Controversial Comedy

Controversial Comedy
By Kirsten Anderberg (http://www.kirstenanderberg.com)

Whether I am sledgehammering a bathroom scale naked in army boots, or making sign language interpreters go through hell signing the song “Vasectomy,” I am known as a controversial feminist comedian. It is actually amazing that I do not get into more trouble than I do, with the political buttons I push. I have been charged with peace disturbance and obscenity in Santa Cruz, 8 times, yet never convicted. I have also been charged with internal violations of city management rules for similar “crimes” in Seattle three times now. I won the first 2 times and the 3rd time is being litigated now. I have had management at fairs tell me to say what I want in the aisles as I busk (street perform), but be careful what I say on stage, and then at other fairs, I’ve been told to say whatever I want on stage, but be careful in the aisles busking. There is no way to predict what will happen when you actually unleash feminist comedy into the public domain for all to see and hear freely!

I kept getting in trouble in Santa Cruz due to my political messages, giving props to welfare moms and singing lesbian take-offs on old standards, such as “My boyfriend’s back and there’s gonna be trouble, hey, la de la, she’s a lesbian, he thinks that we both want him and he gets his pleasure doubled (right!) hey la de la, she’s a lesbian now...” Nothing pisses off an old, hard-nosed Patriarch like a lesbian making fun of him on HIS American streets, in his face! And the Market in Seattle asked me not to perform a feminist comedy song about the Myth in Genesis, saying the reason for my censorship was the Market is a “family place.” Christians seem to get upset about my having the same free speech rights as sidewalk Jesus preachers routinely.

In my early 20’s, I was influenced heavily by Santa Cruz’s Myth California Pageant Protests, and Ann Simonton’s beauty activism. I did performances where I would sledgehammer bathroom scales my fans brought to me to pummel, calling this “Operation Rescue.” I would recite a poem, Fat Girls Are Dangerous (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagefatgrrls.html), right before obliterating the scales. The poem says, “A fat grrl is abnormal. Different. Other. Not normal. Not okay... A fat grrl should be stunted. Dieted. Drugged...A fat grrl should be ashamed. Sorry.
A fat grrl should shed big chunks of herself. A fat grrl doesn't really need to be that way, you know. A FAT GRRL MUST BE REDUCED TO SIZE. A fat grrl does not fit. Is out of control. A fat grrl is uncontrollable. Dangerously out of control. A FAT GRRL IS DANGEROUS!” I even performed this act naked, at well over 200 pounds, naked in army boots and a nun’s habit, in front of 5,000 people, one night in the Oregon woods. And I got an overwhelming response for the show. Out of all the shows I have done, I would say the shows where I sledgehammer bathroom scales always deliver the most passionate response after the show.

One year at the Oregon Country Fair (OCF), I decided to burn my camping pass on stage as part of my act! I went on stage at the Midnight Show, in the wee hours of the night, and was going to lead the whole crowd of thousands into burning our passes together as the ultimate act of defiance, but was talked, at the last minute, into just burning my own pass on stage due to *the fire hazard* all those little pieces of burning paper in the audience would cause in the bone dry forest we were camping in. As I burned my pass on stage, where everyone could see it was gone, I wondered if I would walk off stage and be escorted out of the fair! I obviously had no pass. But I made it through the rest of the fair without my pass, since most of the security saw me burn it on stage, which helped. The year before that, I had been wearing an American flag mini-skirt on stage during my act, and took it off and burned it. So, fire was a reoccurring theme for a while.

One of the more shocking but hilarious skits I have performed is a re-creation of a drug commercial from TV. My son suggested we perform it, and his dry sense of humor and wry delivery, made this an instant hit. He and I would stand on stage, and he would say, “Mom?” And I would reply, “Yes, son.” Then he would say, “Have you ever done drugs?” Now, the OCF was known for its Deadhead-like reputations of psychedelia, so this question set off waves of laughter in the audience immediately. I acted nervous, fiddled with my collar, looked at my wrist, as if looking at my watch, and did other physical things to signal my nervousness with his question which I was not answering, just like the lady in the commercial. He then said, “Mom?” And just like the commercial, I answered, “That is a really good question, son. Someday, we should talk about that.” And then my son and I walked off stage. The crowd was doubled over laughing. It was really weird and seemed very sacrilege to be performing drug humor, Cheech and Chong humor, with my son! But he was over 18.

