Episode 140: "A Charmless Joy Behar"

Date

November 8, 2013

Guests

Camille Paglia

Origin of the episode title

A description of Woody Allen's sister as she appears in the documentary "Wild Man Blues," which Julie watched primarily to gain insight into Soon-Yi.

Discussed

This week's episode is chockfull of things, ideas and notions that will put a bee in your bonnet! That's because CAMILLE PAGLIA, firestarter supreme, is a guest on the show, and she's got stuff to say about Real Housewives, Rhianna, the death of style, feminism, sex, porn, millennials, art history, and her book GLITTERING IMAGES, which is now available in paperback. We do not agree with everything Professor Paglia has to say, but we sure enjoyed chatting and listening. She is a spark plug and a genius, goddamn it!

Also: Julie is in Los Angeles, and a moving billboard is hypnotizing her! Thoughts about lingerie and foreplay, and how we needed both things in the 1980s in order to go through with intercourse, apparently! What Meat Loaf's music sounds like! How the "Swan Lake" song goes! Who America's Most Famous Sex Slave was! My cat's ophthalmologist is on vacation! And precisely what Europe does NOT need, Woody Allen.

A controversial, crackling episode for your brain and ears and soul

Trivia

Roman Polanski will never be in the Redhead Hall of Fame.

Marilyn Monroe was America's most famous sex slave.

Download the Episode

Episode Link

Monologue Transcript

Hurray for Hollywood. Hurray, hurray, hurray for Hollywood. Hi everybody. It’s Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW.

I’m in Hollywood as I speak to you. It is Thursday night. I did the show @midnight which was #alotof fun. Now I am back at my hotel. The view I have from my hotel here in Hollywood is a billboard that’s a screen. NBC owns it. On a loop they play ads that are moving for the Voice, The Blacklist, Carrie Underwood in The Sound of Music, and The Revolution which I have literally never heard of, and Grimm, and the vampire. What’s the one where the guy plays Dracula? Is it actually called Dracula? Hold on here it comes again, yep it’s called Dracula. Jonathon Rhys Meyer as Dracula, the Biggest Loser. That’s all the shows, did you get them? This is on a loop.

I just remember the last time I was here this god forsaken billboard was playing on a loop. What was Jane Lynch doing this summer, a game show where people did party tricks and hung out? What was that show, it was like Celebrity Charades? It was literally Rob Riggle behind a tray of cheese, there was a deck of cards. I don’t know. That was not a fun billboard. Here’s the thing when you watch Jane Lynch move you’re not really getting more information. I don’t think they made the most of that billboard. It could have just been a photo of her just doing her thing. You do realize I’m staring at this billboard as I’m talking to you.

How are you? Enough about me. It’s never enough about you Julie, that’s why we’re on episode 140. 140 Episode in Julie realized there is NEVER GOING TO BE ENOUGH! I had a nice week. Thank you.

After Halloween ended which was ten minutes ago, Halloween became a week this year. I don’t know how that happened. It certainly had nothing to do with the day of the week it fell on. It was a Thursday. I have heard of long weekends, Saturday idiots on the street wearing idiot costumes, Sunday same thing, different idiots. Monday, what happened on Monday, I have no memory of Monday? Halloween lasted a long time. I didn’t even see Heidi Klum’s costume until Thanksgiving practically. Heidi Klum likes to dress up every year. This year she dressed up like an elderly. Paris Hilton did us the favor of dressing up like Miley Cyrus. It was horrible. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. I have described it, yet it is worse. There were two kinds of garbage people that dressed up like Miley Cyrus at the Music Video Awards. The people that dressed up as her wearing the krunky teddy bear onesie, that was Paris Hilton. She did buns on the top of her head. That was disgusting. She should commit suicide.

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but would anyone miss her?

