Episode 126: "Cool Story, Dennis"

Monologue Transcript

Rabbit, rabbit, motherfuckers. It’s Julie Klausner talking to you on August 1. We made it through the wilderness, virtually, it’s only August.

Hello. Hi everybody. It’s Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW. Boy oh boy. I just came back from a little trip. I was in Los Angeles. I got to watch an episode of The Newsroom from this season with our pal Patton Oswalt. Holy cow! Oh my god. I was having a successful time avoiding the episode so far from season 2. Wow! Did I miss a plot point in the first two episodes of the season in which Allison Pill became horribly burned? She looks like there’s something going on with her face that extends beyond the eyebrows she doesn’t have. There’s some Edvard Munch… There’s a chance she is a ghost. At the end of the season there will be a reveal. Shamalan will direct the last episode. No one can direct an episode of that show without Sorkin breathing…I feel like his breath always smells like Nutri-grain bars…I was going to say down the neck of whoever is directing.

He’s a short man, right? He’s a short, stocky blond Jew. I feel like he will breathe down the nape of you…is it called the nape? That part of your elbow that always gets eczema when it is humid? The other disturbing things that happened this week on The Newsroom include Will McAvoy wearing a purple V-neck. Men, never do that. I have no problem with a shawl collar, stick to your neutrals-grays, browns, blacks, whites, and taupe. If you play golf do pink, or checks of any kind. If I ever see anyone except for my dad, who gets a free pass in general because he gave me life, trying to do a purple V-neck and be taken seriously in the same stride, I will lose my mind. At one point, who plays the lady who works for TMI? It’s not Hope Davis or Sarah Polley, she made love to Will McAvoy, we later find out. I say that coming. She’s wearing a black slip, a full slip like Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 08. She’s wearing a thing that no woman wears after intercourse in 2011. It’s two years ago.

I was talking about this with our pal Aimee Mann. I have name-dropped my television watching buddies. I’m fine with it. And so are you, unless you’re not in which case, go listen to Car Talk. That’s the only other podcast besides this one right? Aimee Mann pointed out that the two year ago-ness of Newsroom is probably its most irrelevant feature. There are many things that are despicable about it, but as far as its irrelevance, the old news of it, the recently old news…the Newsroom would almost be more engaging if it covered events that happened 4 years ago. Something about having to remember the time that the gay veteran was booed at the Republican Candidate Debate just gets under my tits in the eczema zone. Yah skin! Summer skin.

In important news, I met Gloria Steinem since I spoke to you last. I had the opportunity to host the Bust 20th Anniversary Awards Party and Celebration live show at the Bell House last week. I got to give an award to Kathleen Hannah who spoke so beautifully that I got chills, and then I met Gloria Steinem. That was amazing. I want to thank Bust for letting me do that. I got to talk to Gloria Steinem back stage about Mad Men, and about the Source Family documentary. She said something in her speech about how we shouldn’t be nostalgic for the 50s. I lived though them and they were horrible.

I have given Gloria some shit in the past. I watched that Doc and talked about it with you. Because of her stoicism and seriousness she doesn’t come across as a lady with a loud sense of humor. She had to be that way. She had to go on Dick Cavett and hold her own while everyone else was trying to find a crack to ridicule the notion that women were unequal to men during a time in which the remote control had already been invented. I retract anything negative or any sort of reluctance to admit that Gloria Steinem is a true goddess. First of all she is so much smarter and gets it more than most women half her age. I have never seen anyone thinner or with a more striking profile. It’s not about her beauty.

I talked to her about the Source Family documentary and I said I really loved what you said about not being nostalgic for the 50s and even the 60s because people, and by people I mean Anthony Bourdain, Will McAvoy, the Dad whose kids you used to babysit for insert him here. He’d say, “One time I smoked a joint…” Cool story Dennis. How so many people are nostalgic for the freedom of the 50s and in reality it was another way to subjugate women and to keep them in their place.

She said during the civil rights movement women had the same roles as they did before. They were just fetching coffee for different people. She said the Civil Rights movement was important. I said Gloria, “I knew there’d be a black president before a female president.” She said, “I did too.” There are so many of us it’s confusing. We’re not a minority. Sexism is almost closer to homophobia because there’s an invisibility element to it. There are so many of us it is difficult for people to conceive that we are a minority of some kind. We are not technically.

