Did you get pears??

Old man: “Did you get pears?… Did you get pears?… Did you get pears??”

Old lady: “We’ll discuss it inside.”

–One of the best pieces of TV writing ever. Tear-inducing laughter. Wow.

Thank you, Mad Men.

Go see Joan Rivers – A Piece Of Work

Joan Rivers – A Piece Of Work – IFC Entertainment.

Highly recommended. I won’t ever say she opened doors for me, because she’d just tell me to go fuck myself.

But for reals, Joan’s unapologetic yet neurotic life is on display, and you’ll never see her the same way again.

New comedy clip! Qymburliee Holiday on Adoption.

I woke up at 5:00 this morning for no reason, so I’m trying to catch up on misc. updates… Here’s a clip from my last Comedy Store show, filmed by my friend Olivia who was trembling from the hilarity. One of these days I’ll get a real camera. (:

Meet Qymburliee Holiday, one of Los Angeles’ young, beautiful celebutante rich girls–so bored she spells her name with a ‘Q’… And she’s adopting a baby.

If you dig, do check out my youtube channel and leave some love!

EFH2T: Living with Bears

My latest post on Billy Corgan’s blog about holistic livin’:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Living with Bears.

Inspired by this pamphlet sent to me by my sister, who finds completely banal things as funny as I do, god love her.

Living with Bears

My sister recently sent me a hilarious pamphlet she found in upstate New York entitled “Living with Bears”. It’s all about how to coexist with the indigenous and migrating bears that sometimes mosey into the wooded neighborhoods of New York, and why bears behave the way they do. It says things like:

“What should I do if I see a bear? Don’t panic. Bears are more likely to be afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Never approach, surround, or attempt to touch a bear. Always leave a clear escape route for the bear.”

“How to prevent bear problems: Proper storage of garbage and removal of bird feeders are the two most important steps you can take to drastically reduce nuisance bear problems in your area.”

And so forth.

Once I got over how funny it was, I started thinking about how much easier life would be if we gave ourselves permission to objectify the differences between each culture, gender, and lifestyle in this same manner, distilling it all into a three-fold pamphlet that we could each hand out.

I guess the first thing people are afraid of is that by objectifying the differences between people, they would be accused of being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. As a comedian, I have a bit of license to go at these topics with greater abandon, however as a person, and a white American one, I have felt the cultural conditioning that is “treat everyone exactly the same”. While I agree with that idea from a human rights perspective, from a cultural perspective, it’s actually a bit insensitive when you look more closely at what it means. The truth is that culture shock can be extremely upsetting. We’re so concerned with not offending different cultures that we don’t know how to react when the differences bother us, i.e. pretending to be indifferent and behaving passive aggressively while the indexical shock grates on our nerves, when we could just point these differences out in objective terms and address them head on.

I wrote a bit about cultural indexicality before, and how certain types of behavior mean different things in different cultures, for example, how some Russian women I used to work with found whistling indoors to be extremely offensive. What if, on the first day I met them, they handed me the pamphlet “Living with Russians”, which explained the many superstitions they have involving whistling? Conversely, I could have handed them my “Living with Americans” pamphlet, which would explain that we generally like to do whatever we please when it comes to our personal space, and we may seem insensitive to a culture that has a lot of customs or superstitions, however we are not fond of people we don’t know well making extremely personal remarks about our looks or body (they all felt the need to point out every time I gained or lost a pound, and it drove me nuts).

However, this raises another problem: after the pamphlets are distributed, we’d have to figure out who is “right”, and who should concede to alter their behavior. In the case of the whistling incident, should I be sensitive to the Russians’ superstition, or should they be more willing to conform to the local culture?

That, of course, is trickier. But if we were allowed to objectify these differences, instead of being aware of them but forced to pretend as if we aren’t, I think we’d be more content to make choices based on these objective, impersonal pieces of information than we are with all of the unspoken differences we deal with now. A lot of the cultural and interpersonal ego battles that prevent us from getting along stem from a deep desire to be understood for the simplest things without having to go out of our way to call attention to them.