The other kind of garbage person that dressed up like Miley Cyrus at the VMAs was Perez Hilton who dressed in the flesh colored bikini that she wore underneath that onesie. Nobody asked for that. He had his tongue out and a foam finger. It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Halloween is also the perfect opportunity for a meme that just expired enough to become a bad idea for a costume to a certain amount of people. What kind of a person? A garbage person, there are so many garbage people. I feel like a baby sometimes underneath a mobile. The mobile is just composed of garbage people dangling. I am fascinated.

Halloween lasted forever. I’ve covered that. I’m not happy about the amount of Hershey miniatures I didn’t get. If you are a grownup candy doesn’t just appear in your life as much unless you work at a very particular kind of office. I should add a grownup that doesn’t have children. If you have children, yeah, Halloween is a thing. If you go to an office they have a bowl-Jolly Rancher, Jolly Rancher, Butter Finger (fuck you), Kit Kat (if I’m desperate). My favorite thing in the world besides pictures of Cher in the 70s and 60s when her teeth were crooked, are those Hershey…they are not miniatures, they’re not the ones that come in the bag with Mr. Goodbar, Special Dark, and Krackle—their version of a Nestle Crunch Bar which sucks. Hershey never cracked the crunch. It’s not that kind of Hershey Milk Chocolate miniature that I like. What I like are the long ones that come in the brown packages. Do you know what I am talking about? Those are two biters. Gross, talking about biting into chocolate, one of those long Hershey miniatures is like the size of your thumb,. I guess because it looks like the size of a real Hershey Bar it’s exciting, there’s little bit more. Is there more? There has to be. Nuggets I have other feelings about. There’s nothing better than one of those when it’s room temperature. Heaven. Also American at its best. Are we on the same page that America at its best is a Hershey Bar? Oh my god, Don Draper, where’s my check? Where’s my sex? If you work for Hershey you can’t steal that unless you pay me in chocolate. That would be stupid right? If I were the worst business man, I’m comfortable calling myself a businessman. I don’t need to make everything politically correct. People who still think that political correctness sis still a thing are wrong. There are so many other things to get angry about when it comes to language.

For example, I was thinking the other day about the term foreplay and how disgusting it is. In the 80s you would hear it used. In the 1980s the word, the term for whatever happens between lovers before a man actually inserts his penis into the person with whom he’s making love was considered foreplay. People talked about it on shows. There was a band called Fourplay, they were a jazz band or pop R&B, there were four of them. That’s how popular the term was. This is true. The band Fourplay would be on the Dennis Miller Show and Nick Bakay would announce them. They would play a terrible song and the go to break. Boy2Men had some doozies too. I’ll have you know it was not all catchy sex stuff. They had a couple of real…sometimes a slow jam is like what’s the point, why can’t we be quiet, sit in silence, so boring.

Foreplay was so weird and so gross that there was a name for the stuff you had to do to a woman before you get to actually stick it in. The resentment that it implies, like oh the wife is going to want more foreplay, or somebody giving a guy advice that is having a hard time with his sex life. A trusted confidant would say, “Well have you played attention to your wife in the foreplay department” and then people would act like it’s the Holy Grail for women. I’m not sure how it was used day to day but it was definitely talked about. There’s line from Three Amigos which as far as I’m concerned is the only thing that embodies the zeitgeist from 1985 to 1990—Do you know what foreplay is? No. Good neither does ‘El Guapo’. It’s funny, because, El Guapo was an outlaw, a war criminal. Here’s the thing with him, and men in general if we are to believe in the philosophy of the 1980s that has been dictated to us by multiple sources, but mostly Three Amigos. Men hate everything that comes before putting it in. That includes kissing, necking; t hat includes caressing your lover’s buttocks. It’s not like we were demanding the vote or anything. Ugh I have to touch my wife’s breasts, “Barry, look it’s me. I’m sorry I have to cancel paddleball tonight. The wife, get this; she wants me to kiss her shoulder. I know. I know. Why can’t I just put it in while she’s dry. That’s how women work, those monsters.”

