I’ve had many opportunities to meet Saturday Night Live cast members. Chatted with Dan Ackroyd about roller derby at the Velvet Margarita. Listened to Chevy Chase try to impress his kids by pointing out filming locations for “Fletch” while I was escorting him and his family through the Universal backlot for Earth Walk. Met Laraine Newman a couple times because of her involvement with charity events I have produced. Had a brief relationship with Buck Henry’s phone number with no answering machine when I worked at the ACLU. I can even say that Kristen Wiig played a character who was loosely based on me in “Whip It” which was written by my roller derby carpool buddy Shauna Cross. And that while I was on set for the filming, Jimmy Fallon ran some derby announcing lines past me. Although not a cast member, I’ve even been given the death glare by Steve Martin when I had to interrupt his lunch with Martin Landau to talk to Marty. But of all the cast members thought-out all the years – there’s only one I was dying to meet and that was Sarah Sherman.
When Sarah’s show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery was announced, I could not buy tickets fast enough. Hollywood Cemetery is one of my favorite places on earth. It was where I used to go to often when I first moved to Hollywood to get some peace and quiet. I’ve seen The Flaming Lips perform “Dark Side of the Moon” there and went to a record release party for Slayer’s “God Hates Us All” on the night of September 10, 2001.
Sarah Sherman or as she goes by on the road, Sarah Squirm, is perhaps one of the most unlikely SNL cast members that you can imagine and I love her. She’s deep into body humor and her segments calling out white male privilege on Colin Jost on Weekend Update are so inspired that I find them to be revolutionary. She’s into gore and clowns and she may be Jewish but I’m pretty sure her imaginary friend god is Norm MacDonald. (I know he’s mine.)
Sarah is kinda like a creepy clown death porn Barbie for natural and untrimmed devotees and speed metal freaks. I used to work on the advisory board of an animal charity event with Joanne Worley, which was an unimaginable gift. I feel Sarah has grabbed her torch and the fire of women like her and is burning the bridges built to elevate men and oppress women to light her way. And I am in for ALL OF IT!
I’m so sick and tired of gender oppression. I have peers who are so stuck in the business model of gender stereotypes that they’ve sold out their daughters’ rights to body autonomy. The mental gymnastics that are happening to make that occur blows my mind. And then we have Paul, Dee, Gene, and Alice where it turns out that the only thing shocking about them is that “challenging” gender was just a gimmick to stand out.
Y’all know that gender is a construct and girls don’t have to wear pink and boys don’t have to wear blue. Right? So flipping the switch on that really shouldn’t be all that dramatic. And yet it is. Why? Because so much of our society is based on that and people don’t like admitting they’ve been wrong.
With those kind of voices getting such amplification, I was fully ready for an evening with Sarah Squirm. I wore a suit, I had an eye-ball headdress, I made her a pennant, and to show I was REALLY serious – I face-painted. Me being THIS excited about anyone is a big deal so my husband got me there early just to stop me from wanting to add more gore to myself. When she hit the stage she even acknowledged my commitment, having me standing up and exclaiming this woman came here to work.
She was right. I’m all about elevating female voices and I want everyone to hear Sarah loud and clear. She’s taking an approach that I have been seriously and anxiously awaiting – she’s elevating female representation in creepy clowns. Truly a level of empowerment I have so long been wanting to manifest. Afterall there’s a little Sugar Slam in all of us.
Let’s rewind a bit. Since we got there early we got to check out all the amazing pre-show projections. It was a magnificently curated collection of some really weird shit. Totally reminded me of that year in the 90s when we were all doing acid to the Mr. Bungle record while flipping channels on the cable TV at 3am.
Sarah took the stage first to warm-up her own crowd. Why? Because she is a GIVER! And first order of business of course was housecleaning. And this is a woman who knows how to clean house. Let’s just say she let a lot of men know they were about to be really uncomfortable. They were warned. And then she left for her opener. She gave them an out, the balls were in their court and this was their time to decide how they were going to use them.