One year I was performing a song called “Spike A Tree For Jesus,” and the signers were making me laugh so hard as they signed it out, that I thought I had to become a more challenging act for the ASL interpreters. So the next year, I was doing a song called “Vasectomy,” and I decided to make it a circus on stage. The signer was signing crazy stuff, like “Vasectomy, just like a navel orange, I’ve been freed, it’s all juice, and there’s no seed! Vasectomy, what a vas deferens it would be!” And the sign for vasectomy was this sort of scissor snipping right at the groin, which was entertaining, as well. But then I brought Hacki Ginda (http://www.hackifun.com/) into the mix, to do some miming of the song too. Hacki was doing things like jump-roping with his genitalia, while the signer battled to keep up. I don’t know, it seemed so wholesome while we were doing it!

I began to get hassled for my performances in 1986 in Santa Cruz, but instead of turning into a Shrinking Violet and becoming less controversial, I decided to become *more* controversial, and more flamboyant, as it seemed the other way was similar to running and hiding. So I would just become larger than life, was my plan of attack! The police hassling me on the street had little costumes that gave them an immediate edge over me to innocent passersby. So I thought, “What could trump the power of a cop uniform in public?” And I decided a nun’s habit would work. So I put on the nun’s habit and could do things twice as controversial, under the protected shield of that black and white garb.

But that whole nun thing quickly degraded into kitsch and in no time, I was selling Papalballs, paddleballs with pictures of the Pope on the side of the paddle that the ball hits. I began to juggle saint statues, even though I suck at juggling and dropped them, breaking their noses and hands off as much as anything, which actually made people laugh really hard. I began doing Holy Card readings, similar to Tarot Card readings, reinterpreting the traditional symbology of saints I learned in Catholic school. One particular holy card reading began a legacy of Spiritual Advisor work. I did a holy card reading for some folks on their way to OCF. I pulled a Saint Catherine of Alexandria holy card, and she is standing by a broken wheel. Out of the blue, I interpreted that to mean they needed to make sure their spare tire was in good repair before the trip to OCF. Due to this reading alone, these people actually bought a spare tire. And on the way to OCF, they had a tire blow out that ruined the rim and were able to go on as I (and St. Catherine) had told them to get a good spare. Soon I was attending underground weddings to give blessings, and began selling my 7 day Mother Zosima prayer candles. The nun habit lent itself to gaudy props as well. I wore a ball and chain I denied was there whenever I performed, made jokes about my “hemp habit,” and also had a George Bush Commemorative plastic weenie rosary made out of plastic deli hot dogs. I would chug water between songs out of a “Holy Water” container, and used brass collection plates for my tips.

It seems the world is used to seeing little Judy Collins clones and has no issue with women emulating that image. But if you are gonna go out on the street and act like a madwoman, talking about replacing your boyfriend with a lesbian, talking about how fat women are OKAY, talking about how motherhood is sacred, juggling Saint Lucy statues until the eyeballs on her platter roll off, well, that has CONTROVERSY written all over it. You can be a big burly guy and sing on the streets all day about male-centered politics and no one will bat an eyelid. But put a big burly woman out there, singing about woman-centered politics, and all hell breaks lose. But that is not enough to censor me. Let’s see...last time I had to up this to a nun’s habit. Where do you go to up it from here? I guess we will find out in the years to come!


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This is ARTICLE #5 of the WRITING BUSK-A-THON!! Written this afternoon, published at 4 pm, on 5/11/06. The next article will be out within the next 6 hours. I am researching and writing it now.
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