Friday, December 16, 2016

The Last 24

The last 24 hours have been very trippy, almost like a strange experience with acid but not quite. I have been extremely busy as of late. One getting the show mounted. Getting up. Working. Trying not to die being me. The usual.

Wednesday night I did a bud's show. I was tired but one thing is I am good on my feet. I have gotten even better this year as I have disciplined myself with my craft in a way I have not in a while. So as I performed I went on a rant about Snapped. The crowd dug it.

Needless to say someone there captured it on video. They tweeted it. The narrator of Snapped got a kick out of my little rant. Watch here https://www.facebook.com/eddie.jones.395891/videos/10155552444997814/

However, the fun on social media was just beginning. Thursday night, as I was doing some publicity for my show, I was minding my own business just tweeting something. Through my efforts I have over 20K followers and am working on getting my account verified.

Anyway, out of no where Roseanne Barr attacks me. Yes, the Roseanne. She begins ripping into me. I didn't agitate her. As I said I was minding my own business in the twittersphere. Anyway, she is attacking me for no reason. So I start to fire back just to defend myself.

As if that's not enough, she starts liking and retweeting my tweets as she is fighting with me. I am like WTF is going on. And then she just blocks one of my followers for telling her off. The bitch is off her rocker. So she calls me a troll. I tell her pot calling the kettle black. She calls me a name. I tell her that's funnier than the time she falsely accused her family of molesting her. She takes several minutes to get back to me. Yeah, I went low but she kind of deserved it. In between I also brought up her horrendous rendition of the national anthem.

After which she says something else and I remind her she's out of work, that's why she can fight with me. Then she quotes my profile, and I tell her that she was better when Tom Arnold was writing for her.

BAM!

Roseanne blocks me.

It wasn't me reminding her of her false incest claim. Nope. Not even the fact she wasn't working. It was Tom Arnold. That was the knockout punch.

Sigh. When she blocked me I tweeted, "I was just blocked by Roseanne Barr. Now I have to explain to a whole generation who Roseanne Barr is."

Today a comedian friend told me she too was blocked by Ms. Barr. I think a lot of people are. My manager said he would have been more impressed if I got into a twitter fight with someone relevant.
Still, it was kind of funny.

Only on twitter

Only in America

Only in the 21st Century.

Oh Lordy Lordy Lordy 

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

18 Cents......

Yes, that is a real Christmas song. My dad and his family used to sing it when I was a kid. Apparently unknown artists before the days of the Countdown Singers put out little records. 18 Cents is the most depressing Christmas song ever. It's about this poor kid who has no money except for 18 cents and how he divvies it up. But damnit, 18 Cents is our depressing Christmas song.

I am glad 2016 is almost over. I am so tired I feel as if I will die some days. There are moments where I want someone to throw a blanket all over me. Yesterday I was so exhausted that I nearly fell asleep in the train station. That would have been a bad idea, but eh.

Lately, I have been running around so much and there has been so much to do. I have been dealing with folks overseas. Then I have been getting ready to showcase my show The Lady and President Tramp at APAP. I have been interviewing piano players who work everywhere and are more tired than I am. In between I have been getting onstage and delivering telegrams. Today I interviewed a young woman still covered in my Lady Gaga sparkles. I know, STABLE.

I asked her about her life as if I had the right to judge anyone covered in my sparkles. She lived with her boyfriend. I asked how their relationship was because I had a piano teacher who broke up and wouldnt get out of bed. This is why I don't know how to play piano. She said things were fine. I said I had to ask. Then I remembered I was covered in sparkles. I was in no place to judge anyone anywhere.

Two weeks ago, I did a podcast with an Irishman who was recording me from a bathroom in Poland. It's not what you think, often the bathroom is the quietest place in the house. I have a soft spot for the Irish because my dad's family is Irish. Heck, my pop's himself is the stereotypical Irishman in a lot of ways. His dad even more so.

Either way, I am ready for 2016 to be over. I am ready to hear my mother's lecture about how I need more protein in my diet. I am ready for my father to shame me about my life choices as we watch Big Battles and I admire his train platform. I am ready for my male younger cousins to tell me about how they realized recently that women were jealous. (Honey, we all jealous). I am ready for one of my female cousins to have a meltdown over a guy and spill the truth via eggnog. And I am ready to tell her at least he went away on his own, you didn't have to get the cops involved.

