CommuniKate

Not to brag, but this summer, everyone coming out of my summer show in Provincetown told me it was my best ever. Oh, okay, not everyone. Two couples got up and left in a huff shortly after I described the Republican Party as ‘the other white meat’. And that’s such an old line. I should not get any more cash out of that clunker.

Out in the lobby two of the guys tried to pick a fight with our darling ticket taker – “I love my country! I fought for my country! I have friends who died for this country. She needs to be taught a lesson.” [We’re in sync on everything, even the last sentence, but I need a lesson in hydraulics, not civics.] Their wives tried to prod them gently out the door, but they weren’t having it. They were escorted out. Perhaps they mistook my show for a town hall meeting.

When security told me after about the incident, I thanked them for their solicitude. One guy said, “Heck no, we weren’t worried about your safety. We were worried about their safety. If they went back in there, and started something, we were afraid you would turn your audience on them.” This summer everybody was achin’ for a breakin’. I am happy to report no pinkies were bitten off during my shows. That I know of.

In my family it was a sin to get a swelled head, so I’ve been critiquing the feedback that it was my best show ever. When people tell me I’m brilliant, I’m no dummy. I know it is just because we agree. My Ptown neighbor who watches FOX all day long does not think I’m the brightest motion sensor bulb on our block. In the beginning of the summer, I proposed an experiment. He would only watch MSNBC and The News Hour. I would only watch FOX and Lou Dobbs. At the end of the summer, we would compare notes. He said he just couldn’t do it. I was relieved. Then he went into a tirade about ACORN.

But I’ve been assessing the feedback that it was my best show ever and I would agree. While the events of Summer 2008 – Hillary Clinton, the primaries, the conventions, Obama and Palin - were great material for my show it was about getting rid of Bush. Other summers were more Bush-centric. I had no idea how bored I was of Bush Inc. nor how deadening Bush Think can be. I was plum out of permutations on the Bush-is-bad simile. Evil really is as banal as a bike helmet.

Even though no one was shot in the face, Summer 2009 was a rip-roaring time to be a comic. Town hall meetings, Supreme Court hearings, teachable moments, healthcare, warfare. It might be no drama for Obama, but our dear democracy is in a parlous fight for its life against the armies of corporate capitalism with its legions of banksters, insurers, pharmaceutical and arms dealers. The color threat levels are high. White resentment is armed and dangerous.

While I feel some disappointment with my new president, It is an old familiar disappointment, oddly comforting. It is nothing compared to the spouting, paranoid rage my neighbor feels about Obama. And it is nothing compared to the cement- block-on-chest despair I felt in the Bush years. Now there are glimpses of hope and change – friends tell stories of being listened to in meetings on the Hill, about being invited to share expertise, about available funding sources. Languished and forgotten legislation is burbling up through committees. Progressive LGBT friends are getting substantive jobs in the Obama administration.

While I agree that this summer’s Ptown show was the best show, I would change “ever” to “of the last eight years.” It had very little to do with me. Please tell my family I’m still the same hat size.

For all I know, Keith Olberman might still be doing his special extended commentary on the You Lie Guy, but I had to get to bed. I have not checked this morning to see if he is still going strong with his fulminating filibuster on stupidity, but he could be. There’s plenty of what a southern friend of mine calls “stupid out loud” for Keith to chronicle. It is much easier to talk about stupid guys than complex ideas.

So while we are at it, my favorite guy was not South Carolina’s Joe “A protégé of Strom Thurmond” Wilson. I could not get enough of the guy with the handmade “What Bill?” sign in his lap. Was he a holdover from the Clinton healthcare speech sixteen years earlier and the “What Bill?” indicated he still did not understand the importance of healthcare reform? Sometimes he acted as if the sign had dropped in his lap from the balcony. Or he was covering a wine spill from dinner. Or it was some Ciallis misfiring.

While others in his pod of pathetics were sternly holding up their white flags, he seemed ambivalent about hoisting his own placard. He pointed to the signage in his lap, “Look at this thing. It wasn’t my idea.” That whole Republican side of the aisle looked like a bunch of troublemakers I had in a 7th grade study hall that reportedly balked at doing the stand-up, sit-down quad-strengthening exercises for a substitute gym teacher.

Republicans treat President Obama as if he were a substitute and they are just waiting for the real deal to come back in the room. That would be a white Republican male. Their desperate efforts to delegitimate an elected president (not to be confused with their efforts to legitimate a selected president) remind me of their panicked response to the terror attacks on September eleventh, eight years ago. For many of them, it was their first experience being attacked. Unlike women, poor people, and people of color who know being attacked as a pre-existing condition, the white guys freaked. Their world order was rocked. They panicked, put the country in lockdown and retaliated against the wrong country.

Once again their worldview is being rocked - demographically, racially, economically, politically – and the Birthers, Deathers and Everything in Betweeners are not behaving well at all. I would suggest detention, but after Guantanamo, it has bad connotations.

The much-anticipated benefit for the Provincetown Dog Park starring Lily Tomlin was a huge success. All day long tropical disturbance Danny dumped rain on our little town, but an hour before the event in a huge white tent out on MacMillan Pier, the rains stopped. In the lowering evening light, eight hundred people walked out the pier promenade and found their seats. The air was so still and humid, I worried the evening would be more like a Bikram Comedy night.

No worries. About a half hour before the show started at 8pm, the winds came up and started whipping tent flaps, swinging the two huge IMAX screens suspended over the huge long crowd, and adding a full sail of breathless excitement to the room. On our darkened little spit of land, in the middle of the roiling sea, the crowd was defiantly good-natured with Mother Nature. It had the feeling of a revival, survival tent.

Stage One Productions of Boston planned a jam-packed, fun-filled evening. After remarks by the creators of the dog park,event sponsors Ecunuba dog food, and a various welcomes from local business owners, I took to the stage in full yellow rain gear, complete with a Captain’s Courageous rain hat. It was like Deadliest Catch meets Laugh-In. I had the sheer pleasure of introducing Lily, who did a medley of her favorite characters updated for the event. Ernestine, the phone lady, was answering calls for an insurance company and the refrain was, “No, not covered.”

After her hilarious set, and group chanting that the top of the tent not blow off, I took questions from the audience for Lily. We plowed through the raffle drawing and then Lily received a lifetime achievement award from the Provincetown Theater. Lily unfurled the document but it was blank because FedEx had not been able to deliver the real embossed parchment due to the storm. She went from there. She was given the key to the town. I forgot to introduce the town moderator who gave her the key, and mid-proclamation, Lily asked, “Who are you?” Luckily our town moderator has great timing and a great sense of humor. She and the poor woman who was supposed to read all the Whereasses for Lily Tomlin Day, got interrupted mercilessly by Lily and me. We apologized profusely later.

The after party at the Crown and Anchor porch restaurant was a chatty, home town affair and Lily stayed graciously to the end. It was a thrill for me to appear on the same stage and work with Lily. It was a highlight of the summer for many and a dream come true for me!