Woke Has Gone Too Far: REID #245
+ being the only cis dude on the comedy lineup
SHORT:
Woke has gone too far!!!
(Jimmy Award1 tickets are a lottery this year)
MEDIUM:
Well (update from last week) we finally got power back after several days of pretending candlelight was romantic and not just… open flame. Then I got a haircut. And saw Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, which was exactly like Selling Sunset if everyone had gout.
On Saturday, I went “thrifting” — something I never do, but I needed something to wear to the Tribeca Film Festival, and everything in my closet was lookin’ like a P.E. uniform to me, so I trudged through 300-degree Bushwick and bought a white jacket and jeans from a woman in a van.
I did not end up wearing them, because Jess accidentally tossed them in the wash 30 minutes before I had to leave. I did, however, try them on soaking wet in a fugue state to “see if I could make them work2”.
“COULD BE KINDA NICE TO WEAR WET CLOTHES LIKE A/C ON THE GO!”
In the end, I opted for a blazer that’s too small on me.
LONG:
I was invited to attend a documentary at Tribeca that I was interviewed for two years ago about gender/comedy/Julia Sweeney/Pat. I showed up early and walked the press line with people before settling into my seat and worrying about what I was going to look like/what I said. Good news is? I wasn’t in it at all! My part was cut!
After the screening, we gathered at Club Cumming to do a live roast of Pat/Julia. My friend Grace hosted and introduced me as “a stone cold killer and the only cis man on the lineup… HE WISHES” — which was rude! Everyone who reads this newsletter knows my biological c*ck is huge and I murder daily!!!
Because I’m a nerd, I did way too much research in preparation. A few key facts:
It’s Pat has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. But! To be fair! Everyone who saw it in theatres!? Killed themselves before they could leave a review.
Julia insists Pat wasn’t trans. Yeah… trans people are funny.
Julia based Pat on a coworker who “drooled and had confusing body language.” Aw, babe — that wasn’t a coworker. That was a mirror.
She also once said finding out she was a Libra, not a Virgo, was “traumatic”. Just wait till she finds out she’s a f*ggot.
Julia says she created Pat to escape traditional femininity. Girl, you could’ve just tried pegging! Traumatize one man, not an entire generation3.
On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Julia played a terrorist grandmother. The producers said, “No need to audition. We saw It’s Pat. We know you can bomb.” That movie was He-heroshima. Should’ve called it The Pat-hattan project.
In Monster’s University, she played a large, middle-aged female monster with five eyes. The role required zero makeup.
Quentin Tarantino did an uncredited rewrite of the Pat movie (true fact) and you can tell even he was embarrassed, he didn’t even cast himself as “White Guy Who Says a Slur”. This is a man who’s proudly filmed Uma Thurman’s toes in HD. But even he was like, “Keep your shoes on, Julia.”
Sorry if you hated those. She really liked them!
I love trans comedy and the trans community and the documentary and how it wrestled with the pros and cons and nuances of Julia’s SNL character Pat and how things can be so many things at once.
I ultimately did have to bounce early from the event, so I missed the end of Julia’s speech about Bonobos, so if anyone sees her around, please ask her “what the end of her speech about the Bonobos at Club Cumming that one night” was.
Snack Of The Week: the Pat cookie featured above (surprisingly good) and the bowl I inhaled pre-Pat roast at the Chelsea Chipotle that was out of sour cream and cheese and chicken and still made us pay full price. The man behind us asked for a discount 47 times.
C U Next Tuesday
Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not [like when people slip on ice].
If this is your first time reading, pls check out the archives.
Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Things Coming Up:
8pm & 9pm June 12th: I’m doing Savage Comedy @ Logan’s Run & It Girls @ Singers
June 16th: I’m doing stand-up at T4T Bell House
June 20th & 21st: You can come to my play-in-progress workshop (reply to this for tix)
June 27th: You can come see a very special Going Down Live! at UCBNY
Which is devastating because watching 17-year-olds belting for their lives has been my birthday tradition for the past five years. I like to spend my special day sobbing alone in a balcony seat thinking, “I, too, peaked in high school.”
“COULD BE KINDA NICE TO WEAR WET CLOTHES LIKE A/C ON THE GO!”
When I did the pegging joke, Julia yelled, “I don’t know what that is!” and her husband screamed, “DO NOT TELL HER!”