I am ready for my cousin to get out his trump and to start playing 18 Cents

Here is the link to the podcast I did with the Irishman from his bathroom in Poland. Enjoy. http://thecomedycast.com/podcast/the-comedy-cast-interview-with-american-comedian-ventriloquist-and-writer-april-brucker/

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Mean Girl Etc.

I have something that has been weighing on my mind. A few years ago I had a friend and now ex friend who was super supportive of me and my efforts. We had a lot in common. It's hard for me to have female friends because I am a very independent woman. A lot of girls need a clique and I don't.

I wasn't a Beta Female who was spineless and needed a man. Then again, I wasn't an Alpha who had to be ahead of the wolf pack either. More or less I am and have always been an Omega Female. I don't need the company of friends, but they are good to have. I can keep up with the guys while preserving my female side. Not to mention I love my alone time, and often out perform an Alpha any day of the week.

Anyway, in my experience my better friends have been males, gay and straight. But occasionally I make a good female friend and I do keep them. I thought this girl was gonna be one. She was ballsy. She was a good writer. She was funny. She was helpful. She was happy for me.

And then one day she blocked me on twitter.

I didn't know she had done this until I saw her on the street acting all shady. At the time she had a wonderful freelance gig and I figured I would drop her a line on twitter. That's when I found out she blocked me. Yeah, I would be shady to someone I blocked on twitter too.

But what had I done?

Had I said something bad?

Had I offended her with my actions?

Did her fragile ego, one who's writing was constantly being rejected, get hung up because my book was published and her's wasn't? But she was happy when my book went to print.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Anyway, I found out through the grapevine that she met a total creep and her whole world has become about him. This idiot she married was accused of sexually assaulting a girl when he was in college at some small school. Instead of just letting it die because the girl dropped the charges and changed her story, and maybe it was a drunken encounter where a conversation wasn't had, she proceeds to destroy this girl on social media. When I say destroy she attacked her on twitter, facebook, instagram.

As if that wasn't enough, her husband didn't like her dog. So I also heard she poisoned her dog. This dog had behavioral issues, but I remember she loved it. Well when her man came into the picture she started locking Mr. Pugs in the bathroom.

Needless to say, I feel like I dodged a bullet with this girl. I do believe I will find solid female friends and good female friendships are possible. Just not with this bitch. She's a mean girl, one who never got out of high school. She's about empowering other women until they get to be a threat. She's about being confident until there's a man. She's about destroying anyone or anything who gets in the way of her relationship.

She's nothing I want in my life. That's for damn sure. 

Monday, December 5, 2016

Name Calling, Etc

As many of my readers know I became very involved in the election this past year. So involved when you throw a topic at me I am almost as knowledgeable as Anderson Cooper without the hefty paycheck. I have learned many of these issues are not quite black and white but a huge brush stroke of gray.

For example, I am pro-choice. I am all about abortion access. My body, my say. A fetus is not a person under the US Constitution nor should it be. If a man can walk away why can't I? Many women are forced to go through with a pregnancy by an abusive partner who wants to hold onto them. Often times, people have abortions because the child has a health issue that will make their lives either short or unbearable. It's not an easy choice.

But I respect the pro-life side of things and felt that way for nearly the first 16 years of my life. I even gave out the white ribbons at the Catholic Church I attended as a young girl. However, over time I saw that the bully boy Republican lawmakers, mostly male, pressured women into going through with the pregnancy via legislation. Their evil, masked behind religion and sexism, was used to torture women. And these cock sure men were also the first to cut education programs that could help these young women leave poverty. The paradox behind Jesus made me ill. This is when I became pro-choice.

However, I do advocate for adoption. We need to make it easier for people who want to adopt. Heck, I have 6 cousins who are adopted so I can testify that my aunts and uncles gave these children wonderful homes and were amazing parents. Being a parent is far from giving birth, that's just a small sliver. It's being there in sickness and health and always and forever until you no longer walk this Earth. Someday, if I am to be a mother to real beings, I would honestly be more inclined to adopt or foster than bear a child of my own. It's because the pro-life movement doesn't account for the abused, unwanted children who are Constitutional Citizens who fall through the cracks.

Whenever I tell this to people they yell and scream. I'm a murderer. I'm a baby killer. Have I never seen a video of an abortion being performed. God will judge me harshly. Over the years I have had a lot of people ream me outline, friends, and they have disfriended me. We can't agree to disagree. We can't say the issue is gray. I am a baby killer plain and simple. Ya!

Sure, I support the mother's choice not to have the child. I support the mother's choice to give it up for adoption. I support someone's choice to keep the kid as long as there are programs to benefit them. But I am big on women knowing their rights regardless.

