Sleepless in L.A.
Last night I had one of my infamous bouts of insomnia. Every so often I’ll hit a night where I can’t sleep a wink, and when it gets to be dawn and I hear birds chirping “gooooooood morning, Los Angeles!”, I’ll finally crash and sleep for 8 hours. I happened to have the TV on, so after Law and Order: SVU ended for the night, I switched over and landed on Bravo, catching a Kathy Griffin comedy special that was about halfway through, which was cool, since I am rapidly becoming a fan of her work. You guys, she is hilarious. She really is. In my consciousness, she was always kind of a peripheral celebrity, since I became aware of her in Suddenly Susan, and after the show ended, she’d kind of pop up in various places, and it was a minor blip on the radar—oh, right, I recognize her, no big deal. Then a few months ago, I saw her stand-up show, Allegedly (I believe it was on Comedy Central), and I could not stop laughing. I had no idea she even did stand-up. Seriously—watch her shows. You’ll laugh your ass off.
The show was a lead-in to her reality show, My Life on the D-List, which I stayed up and watched and watched (several episodes), because the Sandman was late, or he had the wrong address and missed my house, or something. The whole premise of the show is that she remains a D-List celebrity, no matter how many appearances she makes or how good her work is. And she does everything she’s asked to do, to promote her career, like throwing tons of spaghetti against the wall—something’s gotta stick. At first my brain was like, “But Kathy, how can you consider yourself a D-List celebrity when you have a huge manse on a hill, a personal assistant, an agent (whom she can never get on the phone...a clue to the validity of her claim), a personal trainer, publicists, receive Botox injections, do gigs and DVD signings and cover the red carpet on GRAMMY and Oscar nights and people send limos to come get you? These things are not part of my life, Kathy...I, who am an average joe...What do you mean you’re on the D-List, Kathy? Why, Kathy? Why?” Then, as I absorbed the show, I realized what she means: people are not clamoring to get more of Kathy Griffin. As far as the public is concerned, she’s not “box office draw”. Producers tend to call her to fill space when they have no one else. The DVD sales at her stand-up shows and signings are not record--one could use an abacus to count them. And celebrities are not fond of her because she makes fun of them. If you’re on celebrities’ shit lists, you’re automatically demoted to the D-List. People think you’re high risk because of what you might say on-camera, so they don’t hire you.
The thing is, anything she says about any celebrity is a joke. It’s intended to make people laugh, and it’s not meant as a dig (oh, and guess what...she makes fun of herself, too...). She’s a comic—it’s her job. Most comedians make targets of other celebrities because they’re in the public eye and everyone knows them and knows of their foibles (and they can be very hoity-toity. I’m just sayin’...). They’ve been doing it for yeeaaaars. So far back, in fact, that there used to be “sacred clowns” in certain societies, whose job it was to go around and publicly make fun of people who were getting too big for their britches, to take them down a peg or seven. Comedy is an immediate and effective way of dragging yourself or someone else back to reality. When people make fun of me, in my life—’cause they do—I get that it’s not personal, because I am a dork. Basically, if you’re too high on your hobby horse, get over yourself, ’cause someone’s gonna make fun of your ass.
And chances are, that person’s probably gonna be Kathy Griffin.
The show was a lead-in to her reality show, My Life on the D-List, which I stayed up and watched and watched (several episodes), because the Sandman was late, or he had the wrong address and missed my house, or something. The whole premise of the show is that she remains a D-List celebrity, no matter how many appearances she makes or how good her work is. And she does everything she’s asked to do, to promote her career, like throwing tons of spaghetti against the wall—something’s gotta stick. At first my brain was like, “But Kathy, how can you consider yourself a D-List celebrity when you have a huge manse on a hill, a personal assistant, an agent (whom she can never get on the phone...a clue to the validity of her claim), a personal trainer, publicists, receive Botox injections, do gigs and DVD signings and cover the red carpet on GRAMMY and Oscar nights and people send limos to come get you? These things are not part of my life, Kathy...I, who am an average joe...What do you mean you’re on the D-List, Kathy? Why, Kathy? Why?” Then, as I absorbed the show, I realized what she means: people are not clamoring to get more of Kathy Griffin. As far as the public is concerned, she’s not “box office draw”. Producers tend to call her to fill space when they have no one else. The DVD sales at her stand-up shows and signings are not record--one could use an abacus to count them. And celebrities are not fond of her because she makes fun of them. If you’re on celebrities’ shit lists, you’re automatically demoted to the D-List. People think you’re high risk because of what you might say on-camera, so they don’t hire you.
The thing is, anything she says about any celebrity is a joke. It’s intended to make people laugh, and it’s not meant as a dig (oh, and guess what...she makes fun of herself, too...). She’s a comic—it’s her job. Most comedians make targets of other celebrities because they’re in the public eye and everyone knows them and knows of their foibles (and they can be very hoity-toity. I’m just sayin’...). They’ve been doing it for yeeaaaars. So far back, in fact, that there used to be “sacred clowns” in certain societies, whose job it was to go around and publicly make fun of people who were getting too big for their britches, to take them down a peg or seven. Comedy is an immediate and effective way of dragging yourself or someone else back to reality. When people make fun of me, in my life—’cause they do—I get that it’s not personal, because I am a dork. Basically, if you’re too high on your hobby horse, get over yourself, ’cause someone’s gonna make fun of your ass.
And chances are, that person’s probably gonna be Kathy Griffin.
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