As a comedian, I have tons of stand up comedy heroes — but none I really see myself in. There are plenty of doughy, mean white guys out there, but they talk about their girlfriends or their wives or their kids; they never talk about their boyfriends or their partners or their kids.

When I sat down to write this, I was ready to write about the dearth of openly gay male stand up comedians in the world. Because when the hilarious Todd Glass came out on WTF, my immediate reaction was “Yes! We got one!”

One. Like I was living in a drought of gay comedy, and Glass coming out was the first non-ANT drop of water since Charles Nelson Reilly.

It’s curious because I can name a dozen lesbian comedians off the top of my head. And there are superstars of stand up like Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho who gay men spend big bucks supporting, but from what I knew, there were no gay guys telling jokes outside of gay bars.

Turns out: I’m wrong and I’m part of the problem.

My pal Ralph Hardesty (note: when my friends write funny, insightful things I always like to play up the fact that I know them because it makes me look smarter) has some thoughtful things to say about gay jokes, gay comics, and the challenges presented by and to them.

4 months ago | 7 notes | Reblog | | Comments
stand-up, comedy, culturemap, ralph hardesty, homophobia, gay jokes, etc,

The Battles Of G-Baby →

I have a story in the new issue of the Texas Observer. It’s the first in the magazine’s new monthly format, which is exciting — previously, the magazine ran bi-weekly, so this one will be on stands for twice as long.

The story is about Whitney Perkins, who raps under the name G-Baby. I first met Whitney when I was sitting in on a performance/sharing at Travis County Correctional Complex — Kat teaches theater classes to women incarcerated there, and she invited me to see their end-of-term project. Whitney was definitely the most charismatic performer that day, but I was still very surprised to see her retire a 5-time champion on 106 & Park’s Freestyle Friday a few months later.

The article is about battle rap, and sexism and homophobia in hip hop, and Whitney’s completely indomitable spirit. I’m pretty proud of how this one came out — give it a read, will you?

10 months ago | 16 notes | Reblog | | Comments
g-baby, texas observer, whitney perkins, writing elsewhere, rap, hip hop, homophobia, misogyny, conspire theater,

A challenge for music writer friends!

Every time you file a story about Odd Future and whether we should take them seriously and the conflict you feel about the fact that Tyler is so good but so awful at the same time, and how great art can be destructive and reprehensible but probably still great — let’s also be sure to file a story about a woman or a gay person who makes music, too, cool?

Because if all of the energy we spent blogging about and contemplating Odd Future and the meaning of misogyny and homophobia in art was matched by energy championing the people who are marginalized by those things, then our hand-wringing has the potential to be about changing them, at least to some extent, instead of just growing this kid’s influence by making him the only thing people want to talk about.

I’ll play if you will. What do y’all say?

1 year ago | 13 notes | Reblog | | Comments
odd future, hip hop, rap, gender, misogyny, homophobia, music writing, journalism,