I said, “I saw this movie about the Source Family.” I was changing the subject. I don’t know how to talk to people. “You know even in the 60s men thought it was ok to fuck a million different women and not be faithful to wives but they thought it was ok. You know when someone says, “it’s not the other people that bother me, it’s the dishonesty? The thing with cheating, it’s not the sex with someone else, it’s the dishonesty.” It’s both. In the documentary I was struck by how this hippie garbage bag was sticking their filthy kidney bean into ladies of all sorts and then blaming us for feeling jealousy as though it was part of our make-up of being uptight because we didn’t know how to ball properly. She said in one of the first issues of Ms. Magazine one of the cover stories had the following headline The Sexual Revolution was not our War. I said Gloria Steinem get over here and let me take a photo with you where it looks like I am crushing you because you have bird bones. She also said she’d seen a few episodes of Mad Men and she found it very good.

Which feminist sermon did you get last week? The We are All Monica Lewinski Sermon? This week I remind you as I am wont to do that when it comes to boomers in leather jackets who look back on the 60s fondly, most of that has to do with the sexual entitlement they had thinking they could ball a bunch of chicks at the same time and they weren’t uptight about it because it was out in the open. Whereas, in fact, they are the same men as their fathers, these Don Draper mother-fuckers who kept everything secret and compartmentalized, and had the same selfish dehumanizing instinct which is to treat women as need fulfilling objects. That’s all Amen. Please turn to page 46 of your read-alongs.

I have some things to say about Pauley Perrette. I have nothing to say about Pauley Perrette.

I am so excited that the Howwasyourwiki is being filled out. Have you visited Howwasyourwiki? Go to Howwasyourwiki.com. There are a lot of great thing son it. There could be more. There’s book club, movie club, past guests. There’s enemies of the show and a terrific Pauley Perrette entry in which it spell out exactly why she’s human garbage. She’s a real toilet person. There’s a section called vernaculair in which certain words I pronounce in an unusual way are listed an enjoyed by you. Visit that and add to it.

I was in LA as I mentioned for a few days. While I was gone Auntie Renate took care of Jimmy Jazz who likes to be called Josh now. He knocked over two glasses and broke them. Good job Josh.

I drove around in LA mostly singing out loud to Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell which is a karaoke killer. I listen to the songs on that album and I feel like I can see where Jim Steinman is coming from in terms of, “I don’t know where to cut.” Jim, this is an 8 minute long song. How are we going to get it on the radio? You’ve got to get it down to 3 or 4 minutes tops. It’s the 70s. All right I’ll give it a listen. He’s listening. He’s got his big headphones on. He’s wearing his cape. Believe me this is lean. All right.

(Julie sings the song) That is such a good album, unless it’s not. I still like it. Maybe I just like it because it’s in my key.

I have a lot of different experiences with Jew camp. Tu bishvat, that is the day in which we celebrate trees in the Jewish holiday pantheon. I’ll use that word. It sounds like panther and Odeon. I don’t know what words mean. I like to feel them on my tongue. Lag B’omer—I don’t know what Lag B’omer is but it means we go away for a couple of days or a week and at the time we went to Camp Ramah which has the worst food and the prettiest chapel. It was a Jewish camp in which we were divided into teams. We had to do things that were horrible like relay races, and not making out. Maybe other people made out, I never did. That was everything that makes me who I am, whatever, who cares, you’re not my shrink.

At Lag B’omer the girls got really into Bat out of Hell and there was week of, “I want you. I need you. There aint’ no way I’m ever going to love you, now don’t be sad (don’t be sad) ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad.” By the way, I just sped that up five times faster. It was generally a lot slower. That’s another way the producer could have worked on it—keep everything the way it is just make it regular time. Let it have the pace of say I’m Sailing Away. How dare you? Get out of my dungeon.

That’s how I got turned on to Meatloaf, by 12 year old Jewish girls. I look back and think of so much of who I am and what has shaped my decision making was by three girls named Jen.

Speaking of Jen, Jennifer Aniston got a strippers body for the film We’re the Millers, in which a bunch of dirt bags pass as a suburban couple and do some dirt-bag deeds. Naturally Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper because in the previews she’s wearing a wig and a bikini. So that’s fun.

It was a slow news day the other day because everybody like People.com, Huffpo Celebrity was running an item about how she had an all-kale diet. Jezebel pointed out that Kale chips were considered cheating. Ok, okay everybody thanks. Thanks for taking a syringe filled with poison and putting it directly into the part of my brain that processes and understands things. Nobody needs to know about Jennifer Aniston’s stripper kale diet. By the way is stripper kale diet the three worst words that have ever been strung together after Jen Aniston? Or is it John Mayer’s downstairs? I don’t need to know that. It bums me out.