There was also lingerie in the 1980s. It was so essential to our erotic collective conscious, there was so much lingerie to the extent that you thought that all women wore lingerie to work. You went to work in a camisole with a blazer with big shoulders and shoulder pads, underneath all of that you’d be wearing a teddy, a onesie with lace around the edges. It had no support. You’d have to wear a bra underneath it. If you took a woman’s clothes off and she was wearing full on 80s lingerie underneath you can’t not start laughing, unless you’re Richard Jeni. Is Richard Jeni dead? I always confuse him with Kevin Pollack. One of them is dead. I have a feeling it’s the wrong one. Lingerie was a very essential part of the 1980s. I don’t know why yet. I’m thinking about it, I’m on it. I think it had something to do with women in the workplace. We better put some lace on them or something. I don’t know how I’m going to want to fuck that. Lingerie, all of those Playboys. Girls were wearing lingerie but their boobs were out of the lingerie. It’s very exciting to men who grew up in that era. They were always in shades of maroon or a jade green, nothing you’d wear under clothes.

In the 90s we repurposed slips. That’s what you did. When you were a cool girl and it was the 90s you’d were a ½ as a skirt or a full slip as a dress like you didn’t give a shit. What would you wear it with? Docks, Sneakers—it was a different time. I have started to buy my clothing from Victoria’s Secret. This is my secret I’m sharing with you because it is shameful and is extremely embarrassing. Victoria’s Secret has these fabulous sweaters called the kiss of cashmere. They are really cheap and so comfortable. I get so many compliments. Also their T-shirts fit my body. Fine. The end, or is it? I order from the catalogue. I can’t go into one of those stores. People buying underpants, I don’t know. I don’t like a table with underpants on it that says panties. It says the very sexy collection of panties. I can barely get myself to go into Staples. If you order on the catalogue it comes right away. Everything is comfortable. If you don’t like it you don’t have to package it back up and go to UPS you can go to one of the stores and they will put the money back on your card immediately. That’s what I did. I was in the store at Victoria Secret waiting online to return a tank. You don’t think a tank top could be too big until you can see the front part of your bra. If you see my bra straps never tell me because I don’t care. You’re bras straps are showing. Good. So I’m at Victoria’s Secret and near the registers…if you have any allergies you shouldn’t go into a Victoria Secret because that’s where they keep all of their perfume, bath and body products and they have makeup and chapstick and things. You’ll have a seizure or you’ll go into anaphylactic shock by the amount of stimuli for your nose. I am going to open it up to all of your sense. I don’t know if this is something you relate to but there are certain brands that I associate not classy or not ok. For example, I would never use a lotion, a body wash or a personal product from Victoria’s Secret. If I needed a chapstick, I really needed a chapstick, my lips were parched would I buy a chapstick from them absolutely not, no. I’m convinced that their entire line of products that you use on your skin will give you rashes and infections. I’m probably wrong. Victoria’s Secret can use that in their campaign, “I’m probably wrong.” There is something about it that I associate with; I don’t know if you took a bath with one of those bath salts can you imagine all of the infections you’d probably get inside of you?

Here’s how I like to get clean. I like to go to a CVS, a Duane Read, or an Eckard and shop in an aisle that is brightly lit and I find a box. Nobody has opened the box. Does it smell? It smells a little bit. It smells like your childhood like an Ivory soap bar. That’s how I like to buy my stuff. I just feel like everything they sell topically will give you an infection. I like their clothes.

I have been listening to—I refuse to call it a phase-my Jethro Tull phase—is officially my Jethro Tull life. I have been listening to that. I will listen to Meatloaf whenever I get a chance. I love meatloaf. I love Bat out of Hell. I don’t know anything else he’s ever done besides that record. I know the Rocky Horror Show he’s good in that. I love Meatloaf because his voice always sounds like he’s trying. Debbie Harry, bless her heart, but you know she only did one take. Maybe she didn’t, but it just sounds like (sings) ‘I know a girl in a lonely room, do da do dah dah dah dah dah, Can I go?’ Yeah, you can go. Go get out of here. I have to buy some new eyelashes. Of course you do, go Debbie Harry.