There’s a lot I could say about her opener but one thing that really stuck with me is that I’m pretty sure he once told his tailor a joke about his wife and the tailor really didn’t like it. He was cool but I had a taste of blood and I wanted her back. Sarah Squirm knows that our grandmothers couldn’t always have a credit card or own property or a lot of things because this country is built on a business model of women reliant on men so they could serve them. And they work really hard to keep it this way using religion and gender stereotypes to insure they educate, pay, and value women less.
Note: While the show was September 13th, I’m writing about in on thanksgiving weekend because it really took me that long to attempt to find a way to express what Sarah means to me. Just hang for a bit.
So it’s thanksgiving weekend and it always bums because my Mom being an immigrant thought it was a bullshit holiday. She wasn’t going to spend all day in the kitchen cooking a bunch of food for her husband that she didn’t even particularly like. She had this great pizza dough recipe and who doesn’t want pie on thanksgiving? Pizza pie! Throughout the years we got stuck more often in traditional thanksgiving gatherings than doing what me and my mom wanted to do. Had to get dressed up and always help put out the pilgrim and Indian candles. Hi little Indians, your land has been taken and you’re all gonna get murdered while the white men set up an economic systems and religious establishments of oppression. And we celebrate this shit? With turkey?? So stupid.
My favorite thanksgiving was the first one I spent in Hollywood because I finally got to be alone. Just me in my pajamas and a pizza and the Twilight Zone on Channel 5. Twilight Zone marathons come on and go so this year a Dean Martin Roastathon caught my eye and Ruth Buzzi’s ‘spinster’ character Gladys Ormphby caught my attention. My earliest TV memories are of watching Laugh-In because I liked all the shapes and colors. Somehow the humor was absorbed into my system and seeing Ruth Buzzi five decades later brought on a whole new level of appreciation. Not just of my enduring appreciation of handbags as a weapon, but a whole level of appreciation of her middle-finger-up to gender expectations.
Ruth / Gladys flung one-liners with the same power and velocity of her handbag. While her felt purse was lined and filled with old pantyhose and cotton and designed to make a thud but not a mark, her words mocked her targets with an underlying power of darkness slamming against the absurdity of their perceived wholesomeness. Beautiful! In the Roast of Lucille Ball, Gladys said she was Lucy’s old roommate and that Lucy ripped her off. She said it was supposed to be “I Love Gladys” but she was robbed by Lucy who she claimed had a hidden XXX background that she was required Gladys to participate in. So good.
Sarah Squirm was wielding her microphone with the power of that purse. Using an arsenal full of body humor, she launched into an unrelenting barrage at the behavior that women have endured FOREVER. The Mr. Bungle music that had been playing in my head earlier was replaced with some Iron Maiden. You’ll take my life, but I’ll take yours too. You’ll fire your musket, but Sarah will run you through. The chef’s kiss was the visibly uncomfortable man next to me. Fake laugh and all. And one point he “went to the bathroom” and I was for sure he cried mercy. He did come back. Afterall you’d better stand, there’s no turning back. And I thought the Slayer “God Hates Us All” party on 9/10 was the most metal thing I was going to see at Hollywood Forever.
Sarah commanded it all with a multi-media production that I can only assume has been created in a laboratory. Frankenstein might have created the monster, but a woman created Frankenstein. Oh yeah, and she was dressed like a clown. Total swoon! And she punctuated it all with Seinfeld music.
Seinfeld has always been a show of how awful people truly are. If you don’t believe me, think about it. How many episodes are there were they do terrible things and we think, I do that or I know someone who does that? There’s always something that you think no one else does and then suddenly it’s on your television and you’re wondering how is this possible. Seinfeld took all the shitty stuff we think or do or know of that people think or do and put it on full display making it hilarious and superbly f’d up. Sarah takes this and says – not only is Seinfeld pointing out the emperor’s new clothes don’t exist but we celebrate that and it’s kinda stupid y’all.
