a year and we were restraining one of the kids in the 'quiet room'," he recalls. "A visitor was coming in and clearly had never seen this before. And the look on that person’s face compared to the numbness that I felt — like, this is just part of my job, he’s out of control, so we had him restrained — it's similar to how people are just looking at that rape comment. They have no idea about anything that is behind that. This is part of a comedy club. This is part of his act. This is part of an interaction where you don’t have all the facts." 


Jon Fisch offends feminists everywhere by discussing hairy backs. 

While explaining how Tosh was "using his power to humiliate the woman," Bassist admits that she, herself, knows a little bit about making funny rape jokes. 

"I have a rape joke myself,” she reveals. “When I wrote about my sexual assault for a nonfiction workshop in my MFA program, I called the piece “rape-portage,” as in “reportage”... I’d laugh at my own joke, which I said aloud only to myself and a few close friends.” 

Droll! Okay, let’s make a rule: You are not allowed to write anything about comedy until you know what constitutes a complete joke. That is, the secret nickname you had for your MFA paper is not a joke with a punchline, nor is attending a nonfiction workshop the same thing as being on stage and responding to a heckler. 

If you want to see some more of Elissa's killer comedy stylings and what makes her an expert in crowd control, she's over here on YouTube yammering about Jews and adoring the utter shit out of herself. 

The point is, if you're going set yourself up as a comedy expert and start telling other comics what they can and cannot say, then you really shouldn't suck that fucking hard. There's nothing about that performance that couldn't be improved by putting her head in that "reverse bear trap" mask from Saw. Yet she, and so many others like her, have set themselves up as the gatekeepers of comedy. And people are listening.


Louis CK confronts a heckler both inside and outside of the comedy club (Easter egg: look for Kurt Metzger on the stairs outside the club). 

That Tosh used his humor to “cut someone down” is echoed in the heckler's initial account from Cookies for Breakfast, where the blogger herself subtly admits that Tosh was only doing his job. 

“It was humiliating...” she says, “Especially as the audience guffawed in response to Tosh, their eyes following us as we made our way out of there. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said about me.” 

I have to wonder if maybe this ego-bruised young lass was actually more upset at being “cut down” by a professional comedian and laughed at by an entire audience than she was about the initial rape joke. 

"Did you hear what Chris Rock said about Tosh?" Fisch asks me. "He said 'The Laugh Factory is our gym.' It's a workout space. You can't hold a comedian accountable for something said in that environment." 

* * * 
Perhaps this is where the argument that "rape jokes cause rape" comes in. If the comedian is just working out some new material, or — god forbid, if the comedian is actually a good person who, like Ted Alexandro, has “done enough work on himself” to know the intent behind his joke — then you're left with nothing but your personal opinion. And no one cares about that. 

But once this new ball is in play, the conversation changes. Rape jokes aren’t just unfunny or offensive, now they actually cause rape. And, as such, a new breed of women feel that they have a social responsibility to heckle you. They feel entitled, because they believe they are stopping a future rape. 

"The problem with rape jokes is that guys who seem normal but are actually rapists hear the jokes and interpret them as a secret wink and nod that you approve of what they’re doing and that you would, or are, doing it too,” says blogger 'Talkin’ Reckless'. 

Unfortunately, this bold statement did not come accompanied with any references or footnotes, and I have yet to find any studies or interviews in which a rapist claims that he thought rape was okay because someone had joked about it. Is that the rapist's version of "I'm sorry officer, I didn't see that sign,"? 

"Okay, you wanna discuss that?” asks Fisch, when I ask him if he thinks rape jokes contribute to rape. “That's tough. I think there's an understanding when you're going into a comedy club that he's making jokes about it. Like, Louis CKs joke was defended as being funny and appropriate, but, in essence it's probably angrier than Daniel Tosh's.” 

"I don’t dismiss that all of these things are worthy of discussion,” says Alexandro. “But when the entree into the discussion is Daniel Tosh’s joke on a Tuesday night that one person left the room over, it’s disingenuous to me. But maybe that’s what starts the conversation.” 

In the end, neither Ted or Jon proffer an answer. It’s a far cry from the evil, women-hating comic masterminds that many feminists have concocted in their blogs. 

"Do you think you have ever encouraged anyone to act out in a violent way because of something you joked about? Do you think it's possible?” I asked Kurt Metzger. 

“If only I had that kind of power,” he says. “This is the old argument against comic books and video games and pornos dusted off once again for my medium.” 


* * * 
 "I'm doing my act and a guy comes in.  I know he's a cop — I've had plenty of experience with them.  He starts taking down as much of my act as he can.  He doesn't miss a dirty word; he doesn't get too much of a rest.  He arrests me.  We go to court.  Me and my lawyers have to defend the act he says I gave.  All he says are the dirty words.  His act is obscene... There's something screwy about the whole thing." — Lenny Bruce 
 * * * 
Now, what if you’re a comedian who is determined to go on stage and tell your rape funnies, but you're concerned you might be doing the comedies wrong?  Do not be disheartened! Feminists are going to help you write your jokes! 

Here is a handy flow chart that Talkin’ Reckless compiled to, quote: “help comedians decide whether a rape joke is a “good” one or a really terrible one.” She seems nice!


[image error]  click for a larger version

Wow! So much helpful advice in here! I especially related to “Go for it!” because that kind of thing is super inspiring for comedians. She's like "Go for it!" and I'm like "Yeah, let's do this!" and then we rock it, comedy style! Also, don't forget that if you offend someone from stage, you should always immediately “give a sincere apology” and then “move on”. I'm sure all the good comedians out there are already apologizing in the middle of their sets, but I think this is going to be a game changer for some people. Joan Rivers, I'm looking in your direction! 

After reading this flowchart, you will not be surprised to learn that the feminist movement could be starting to fracture. Lisa Kerr is a feminist blogger who recently wrote a post entitled “The Feminist Yawn” about her issues with the movement. 

Kerr says she has been slowly distancing herself from the movement, due, in part, to the Daniel Tosh controversy. 

"Rape isn't caused by comedians nor is rape encouraged by comedians,” she told me. “What the feminist bloggers did that really caused me to separate myself from them was to implicate Daniel Tosh for causing or encouraging rape. I think that's negligent and irresponsible... They also wrongly assumed that Daniel Tosh's audience was largely male and wholly misogynist, which is untrue. Daniel Tosh has over a million female viewers and fans. I'm one of them. We are women who love comedy, who love sex, and who love men". 

Unfortunately, the "women who love comedy" are quickly being eaten by their own. Even Jezebel darling Lindy West (who usually sticks to hyper-safe topics like "racism is bad") dared to posit an actual human opinion when she insinuated in her article How To Make A Rape Joke that maybe, possibly, there are SOME rape jokes that are kinda funny sometimes, maybe...? Because of this, she garnered negative comments from feminists who actually disagreed with her for once. The weird thing is, she wasn't even defending Daniel Tosh. She was just defending the idea of jokes. 

With all this grandstanding, I wonder: is it possible that we need rape jokes now more than ever? 

"Look," Jon Fisch tells me. "Daniel Tosh did not say, "Hey America! Hey world! I want this person to be raped!" 

"But people think he did," I respond. 

"Right," he says. "And that's the problem."