Meatloaf, on the other hand, has a singing voice. All of his songs sound like they are the audio equivalent of a sweaty tuxedo which is what he wore. He went full Carrie shopping spree in a ruffled…you know what Meatloaf looked like in a tuxedo. If you don’t you should google it. He looked like a man who had had a really rough night. Meatloaf would show up, he’s come out on stage. He had long hair but he was not sexy. I’d fuck Meatloaf, I have talked about how I would fuck Meatloaf in the past, and I’m fine with that. I’m fine with you knowing that. You know his last name is Aday right? Like A-Meatloaf- A-Day keeps the doctor away. He’d show up wearing a ruffled shirt, a baby blue cummerbund, and he’d sing, “Let me sleep on it, baby baby…” sweat everywhere and the smells coming off of him must have been exotic. They weren’t the kind of smells you got off of Jim Morrison when he sweat. Ugh just thinking about Jim Morrison sweating. I don’t think Jim Morrison really did sweat. I bet he just started to smell. You know when you haven’t done anything sweaty but you wonder why do I stink? It’s because your body has given up. When you just smell bad under the arms, are underarms a private part? Let’s talk about this until everyone gets uncomfortable.

I want to plug two things. Joe’s Pub is kind enough to host me November 22-26th I am going to be doing my cabaret show. Please buy tickets for that. They are going quickly for the first two shows. It’s a five night run. It’s an engagement. Please come I’ll be thrilled if you do. Go to Joespub.com. The Premium is doing well but it is not doing well enough. Here’s why I say that. A lot of you have downloaded the app and are happy with it. A lot of you have subscribed to the HWYW Premium. It’s a lot of bang for your buck. The first episode that we did that only the premium people can listen to is How was your Manson? I am bringing this up because I strongly believe that episode is worth the price of the Premium subscription for the year. It’s worthwhile to hear which Manson nickname Jake Fogelnest thinks is the creepiest. It is one of my favorite episodes. I said this last week, I feel like it is the best interview I have ever done. You should get it, do it, have it, and listen to it. It’s wonderful. I swear to god I’m not over-selling it. Howwayourweek.libsyn.com

I forgot to vote the other day for Bill DeBlasio. He seems like a good man. He seems like a liberal man. He seems like his family is beautiful—a bunch of colorful characters. I voted for him in the primary. I basically voted against Christine Quinn who I originally loved and then I saw a campaign ad starring Steve Buscemi and Lady Bunny saying vote for DeBlasio and I thought, Ok.

He won. I forgot to vote for him but then I figured out after he won that I should just tweet at him and I did, a lot of ideas about how he can improve the city. Not all of them have to do with exiling Banksy. Banksy is gone and I am still mad about what he hath wrought. There’s a statistic I read on WNYC’s twitter. I don’t know why I follow that. I should just watch Master’s of Sex if I wanted to be bored. ( I wanted to like that show so badly. I love Lizzie Caplan, it’s just not a very good show. I watched the first two. There’s so much fucking and yet it’s so boring.)

WNYCs twitter said that there have been 0 deaths since they started the Citibike program. Sounds suspect to me. Who’s doing that tally? Really 0 deaths since the Citibike program was rolled out around springtime? That eye sore we know as a Citibike station popped up in front of your favorite thing you like. You started seeing dopes with their flipper feet going to point B, and you’re telling me none of them were hit by cars? I don’t believe you. Do you know what like Whitney Houston said, show me the receipts. I do not believe you. Bill DeBlasio is going to be our mayor, I say to him welcome. Congratulations. This is something I wouldn’t say to him, but I’ll say to you, I find his earlobes disgusting. I have said this before he has old man earlobes. They are like half an inch too long. They give me the weebies, the stevie weebies.