I’d personally love to hand out a “Living with Ve” pamphlet to everyone I meet. It would say things like, “Ve is prone to extreme moodiness and lack of focus before noon.” and “Store sugary food in tight containers and keep them in a secure place out of Ve’s field of vision lest she will, due to an overactive enthusiasm for candy, be forced to devour your sweets as soon as you turn around.” (Somehow I think the above two statements may be connected, but I digress.)

Think of how easy social life would be if we were allowed to make these pieces of information so objective and distant from our egos! What would your “Living with…” pamphlet say?

Since there’s currently no government subsidy for such pamphlets, maybe for now we can just try to see the differences between us, our lifestyles and our cultures as objective things, and not let them rule our relationships, or get under our skin. As with bears, acknowledgment and acceptance of our differences is the key to Living with Humans.

Ve Magni Performs at The Comedy Store Saturday Night!

Saturday, February 6th 8:00pm!

Come see some of LA’s best up and coming talent perform at the world famous Comedy Store on Sunset! The show is put together by the marvelous comedienne Cathy Lewis, and features a lot of amazing female (and male, less amazingly) comedic talent!

The show is upstairs in the Belly Room–Walk to the right side of the Comedy Store patio and enter through the back.

The Comedy Store: 8433 W Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069  -  $10 Cover  21+

The Ve on the YouTube: youtube.com/vemagni

Gratitude, Comedy and Rice Chex

I am so happy to be back in LA, I can hardly stand it! Though I’ve only been here one week, I barely remember trudging through the snow and ice in Berlin, desperately trying to get to the grocery store before 8:00 because it’s Saturday and if I don’t shop now, I’ll starve until Monday…

Well, today’s Sunday. It’s a gorgeous day outside, and not only do I think I’ll go to the grocery store, but I think I’ll get a steak–because amazingly enough, finding a decent steak at the store–on a Sunday–that won’t cost half the month’s rent is not difficult! In fact, most things here aren’t!

Maybe it sounds a bit pathetic, but I just want to use my energy for creating, for accomplishing and relating, and not for doing simple everyday things like feeding myself.

On that note, I bought my allergy-havin’ ass a box of Rice Chex. It was $2, and delicious. I look forward to waking up to more Rice Chex tomorrow!

Ok, I’m very happy about the food situation, but there is more. Last night I spent several hours at the Comedy Store on Sunset watching a group of really fantastic comediennes tear up the stage (ok, yeah, a few good male comics as well. They were great, actually.). There were 3 rooms booked solid with comedians all night, and though the crowds liked it, they obviously didn’t give a second thought to how lucky we are to live in a city so rich with comedic talent. Comedy is so important to me, and I think to the world, that it’s a bit hilarious that these people don’t see how lucky they are! But they showed up, which of course is the most important part.

Ve at the Kookaburra Club

Some videos from one of my last performances at the Kookaburra Club in Berlin. I do believe this was on my birthday, December 15th–English Comedy Night hosted by Wodonga’s own Kim Eustice.

More videos on my youtube channel at youtube.com/vemagni!

A typical American

at a comedy show last week, a comedienne interviewed some audience members, asking where they were from, what they did, and so forth. one man sat grimly in the corner of the front row with his wife, who thought it was all delightful. the comedienne asked this man where he came from, and he very smugly and slowly said, “America.”

i knew right away that he was not, in fact, American, not only because of his badly imitated accent, but because i don’t know any Americans in Europe who would say, “i’m from America.” we all, including me and all the other Americans at the show, say, “i’m from the U.S.” turns out, the man was from Scotland, and being a smartass.

it’s mostly the Brits who say that someone is “from America.” pretty much every Brit i know here says it out of habit–it goes back a few hundred years (many also still call us Yanks). a lot of people give us crap about calling ourselves Americans, on account of the north and south portions. it’s the only decent adjective for us (what else would we say? United Statesians?). but i don’t know anyone who travels and says they are from America. my generation was taught that it is an inappropriate thing to say, and that our country is called the United States. they even changed the name of the pageant. but this issue is one of those cultural divides between the scorching reds and everyone else. i’m sure Glenn Beck would vomit in his mouth hearing that Americans living in Europe aren’t ranting about how great “America” is. (personally, i rant about how great the United States of America is.)