I made a funny or die video when I was in LA that you can see at the Internet Cat Video Film Festival Labor Day weekend at the Minnesota State Fair. I know that’s a lot, but it is happening. I am hosting that in Minneapolis and I intend to have fun. I wore glasses in it because I was doing a character. Boom! I’m a sketch comedienne! There were no frames in the glasses. I asked the lady stylist, “Will people notice there are no frames in these glasses? She said that in Benjamin Button, I swear to god, Brad Pitt wears a pair of glasses and there are never any lenses in it and nobody notices. I said, “Give me those glasses, you’ve convinced me.” I thought to myself I never saw Benjamin Buttons. Was that the name of it? Was it called the mysterious case of Benjamin Buttons who kept disappearing under the guise of aging backwards? It had a longer title than Benjamin Buttons, but that’s what we know it as. What a good movie. I got three seconds into that movie. What happened? An old baby was born in the first three seconds? I don’t remember. Who’s the woman? Naomi Watts dressed up as Princess Diana.

Do millenials remember Princess Diana? They know of her. I was never a big Princess Diana fan. I am going to admit that to you. I like Duran Duran. If Princess Dian were a guy I totally would have had him finger me constantly. That’s my type. I like my James Spader. A friend of mine had breakfast with me recently and I mentioned a couple of actors I had crushes on. I said John Slattery obviously, Steve Buscemi in Living in Oblivion is the ultimate hunk, Michael Keaton obviously. She said ooh. You like a little dirt in your sandwich. Somebody send that to Howwasyourwiki.

Carnie Wilson is on twitter. She’s trying too hard. Carnitas Wilson. My curling iron broke while I was in LA. I was in a hotel. I was blow drying my hair, I finished blow drying my hair (let’s get this story straight!) I blow dried my hair with my diffuser, then plugged in my curling iron and guess what? It didn’t heat up. This is a horror story. This is right out of Camp Ramah sitting around a camp fire after all of the Meatloaf songs have been sung and the Jewish girls wanted to get the shit scared out of them.

I had to go to a beauty supply store a few days later and get a new one from a woman who could not have been more uncomfortable and who was listening to the Best of Abba. I asked, “Should I buy the ceramic or…” This is not a good story-anyway, it was a nightmare having my curling iron broke. You can’t call downstairs and ask if there’s an extra curling iron. You don’t do that. I stayed at the Riot House, the Hotel Andaz in West Hollywood where Keith Moon haunts the room on all of the odd floors. Face Off is coming back. It’s an All starts episode. I hope what’s his name with the hat, the guy from Texas. He should win. I also got a couple of notices (this sound like a Humblebrag) David Sedaris gave you a shout out on Facebook. Billy Eichner gave you a shout out on watch what happens live. While both of those things mean everything to me and I love knowing that those are both true things, you have to understand I’m like Santa Claus for gay people. I know everything they’re doing. I know when they are sleeping… (that was a song clearly written by a gentile right?)

That’s interesting—Christmas songs that were not written by Jews—like the bad ones. Here Comes Santa Claus, that’s the worst song. Santa Got Run Over by a Reindeer, I’d actually wager that was written by a guy named Marty. I feel like that was one of us. This is just me guessing.

I have a couple of shows I want to tell you about, August 10th I’m going to be in San Francisco doing the Cab Show at noon in the park. It should be great. That’s really how cabaret shows are meant to be enjoyed, under harsh day light with trees in reaching distance. Bridgett Everett will be my guest. She will join me on a couple of tunes. That is the Outside Lands Festival.

Our pal Rob Sheffield has a beautiful new book out called Turn Around Bright Eyes about Karaoke. I’m going to be interviewing him Monday August 5th at the Strand at 7pm. Come and see us there. There will be a photo of me posing on a Citibike in a humiliating way coming up. We are working on it. I just got home. Give me a second to breathe. I’m also trying to figure out how to use my new curling iron. By the way, I did not go with the ceramic, thank you for caring about that.

Please continue to tip Spoony whose wife is pregnant with a little girl by going to Paypal.com and Klausnerama.com.

If I forget to tell you something we’re going to see each other next week. That’s the nice thing about the show. Keep checking in with each other. We stay in touch. That’s important.

Let’s start the show. We have one guest…