Some stuff made me a level of uncomfortable that I haven’t felt since my Dad found fur-lined handcuffs and a bottle of motion lotion under the passenger seat of my Chevy Celebrity while I was in High School. And I LOVED Sarah for it! This is the kind of uncomfortable I wish I could have made the guys at Radio Shack feel when they decided to ban Orange Julius because they figured out our manager was gay.
Sarah went on about people’s bullshit on so many levels. And she did it so loud that you could probably hear her at Fatty Arbuckle’s grave. You know the multimillionaire silent film star who raped a woman to death in the 1920s. Which resulted in her being unrelentingly victim blamed while he eventually was acquitted. Probably why it took A HUNDRED F’N YEARS for someone to stand up to someone like Harvey Weinstein. Well Virginia Rappé is also buried at Hollywood Forever and I felt like she was getting a little justice that night.
When Sarah left the stage I got to give her my pennant and just kinda screamed over and over “you’re fucking brilliant, never stop.” Or something like that. While I am writing this, I’ve been using my notes from after the show. For some reason that I can’t remember I wrote these exact words exactly like this: “Dawn of the dead when there’s no more room in hell the dead will wander ?? the earth.” I’m not sure why but that’s a cut and paste. Yet it feels the perfect way to describe Sarah Squirm Live at the Hollywood Forever cemetery.
I laughed so hard at one point I couldn’t breathe and it was honestly the first time I’ve really felt my ovaries since menopause. They kinda woke up and stretch their legs and I was in pain. I thought I might be having a stroke and while I was scared I also couldn’t have been happier if this was how I was gonna go.
With the Writers’ and Actors strikes’ over, the picket lines at Paramount next to Hollywood Forever have cleared out. Sarah is back to work on SNL and bringing it. Her recent short film on the “Battle of the Sexes” gone wrong is a throwback to the 1960s tennis competition and that era of humor but only as can be done by Sarah. I’m excited to see what she can get away with on this year’s season. She’s also getting some attention being in Adam Sandler’s most recent movie. I’m excited to see what she comes up with on her own and how far she takes it.
Sarah was right, I showed up to work. Because I have been working and I’m so exhausted. There is absolutely no reason why my gender should have required me to wear pantyhose while I was a hostess at a Village Inn restaurant as a teenager. But more than that, there is no reason why my gender should mean I have less earning potential – FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE. When I was at that Village Inn, I kicked some ass and my manager knew it. So I tried to get him pay me more than the male host even if just by 1 cent. Never worked but I sure as hell deserved it because not only did I do more than him, better than him, I did it in a dress while I was probably fighting off a damn yeast infection from the stupid pantyhose.
One thing I admire about Gen Z is they look at a lot of the crap we have all tolerated our whole lives and say, nah. I mean every generation does it on some level. But with a lifetime of social media giving them unfiltered access to the world instead of what the establishments want to us to get, they can actually really form their own opinions. As an pretty early era Generation X, I love it. We all think we’re so progressive, but my nieces are still gonna make 83 cents to a dollar a man makes and they don’t even have the power to make life-altering medical decisions about their bodies. I’m not okay with this. The f’n Queen of England outlived legal abortion in American. People can’t even grasp how that destroy’s a woman’s ability to earn a living and provide for herself.
Sarah is pushing boundaries and we need that. You think gender role shit is bullshit but I ask, did you invite the boys to come in the kitchen this weekend to help measure things and bake? Maybe you did, I truly hope so. And while the world got “I Love Lucy” instead of “I Love Gladys,” I’m holding out for “I Love Sarah.” Because she’s f’n genius!
Sarah Sherman is currently a cast member on Saturday Night Live and you can look for Sarah Squirm tour dates and other madness at sarahsquirm.com.