Jennifer Aniston got a haircut and I regret googling it because I thought it was a big deal and it turns out it wasn’t. You listening thinking to yourself how is a haircut a big deal in the first place? Shut up! What’s more important? Nothing is more important than hair. Hair is important. I heard that Jennifer Aniston got a haircut and Patti Stanger, who is made out of snakes, tweeted “Jennifer Lawrence, Kristin Chenoweth, Pamela Anderson and Jen Aniston cut off their hair does this mean they are not interested in men?” Shut the fuck up Patti Stanger. Her whole thing is that men like long hair. They like it when you show your boobs and legs. They don’t like redheads; all of those things are true. Believe me. Some men like long hair, some men don’t. The kind of men that want the women that Patti wants to make you look like are poison. But she does a great job. I googled Jennifer Aniston’s hair cut. It was not a significant haircut. She got a bob. I don’t give a shit about her bob. I was very resentful that she was looped into the real news that Jennifer Lawrence got a haircut that makes her look 35 years older. She got a Kate Goslin at a Super-cuts. Pamela Anderson looks adorable. I have not seen Kristin Chenoweth’s yet; I have not scheduled that into my day. Jennifer Aniston cut off a few inches. She has a bob, a bob is not news. A pixie cut is news. The end. I started watching Wild Man Blue’s on the plane out here. It was recommended so frequently by pals I thought I had to watch it I needed to know what Soon-yi is like. It was made in 1997. Obviously things are different now. It’s fascinating. I’m half-way in. Woody Allen’s sister is a monster. She’s like a Charmless Joy Behar. Soon-yi is in this ill-fitting wool trench the whole time, half-smiling and bemused. It’s like you read the New Yorker but you also seem like a low IQ person. Contradictions, multitudes, we contain both in our bodies.

What I hadn’t prepared for…I prepared for the creepiness that would be Soon-yi’s mother daughter thing with Woody, meaning that she’s his mother in some incidents and then she’s his daughter because she’s his daughter. You know she’ll cut his meat and stuff. Woody Allen congratulations you just discovered a new weird thing for Jewish men to be into in a weird Freudian way. Leave it to Woody Allen, he invented a new gross thing for Jewish men to lust after. A mother that’s also your daughter and she’s also Asian-what!?! What I wasn’t prepared for is precisely how bad Woody Allen’s music is. If you don’t know Wild Man Blues is a documentary about the time Woody Allen convinced enough people to let him play the clarinet in a New Orleans Dixieland style band. Is it even called a band? It’s not called a gaggle or a jamboree? They toured Europe. If Europe needs anything it’s more Dixieland Jazz. That’s what the people that built Paris, “My only one regret is there was not room for Dixieland Jazz, then we kiss. There’s red wine. We fall asleep in each other’s arms. We are lov-airs.”

Dixieland Jazz is the worst kind of music first of all. On top of that Woody Allen’s band is so fucking bad. It’s one thing to play Dixieland Jazz, it’s another to play it poorly. He does both through this entire movie. Soon-yi Previn as if this girl/woman hadn’t endured enough fucked up abuse and inappropriate destruction of boundaries, she’s been through enough, she shouldn’t have to listen to this music on top of it. That was shocking.