the other comedienne made lots of jokes about Americans and how we all ski because we’re idiots, and so on. i laugh at American jokes, because they’re funny. we are usually insulted as ignorant, stupid, culturally lacking, judgmental, racist, etc., and not to say that it’s not true some of the time, but it’s ironic that the people who accuse us of prejudice are doing the same thing to us.

every time i meet someone from the middle east, as soon as they find out i’m American, they say something like, “oh so you must be really scared of me then.” one guy made a big deal of telling me that there’s an Arab living in my building, and doesn’t that frighten me… i usually just blink at them incredulously and say, “um, no.” i would apologize for the racial profiling of middle eastern people in my country, but we were attacked by an Islamic terrorist group, which consists of middle eastern people. if we were attacked by Irish redheads, we’d be strip searching them, too. i was detained for an hour both ways on my trip to Israel–they actually took me into an office where i had to show them my picture on my comedy group’s website before they would let me through. people get paranoid when they think they’re living under a bullseye. that doesn’t mean we think all middle eastern people are terrorists.

it’s often much dumber than that. i was telling some friends that my sister and i traveled from Vienna to Prague to Dresden to Berlin by train, stopping in each city for a while. this guy i’ve never met turns to me and says “that’s soooooooo American.” i blinked incredulously and said, “they’re in a straight line, and we only had 5 days. it’s an extremely logical trip to make.” i don’t even understand what he was implying–that Americans are smart travelers?

but generally, peoples’ prejudices about Americans are extremely vague and uninformed, because most of the people making these statements have never actually been to the U.S. how would the Germans feel if everyone in the world assumed they were all Nazis because there is still a neo-Nazi movement here? the NPD actually won enough support to be on the ballot this year.

a lot of Americans don’t travel outside the country, and for that we are insulted and dismissed as xenophobes, or arrogant duschbads*. before i actually lived in Europe, i never really formulated a response for this assumption. a few months ago, i was talking with a Belgian guy who again brought up the “i heard most Americans don’t even have passports” line. it didn’t take me long to respond once i thought about it. i said that despite what people like to believe, most Americans are not rolling around in money, and international travel is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. we do go to Canada and Mexico, just like the Europeans skip around to their neighboring countries, but the reason this “Americans don’t get passports” thing started is because until 9/11, we usually didn’t need passports to go to Canada and Mexico. if you didn’t look suspicious, they didn’t make a big deal out of it if you had a state ID, sometimes less. one time i took a bus to Montreal and forgot my passport. they let me through because i had a note from my mother wishing me a good time. i even boarded a plane once with no ID–they accepted my checkbook.

so i’ve tried to explain this to Europeans, and they usually just say, “huh. i never thought about it like that.” i also try to explain that many of our states are larger than their countries, and going from state to state is sometimes a bigger ordeal for us than jaunting from Switzerland to France to Italy, etc. i tell them i’ve lived in an Islamic country and studied Norwegian recreationally, and that we generally aren’t isolationists. i’ve often been told that i’m not a “typical American”.

my point is that it doesn’t make me feel special to be told that i’m not a “typical American”, as if i’m somehow the exception to the “Americans are idiots” rule. most modern Americans are paranoid as anyone else being threatened, but overall very tolerant and open to other cultures. our country is big, and contains a few hundred million people, including millions of immigrants and children of immigrants. get to know more of us before you call any of us “typical”.

phew. that’s been bugging me all year.

*duschbad=literally means shower bath, but sounds like something much funnier.

improv: find the joy

the business of comedy has been stressful lately. it’s an ironic job, in that we have to overcome, or subvert, so much personal anguish and professional bs to just try to make people laugh, which they sometimes don’t. the English comedy scene here in Berlin is growing, and with that come the pains. so when a special moment comes along, it helps to have the camera ready.

i think my favorite time to be a Laugh O is when we’re all getting ridiculous before a show. it’s definitely taught me a lot about enjoying the process as much as the product.

(in the photo, Brian and Matt demonstrate their proportions.)