Okay, it's Sunday and I don't usually post on Sundays, but I want to take a moment to clear up a few things about me, our community and our need to lighten the fuck up about ourselves.One of the things that Americans are best known for around the world is our ability to laugh at ourselves and nobody does that better than Queer Americans.
Where does it come from? Maybe it's a coping mechanism, like laughing so you won't cry. The bottom line for me is, who gives a rat's ass? Go with what works. I hate to over analyze comedy because it takes all the fun out of it. Making jokes is fun. That's why we do it. Humor can also be used as a weapon to take somebody down a peg or two when he's a little too full of himself or a little too serious about life in general.
One of the things I'm best known for is my sense of humor. Some people get it and some people don't. I don't worry too much about the ones that don't get it. The ones that laugh at my off the cuff remarks more than make up for the ones that don't. I was the smart-ass kid whose mother always said, "Don't laugh, you'll just encourage him." She was soooo right.
Laughter is its own reward. It's like a narcotic. Once you get that rush, you want more and you'll do anything to get it. Once I shaved my mustache and tended bar in drag in a straight bar just for a laugh. When an elderly, very drunk and very straight man started hitting on me, I said in my deepest, butchest voice, "Thanks, man." Everybody, except the old drunk guy, laughed their asses off.
Another time, at a different job, I took everything out of my boss's office and set it up in the company's warehouse, with everything exactly in place, as an April Fool's joke. The next year I staged a theft of my company car, knowing that my boss was the last one to drive it, then accused him of punking me. Both times everyone laughed... except my boss.
I will make jokes about myself, my friends, my family, my coworkers, my boss, celebrities, strangers, news makers, politicians and anyone who takes him/herself too seriously. Like I said, some people get it and some people don't. I find that the people who don't get my sense of humor probably aren't people I'd want to hang with anyway. If somebody gets the joke, that means they can probably tell a good joke too, so it's all good.
Then there are the people who catch the ball and run with it. In the late 90's I got a job as Education Coordinator for a debt counseling agency. On my first day, my boss took me with him to a lecture he was doing for a women's group. As we walked up to his pickup truck, I noticed the logo decal on the cap he had over the bed of the truck. It said "Leonard". So I immediately, and very conversationally, asked, "So what made you wanna name your truck Leonard?"
Without missing a beat he said, "I named it after my mother." Bah-dum-bump! We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. In fact, in many ways he was the worst boss I ever had. But I always knew that he and I shared a particular sense of humor and I used it many times to diffuse tense working situations.
When I was a kid, it was my bothers and sisters who had the best sense of humor. I guess it was a way for us to cope with my parents' divorce and the abusive environment we were living in, but it turned out to be a comedy training ground. During long family car trips, somebody would say something funny, then somebody else would say something to make the joke better. Then somebody else would add to it and so on, until one of us came up with something so funny that it couldn't be topped. I sometimes think of it like a game of volley ball, where team members set each other up by keeping the ball in the air, bouncing from one person to the next, so that the best player on the team can spike it over the net, right into somebody's face. Score!
However, if your joke bombed, you weren't allowed to speak for the rest of the trip. Since those days I have learned that there is comedy to be found in most everyday situations if you look at it from the right, twisted perspective.
Okay, where am I going with all of this? I shared the video below on my FaceBook status today with the following comment: "I love Scare Tactics, but every week they get some big old nelly queen on there that undoes 4 decades of progress. You gotta see this."
A good friend of mine accused me of being prejudiced against effeminate gay men. WTF!? He said something about me being a community leader and that people pay attention to what I write and say and that I should be more sensitive. Long story short, I actually had to publicly defend myself and my sense of humor on FaceBook.
For the record, I understand that it was a bunch of nelly queens that fought the cops at the Stonewall Inn and we owe them everything. However, those queens stood up for themselves and refused to act like scared little girls any more. That is what we respect and admire them for. It is their courage, not their cowardice, that we honor every June. They forever changed the stereotype of the effeminate gay man as a coward.
What I love about Scare Tactics, and shows like it that follow in the footsteps of the classic Candid Camera (that I grew up watching), is that they find the humor in everyday people caught in the act of being themselves. Scare Tactics takes it up several notches by placing ordinary people in extreme situations for our personal amusement. In this scenario, the guy thinks he's been hired to babysit a little girl. When he's confronted by strange voices from the TV and objects moving by themselves, then the ghost of the dead sister, he completely losses it, with hilarious results.
Did he try to protect the little girl in his care or try to get her to safety? No. Did he attempt to fight back or in any way stand up to the perceived threat? No. He screamed like a little girl. He lived up the the stereotype of gays as cowards. That is the motivation for my comment and I make no apology for it. This guy showed us what a pussy he really is and for millions of Americans, he reinforced a deplorable stereotype. But it was funny.
How would I have reacted in a situation like that? I don't know and I don't care. Chances are I will never be on a show like that, so we'll probably never know what my reaction would be. I do hope that if I ever find myself in a similar circumstance and end up on a show like this, that you and the rest of the world will laugh your asses off.
If it's true that I am a community leader and that people pay attention to what I write and say, then please pay attention to this:
Don't be a pussy like the guy in this video!
Have the balls to stand up for yourself and your point of view. Don't be a walking stereotype and never -- and I mean N-E-V-E-R -- let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn't say. Finally, Watch the following clip and laugh your ass off like I did.
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