A childhood karate buddy and facebook friend is an evangelical Christian. She is pro-life to begin with, but she had a child who was born premature. This woman feels that if her son could survive at 28 weeks, that's a full term person. I am not going to tell her she's wrong. If anything it adds another layer to the whole complicated issue. For me to even debate her stance on this, her experience, would make me or anyone else a judgmental monster. And to her credit, our views could not be more different, but she was able to appreciate my point of view. She also didn't resort to name calling. That's what America should be about.

This election in general has made bitter enemies of some I used to call friends. I was called a libtard by some because of my activism against Trump. Others resorted to saying I deserved to be raped, cowards online more or less. All because I spoke my mind. I guess they were speaking theirs, and their insults laid claim that they really and truly had nothing to say. One man who had a KKK avatar messaged me saying, "Respect our next president you cunt," when I initially released a Donald J. Tramp video.

The hood over the head was scary. Anything hate group related always is. It's a level of evil that is based on both ignorance and fear that we can never fathom. Yet the hood over the head also led me know this was an idiot who was easily manipulated that had nothing to say. He had nothing to back him up. Of course he called women the c word. A woman with an opinion was a dangerous thing.

My political point of view tends to be more socialist. I am light pink. While I can appreciate Marxism, I know it does not fully work. Yet like a lot of Americans I will not demonize it either. The only reason I registered as Democrat is we have a two party system we need to work with.

I posted what I believed to be a very objective tribute to Fidel Castro. No, he wasn't perfect. He was a dictator. However, he got rid of the color stuckedness issue in Cuba. For the first time the black Cubans, second class citizens, had the same rights their white counterparts did. He also educated the people and gave them universal healthcare. Castro wanted a free Cuba for the Cubans like Ho Chi Minh wanted a Vietnam for the Vietnamese without Western influence. And yes, Batista was our man, because he let us swing our imperialist dicks around and dip our dirty fingers in his water. I told the truth.

I got some support but I was told by a lot of people that I "did not understand history." That I had never spoken to a Cuban. Yes I have. My deceased best friend was Cuban, and his family disliked Castro but told me Batista was much worse and kept the people racially divided. More Cubans in the US are white than black. The white Cubans were more or less political exiles and of course hate Castro. And as for me not understanding history, I debated becoming a history professor. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was my bedtime story as a child. I understand history a hell of a lot better than you.

Then there were those who kept telling me I was a stupid American. And they kept going on and on about the people in boats. Yes, the people on the tires. Let me point out that's bad. But we killed more blacks in the middle passage as we embraced the progressive immigration policy of displacing one ethic group solely to be slaves. Before importing slaves was made illegal, we also worked these people to death because we figured they could be replaced. And then when importation was made illegal, we bred them for work in the field and ripped their families apart time after time because they were not full persons under the law. Now we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, most of those convicts young men of color who don't know their rights.

Let me not even get into how we massacred or killed off with disease The Native Americans. Our record is nothing short of terrible in America. We have no room to criticize anyone at any time.

Andrew Jackson literally killed off an entire tribe of Native Americans by himself. He also initiated The Trail of Tears where many more died. Additionally he was a terrible sexist and brutal slave owner. Not a nice man, but a hero of our history. He's on our $20. Castro's no hero but he pales in comparison to Jackson.

Then there are those who challenged me that Castro censored artists. Yes he did but we censor the art and media all the time in the United States, and our coverage is nothing less than biased. Additionally, yes he put HIV positive people in quarantine. But Reagan denied HIV/AIDS and millions of Americans died. Some even argue the AZT killed more people than HIV/AIDS, and the government knew this and was eager to rid themselves of the demon of the homosexual. If this is true, it makes us worse than Castro could ever be. Sure, he was terrible to homosexuals. Yet we listed homosexuality as a mental illness in the US until the 1960s and then subjected young LGBTQ kids to conversion therapy for years......abuse of the worst kind. Yet we wag our finger at Cuba for being such bad, bad people. Double standard much, Miss America?!

And then let me add as I tried to make these points I was a traitor. Don't think so, just telling the truth. I was also a Communist. Eh, maybe I am as long as it pisses you off. People were going to try to set me straight. You are more than welcome to. That is when I just finally stopped answering. I know I am telling the truth.

As for those families affected by Castro, not excusing him. But unfortunately that is the bi-product of political unrest and revolution at times. We see it constantly in the developing world. Heck, we are about to see it here with a Trump presidency. So let's not judge because we have a superiority complex.

