There’s a podcast that completely fascinates me, the same way that Planet Earth might fascinate you when you’re on mushrooms. It’s called The Champs – I’m certain I’ve mentioned it before— and it’s hosted by two intriguingly fucked-up comedians and features a black guest. I guess the reason I’m so taken by this particular podcast is the way they speak so honestly about women and getting laid. Like, when I die and go to heaven and finally get a chance to listen in on all the conversations that had ever been had about me by guys I’ve hooked up with, particularly comedians, I imagine they will take a similar tone to the banter on this podcast. In that, it’s a tiny bit degrading, explicit and completely entertaining. I really suggest you listen.

Anyhow, on the latest episode, they talk at length about how to get sex on the road as a touring comedian. Tactics range from going to a local mall and inviting the girl at the makeup counter to your show, to chatting up the young lady who’s come with one other (female) friend. Their stories reminded me of an off-handed comment my mother made recently about the time a comedian hit on her in the 80s. It goes to show that as long as comedians have been making people laugh, they have also wanted to sleep with pretty strangers who come to see them perform. I decided to ask my mother some question to get the female perspective on this “phenomenon.”

Me: So a comedian tried to pick you up after one of his shows a few decades ago. Which one was it?

Rosa Lev: Jackie Mason.

Me: I know the name. Who is he?

RL: He’s a Jewish comedian who was very popular in the 60s, I think, I’ll have to look it up. He was trying to do a comeback so he was playing a small show in Toronto. I had never heard of him but my friends, who were much older than me, knew him from their youth. It’s very Jewish humour. So they took me.

Me: Was he funny?

RL: Yeah, it was really funny. I think he was rehearsing material for a show he was doing on Broadway, and then turned it into a CD or something. He did really well with that material. But there was no one at the club when we went to see him. It was me, the older couple I went with, and maybe two other people. It was really empty and I felt embarrassed for him. But he was really funny, we laughed our heads off, which is hard when you’re in a small, almost empty venue. He was basically talking right to us.

Me: So he was engaging with you?

RL: He did his material and when he was finished he asked if he could join our table. He asked my friends if I was their daughter, since he was around their age. They said no, that I was their friend. He asked if I was from Toronto. I said yeah. Then he asked what I was doing later that night.

Me: And?

RL: My friends said “We’re going to take her right home.” Then he moved on.

Me: How did you feel?

RL: We laughed about it.

Me: Were you flattered?

RL: Not really. How many people were there in the audience? And I was the youngest one by far. He was only interested in me because I was the youngest?

Me: Mom, you’re being modest, you were a power babe. I mean, you still are, but come on, you were a hot piece of ass. (Eds note: I’ve attached a photo below of my mom, a former model, when she was younger to hammer home this point.)

RL: Well, there wasn’t a lot of variety at the club that night. He didn’t have a lot to choose from.

Me:  It’s probably a good idea you didn’t go home with a comedian. Not only because you were happily married with two children but because you probably would have ended up as fodder. Instead, it ended up being the other way around. He ended up as your fodder. Or at the very least, he gave me fodder to blog about this week. I’d be skimped otherwise. Thanks Mom!

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You know when you have things to do, a life to get in order, and you’re so in your head and anxious about what’s to come that all you can do to escape is spend time online researching and reading about people who live lives so completely different than yours? And then it’s a bunch of hours later and you feel like a big waste of sperm? Yeah? Well, anyhow, here’s a list of those people who’ve been occupying my time lately when it could alternatively have been spent, you know, establishing a new life in Toronto, pitching articles, arranging meetings, going swimming or walking my dog. (Most of these links are NSFW, by the way.)

Who: Kat Stacks
Why: I was first intrigued about this girl after I saw a Nardwuar interview with Tyler, the Creator, who enthusiastically proclaimed  “Dude, I want to fuck her so bad.” After a bit of Googling, I learned that she’s a young lady who was beat by her uncles, started her career as a stripper, graduated to hanging out with and being romanced by various hip hop artists and then blasted to online stardom by recounting revealing details about the inner workings of the rap game, as well as releasing telephone numbers on the Internet. As a result, she’s been filmed getting beaten up on numerous occasions, which you can watch on YouTube. Now, she’s in jail for something to do with immigration and Tweets regularly about the exploits of prison life. (Some samples: “niggas in prison send me more money than my bum ass babydaddy ever did without me even asking” and “most of female-officers in the facility are fucking eachother but got the nerve to descriminate against me & my girl”)
Minus the last part, Kat Stacks is an extreme personification of my middle school experience, when a lot of my friends were from local government housing. Not so much the sex stuff, but more the drama and pride and yelling and lack of positive male role models and misguided intentions. Seriously. It’s its own genre of soap opera and one I can only take in with astoundingly wide eyes.

Who: Jessie Andrews
Why: In short, she’s a 19-year-old porn star who is almost literally spewing sunshine out of her ass. I spend a lot of time on her Tumblr account, which unless you work somewhere really cool, is probably best viewed in the privacy of your bedroom.  To give you a brief picture, she’ll alternatively post photos and videos of herself innocently singing in the car and sticking out her tongue, to showing her gaping butthole and other uncomfortably in-depth photos of herself. (Or sexy, if that’s your bag.) The thing that makes this girl so baffling is that she desperately lacks a dark side. How can this be? No one can be that skippedeefuckingdee and make a living having sex on camera. I spend a lot of time thinking about Jessie Andrews, wondering about her future. When will she buckle? When will she collapse? Am I just old? Is she just really dumb? I want to be as bright and positive and life-loving as this 19-year-old porn star and I also really want her beautiful loft apartment, but I really don’t want to be filmed having violent sex for money. The whole thing makes me confused.

Who: Neal Brennan
Why: Way, way, way, back in the day when I had a serious boyfriend, Neal Brennan, who’s the co-creator of Chappelle Show, was my “one allowed.” (So was Stephen Merchant, the co-creator of the Office. So it’s a pattern.) The show went off the air a long time ago and that crush faded away. Then, I recently discovered his podcast, The Champs, which he co-hosts with the unsettlingly angry Moshe Kasher. I feel like a lady anthropologist when I listen to this podcast, in that it’s an hour’s worth of straight-up dude talk. More specifically, dudes who admittedly (almost proudly) have no idea how to have healthy relationships with ladies. There’re a lot of graphic stories about fucking and getting fucked and having sex and fucking some more. (Anyone who doesn’t have a lot of sex will inevitably feel wishful.) As a woman with a past for wanting to fix, nurture, mature and love this exact type of guy, this is basically my version podcast porn. I spend the entire time analyzing Neal’s patterns in an attempt to figure out a way that would make him fall in love with me, one day. This is basically my version of a celebrity fantasy.

Who: Katherine Marion
Why: This woman’s a raw foodist/stripper/undeniably unstable person with access to the Internet. She talks in non-sequiturs about the great powers of the Universe and her breasts. She spends a lot of time making YouTube videos in her underwear of her just hanging out around the house, in her underwear. She’s really proud of her 51-year-old body, which is admittedly pretty banging, except the person who’s filming her is her homeschooled, emotionless and disturbingly sheltered son, Kaeilin. There’s more I can say but I won’t waste your time. You could probably do a good job of that yourself after watching some of her videos.

Hey reader! Are there any other people online who I should be wasting my time reading/researching/obsessing about? Leave me a message or email me at write@eliannalev.com