AKA William

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Because the old school gay is fast becoming the new modern man, AKA William theater contributor Ben Rimalower will, every Thursday, document exactly how, when, and where everything old becomes new again.

Straddling the line between old school showbiz cheesiness and contemporary short attention span whateverness, Ben is the New Old Gay. He loves Patti LuPone.

I saw Joan Rivers at the Beechman the other night. It was exciting to finally see her perform live after years of enjoying her. Just as at the beginning of her career, Joan always scores big saying the things that we think, but which would be uncouth to say. She had the audience in stitches the other night ranting about ugly babies. Sometimes, her imagination dazzles, coming up with things we’d never even consider, but whose absurdity is hilarious. She had a famous bit years ago about Queen Elizabeth’s purse. What did she carry in it, the keys to Buckingham Palace?

Part of what makes Joan Rivers funny is the fact that she has no sacred cows. She looks at Queen Elizabeth carrying a purse and sees only a woman carrying a purse. She relates it to herself and what she carries in her purse and then comes the irony. More often than not, it’s the things that annoy her in life which catch her attention.

I totally subscribe to much of Joan Rivers’ platform, if you will, but her show was kind of off-putting in its negativity. More than ever, she basically hates on everything and everyone in her ravenous effort to cross any and every line. I’m not saying her humor is cheap; to the contrary, much of what she has to say is very sharp and sensitively observed, but a surefire way to get laughs is to assume the most critical position, to knock everything down, go for the jugular.

Watching her this week, I wondered if Joan has to be so globally scathing to maintain a feeling of freshness. She’s obviously the perfect person to talk about celebrities’ plastic surgery because she understands that universe from experience. I got the sense that much of her material is almost self-defensive. She’s eager to trash the world to avoid being perceived a soft old lady – not that there’s much danger of that. In our Reality TV obsessed, youth-focused culture, Joan stays relevant by going beyond irreverence. She’s hell-bent on outdoing modern society’s godlessness.

I’d been thinking about Joan a lot lately since watching her Friars Club Roast on Comedy Central, which I loved. Besides all the comedians making varying degrees of funny jokes about pretty much what you’d expect – her age, plastic surgery, etc., I loved watching Joan bask in the attention and I particularly loved one moment with Jeffrey Ross, who, besides ribbing her in all the usual ways, talked about how inspiring her memoir had been to him when he was starting out in the business. He paraphrased her, “You can go anywhere in this business if you learn to enjoy the process.”