Heck, when Marx wrote "Religion is the opium of the masses" he might have been on to something. We use religion to keep people in their place constantly. We used it to preach that segregation was good for blacks and that gays were evil. We use it to control women's wombs at the government level. We use it as a mask for the sexist, racist notion of The White Man's Burden. While I am not totally for it as a spiritual woman, maybe not having it isn't the worst idea.

Then there is the subject of burning the flag. People tell you that you're UnAmerican if you burn a flag. Personally, I think you should be allowed to but feel it's lazy protesting. There are people who feel you should be in jail. Trump wants to take away your citizenship. Makes me want to torch one just because.

There are the idiots who use the argument that the troops died for our freedom. Not since the Revolutionary War have the troops died for our freedom. Mexican American War was Manifest Destiny. The Civil War was to preserve The Union. Spanish American War was imperialism. Both World Wars were imperialism. Vietnam was imperialism. Both the Gulf War and this conflict were imperialism.

I do respect those who lost their lives in battle, and feel for their families. I regard their sons as heroes because our government cheats the vets whenever they can. Plus as an American I do support them because I know there are also layers to the story we do not get and they are pawns. That being said, stop saying they are fighting for our freedom. It isn't true!

Also, unless you are white and male America is not always the paradise it is painted as. When your rights are denied and you feel there is injustice maybe a flag needs to be torched to make a point. While I feel perhaps you should run for office or join a peace rally, people are also pushed. Just like the minutemen were pushed. Actually, these farmer soldiers, untrained but sick and tired of being sick and tired, would probably actually be for flag burning. We are a country built on protest. So I say don't tread on me. And if that means torching the flag do it.

This past week I have been called a stupid cunt by a comic I once liked who defriended me online. Another called me a psycho, and this was one who used to be a nice dude before he decided to swing for Trump and left reality. One man who was a former club owner who let his club run into the ground called me a slew of names, one being failure. (His 5 businesses that went into bankruptcy could say if you spot it you got it).

Several people told me to get on a flotilla and go to Cuba. "Go somewhere else."

Eh, you mean somewhere that people can have a discussion without calling each other names? I think I will go there. And I think the loss of your friendship is no real loss. I can appreciate different ideas. I can appreciate discussion. But I don't appreciate name calling. Just saying, kids.


























Saturday, December 3, 2016

The Greater Good

This past week, I did a show at Carmen Road School. It was a nice little jaunt out of the liberal bubble I call my backyard. The school is a special needs school in Massapequa Park, NY. I took the LIRR and off I went.

The school services students with developmental disabilities whether it be physical, mental, or in some cases both. Students in the school are up to 21 years old, because some kids with an IEP get longer to finish. Anyway, I had no clue how this would alter my week in the most positive of ways.

Before the show, I ended up talking to the comedians. A lot of them, unlike my little liberal bubble, had voted for Trump. I feared I would be shot for bringing Donald J. Tramp. They told me I was fine, I was in suburbia. Had a laugh about that.

The show itself was a fundraiser for the PTA. The audience, composed of parents who children were students, were wonderful and laughed the entire time. There was also not one weak link in the lineup. The show was a wonderful breath of fresh air, as it was composed to people who aren't in my usual orbit. Comedians from LI tend to focus on jokes more than "being real." That is a thing particular to NYC comedy.

I watched the entire show, and learned a lot from this talented group of people. City comedians tend to get personal and deep, while Long Island comics tend to have more fun actually. Again, it's always good to get out of your bubble. The parents were nice, and even wrote us all wonderful thank you cards.
Look at the whole crew of us! 


Afterwards, I was speaking to one of the parents. He told me his son played wheelchair soccer. I had to applaud the staff and the teachers for all they did for these kids. Sure, they were disabled, but it didn't mean they weren't able. Life is about doing the best you can with what you have. It's amazing how much they were able to do for these kids, and how hard their parents were willing to fight for them. It was a blessing to be a part of that effort, even if it was for a brief wrinkle in time.

Right now, what the world needs is more people doing the right thing for the right reasons. There is so much hostility on both sides post-election. It's to the point where I need to take a break from the internet more often than not. So what we all need now is a little kindness and a little laughter.

Donald J. Tramp received a mixed welcome as this was a red county. However, May Wilson swooped into save the day. Everyone loves a party girl.

Either way, thank you to Carmen Road for an incredible experience. And thank you to the comedians who performed, and Joey Petroni for organizing.

April n May