The person who won Face-off I thought was the right person. I was rooting for Roy, but Roy has disappointed me in the last few episodes and I was pleased to see who won. The woman who won Face-off, oh I just gave it away it was a women. The person, time moves backwards not forwards, they did a finally where they had to make make-up for the bad guy in Swan Lake. Was it the black swan? I don’t know. I could barely get through the Natalie Portman movie. I don’t think I like Natalie Portman. Am I allowed not to like Natalie Portman if I am a Jewish person? They had to design make up for the ballerinas on the finale. Last year they all jumped into a pool or something, they used waterproof make-up and said , “Oh is it still on their faces?” It was, between you and me an ad for that makeup. This season they had a ballet dance. The people came out and they danced Swan Lake or they didn’t. I don’t know what the choreography looks like. I know the music (hums some notes) The best part of the Face-off finale was watching the judges watch the ballet and pretend to be interested in the play. It’s fun to watch people watch things that they think they are supposed to be enjoying or they know people are watching them watch. So they need to seem like they are into it, and they’re not because it’s ballet, because it’s opera, because it’s a classical music concert. These are things that humans don’t like to do. If they do they are very wealthy and they are very old. Do I expect to get many letters saying, “Hey I like opera.” You bet I do. I am going to use those letters to find out who I am going to marry. I once saw an orchestra when I was a child. My parents took me to see an orchestra play classical music. I remember never having been that bored. I remember thinking, “What are you doing to me?” I had no problem with classical music, they’re probably somebody listening who’s really smart about this stuff and every time I saw classical music they rankle. When Marilyn Monroe in the Seven Year Itch says, “I know it’s classical because it doesn’t have any words in it. “ I would have killed myself too if I had to act as dumb as she did for as long as she had to. She was America’s most famous sex slave. Are we all on the same page about that? Or was it Mercedes Ruehl?

My cat’s ophthalmologist is on vacation. I tweeted something about when did I become a character in a New Yorker cartoon but that is actually a true thing. My cat’s ophthalmologist is on vacation. My cat’s ophthalmologist is on vacation. This is the sexy ophthalmologist. This is the one who has legs going to Timbuk-where? I told you about the culture Jimmy got a couple of weeks ago. My heart exploded. Since then I will tell you this, the vets came. There were two of them. One is Dr. Danielle she’s the vet. She’s a very soft-spoke woman, sweet, kind, tiny, long-hair. She puts it back in a ponytail. The other is the women whose job it is to chase Jimmy if Jimmy is having none of it, and to hold him down while the doctor takes care of him. It’s very scary. Why am I explaining this to you? It’s ok, but we love him.

Julie, it’s ok. You don’t have to talk to everybody like they are cats. “But then who will I call myself mommy too? “She asked the tears not even bothering to form. They found out what was wrong. It’s fine. He has a wonky eye. They are working on it. They’re finding the right cocktail. Don’t let the world cocktail freak you out. Let me back up. So Danielle and her henchmen come into the apartment a couple of weeks aga and he got examined and he was fine (or so I thought) On Sunday, not to name drop but my friend Ted Leo came over with his friend, AND MY FRIEND, he brought our friend Aimee Mann over. The two of them came to the door and Jimmy hid under the chest of drawers because now in Jimmy’s mind when two people come over they are going to molest him. They are going to pick him up and put a q-tip in or near his eyeball. Dr. Danielle calls me and says, this is what’s going on. I would explain more but Dr. Welzer is on vacation. Oh? She asks, “Would you like to speak to the doctor covering for Dr. Welzer?” No that’s ok. I’ll wait until she comes back from her vacation. Then I’ll have a fun thing to ask her during the small talk portion of our conversation. How was your vacation? Did you go someplace nice? It’s nice to get away isn’t it? It’s good to switch things up. Do you know what’s nice about going away when you come home you feel good. Oh I have a fresh perspective isn’t that nice.

I’ll find out next week when she calls me back when she’s back from her vacation. Part of me wanted to pull a What about Bob? Find out where she was staying, and show up and be creepy. I have other things to do.

Some of you tweeted asking how I feel about Carrie Underwood in the Sound of Music. I feel great about it. I don’t give a shit about the Sound of Music. Sorry, not a Rogers and Hammerstein girl. I don’t believe in the sanctity of their work, I think a lot of it is corny. Sorry, said it. I think Laura Benanti is involved so therefore I am n favor of it.

Something on my list of things to talk about is my pussy doesn’t know it’s 35. I’m going to do you the favor of deleting that item.

I am going to start the show…