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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Comedy I Second Cienna's Appreciation of Last Night's Comedy Competition

Posted by David Schmader on Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:29 AM

willweldon.com
Will Weldon, funny as shit

Seriously, last night I laughed for nearly 90 minutes straight. Most amazingly, it was at a comedy club, a place I'm not usually inspired to laugh for so long and so hard.

But last night's semi-finals of the 32nd annual Seattle International Comedy Competition at the Comedy Underground was seriously one of the most consistently funny things I've ever seen in a comedy club. Of the nine comedians, seven were really, really good—smart, inventive, polished but relaxed, and so funny I all but forgot the two who made me want to hoot at their lameness.

Among the best of the good ones: Kansas City's Mike Baldwin (who had the night's high score), Houston's Sam Demaris, Seattle's Xung Lam, Austin's Eric Krug, and LA's Patrick Keane and Rick Kunkler.

But my personal fave of the night (which was literally a total sausage fest, with not one broad on the boards) was Will Weldon, a young L.A.-by-way-of-Canada comedian who got the night's second-highest score and told the first pro-transgender joke I've ever heard.

Actually, it was more of an anti-people-who-are-dicks-about-trans-folks joke, and in lieu of a transcript (I was drinking), here's a description, which will rob the joke of its comedy but will represent it accurately. Weldon started the bit by bringing up the lame-ass Hollywood-and-TV comedy trope in which a big douchey straight guy makes out with some super-hot chick, after which it is revealed that the super-hot chick is MTF trans, with the revelation immediately followed by footage of the douchey guy puking into a toilet over a laugh track.

Will Weldon calls bullshit: "You're throwing up because the girl you kissed used to be a guy? She used to be a guy. Past-tense." Weldon then pointed out that everyone in the world used to be a baby, and that kissing a person who used to be another gender doesn't make you any more gay than kissing someone who used to be a baby makes you a pedophile.

I did a lousy job relating this, but the whole joke made me want to buy him a yacht.

The Seattle International Comedy Competition continues, building to the night of finals on Sunday November 27.

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Ooh, he cute.

Posted by Rowlf on November 16, 2011 at 11:02 AM

Oh weird, I just discovered his twitter feed last night. It's almost as good as Joshua Karpati's.

Posted by Irena on November 16, 2011 at 11:08 AM

I'm not going to be one of those people who tries to tell trans people they don't feel the way they do, but you can't actually become a different gender. You can get surgery and take hormones to become a physical approximation and be more comfortable in your own body, but you're always going to be the same gender you were born with at a physiological level. Trying to make women and trans-women completely equal on all levels including the one in the joke is a bit disingenuous.

Posted by The CHZA on November 16, 2011 at 11:14 AM

How prevalent is that "trope"? Because I've seen it exactly twice: in the Crying Game and in Ace Ventura, which was explicitly satirizing that scene in the Crying Game.

(Although admittedly I stay away from the kind of bro-medy that would use that kind of "joke.")

Posted by keshmeshi on November 16, 2011 at 11:18 AM

@3: What the fuck are you on about? Are you taking blood samples from and analyzing chromosomes of everyone you meet to determine what their gender is "at a physiological level?"

If a person says they're something, and looks like they're something, and acts like they're something, but their DNA says they're something else, who gives a shit what their DNA says?

Posted by Ben on November 16, 2011 at 11:27 AM

@4: I've seen it a few places. Not necessarily with the throwing up, but some sort of freak-out. An episode of the I.T. Crowd comes to mind. I'm sure TVTropes could provide a lot more examples, but I'd like to get some work done today, so I won't be checking.

Posted by Ben on November 16, 2011 at 11:29 AM

#3: You're ignorant - that's what makes transgender jokes so difficult. It's hard to tell a joke if the audience doesn't understand what you're joking about.

First, gender isn't physiological. Look up the difference between sex and gender.

Second, there are six typical physiological difference categories between the sexes - brain/behavior, genetics, secondary characteristics, gonadal, internal genitals, external genitals. Transgender people, by definition, don't match their assigned sex in the first category, and often don't in 4 of the 6
physiological categories (all but internal genitals and genetics) - sometimes genetically as well, particularly with XXY individuals who seem to be often transgender MTF (sometimes FTM). You could be an XX male, XY female, or XXY either and never know it unless you've had a karyotype test done - most people don't know.

If you want to take the one category that transgender people are almost never matching their typical sex - internal genitals (uterus, gonads) - you exclude infertile non-transgender people as well from any sex.

There is just no way that makes sense to say that transgender people are not "physiologically" their stated sex without condemning many non-transgender people as well, including possibly yourself.

Posted by raku on November 16, 2011 at 12:20 PM

Hopefully medical technology will improve to the point that we can induce cultured cells to form a penis or a vagina, among other organs. We're well on our way to growing kidneys...

Posted by venomlash on November 16, 2011 at 1:29 PM

You mean that's not Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the picture?

Posted by Sousaphone Colossus on November 17, 2011 at 7:33 AM