Mi abuela

My grandmother came to this country from the Dominican Republic at the age of 21.  She learned English on her own while she was here.  She earned a living by cutting hair and mending clothes.  Once she amassed enough skills she then opened up her own salon where she employed many other stylists and an accountant.  Because of her, this country received more taxes and had more more employed persons.  I appreciate the work that she did and I am proud to call her my abuela.

I wrote a new joke!

This joke is written in the style of Mike Birbiglia.  I'm trying to avoid shock humor and instead actually write about things that have happened to me.  Here's an example of my old shock humor:

I got pulled over for a speeding ticket today.  Nah it’s okay.  It’s not like it’s my first time getting a speeding ticket.  But I think it was the cops first time writing a speeding ticket.  

He didn’t make me pull my pants down or anything like the last four cops.

 It's alright. Is it true? My lips (and butthole) are sealed.

If you want to check out some of Mike Birbiglia's comedy check him out in the links below.

Without further ado: Here's my newest joke:

I went to a conference for my job recently where I met a bunch of people.  I know what you’re thinking- thank god this guy has a day job because this comedy thing is not going to work out for him.

Anyways, at the conference I’m in this workshop and we’re introducing ourselves and I was like the fourth chris in the room. If you’ve had a class or a job with people who share your name you know how much this sucks, right? Cuz now we have to figure out what we’re going to call each other

So we have to this weird native american ritual to determine who gets what name.
“Well that guy is older so he shall be Chris the wise”
“That guy is indian, so we’re just going to call him Brown Chris”
“That guy beat the shit out of his girlfriend last week so we shall call him Chris Brown" 

"And he’s fired.”

Well we get to me, and I firmly say that I’d like to be called Chris, just Chris. But I joke that kids in middle school used to call me Mother Goose, because my last name sounds like Goose. And because little kids are assholes.

But they actually choose to refer to me as Mother Goose! Even the leader of the workshop who is the president of a multimillion dollar organization.
They didn’t even try to pretend they were joking about it.  At one point I ask a question, cuz I’m a loudmouth, and the president guys responds-
“Now, that’s a very good question Mother Goose”
“Mother Goose raises a good point here, how DID humpty dumpty fall off the wall [trail off] and what can we do to put him together again?”

I'm still working on the ending.

Notes from first night of the ethnography

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

Thought the open mic begins at 9:00, I arrived at 9:45 due to a combination of having difficulty finding parking and leaving late.

One of the first things that I noticed is that there is no community here from which to draw conclusions about a culture.  The comedians get up, perform, and leave the stage.  One may not be able to conduct an ethnography in these conditions.  Watching comedians perform is not observing a community, it's commentating on their performances.  I stay anyways.  The thought did come to me that perhaps I could conduct an ethnography of an Improv troupe.  My local theatre is hosting a Improv 101 in the near future.

Jokes that I notice throughout the night:

• Jokes about sex
• Jokes about drugs- weed, coke.
• Jokes about race
• At one point there was a joke about smoking weed while having sex
• There were also jokes about TV shows and Movies
• These jokes were not as perverse.
• These jokes tapped more into the stream of pop culture
• I wonder if comics tell jokes on these premises because it is a shared experience that the comic and the audience has.  That may be true for all jokes.

The first three jokes seem to suggest that here in this open mic performance, the perverse is the norm.  Almost every comic makes fun of a topic that would not come up in day to day conversation.  However, I should note that these topics don't come up in my day-to-day conversations, but perhaps they are often discussed among others.

After the first comic I see performs, the next comic is introduced.  The host goes in detail that he has performed in over 4 rooms and many shows.  It seems that he is a high status individual because e has performed in many places and many different times.

I also wonder what makes each comic unique. Is it their size, race, or voice?  Some comics seem to point out their race or voice.  Their names may also make them unique.  One female comic went by the name of Pixie Rose, which made me question if that was her real name and that was one way of uniquely identifying yourself in a room of many comics.  The comics do not seem to be in competition with each other as there is no prize, but perhaps they strive to be unique somehow.  

Some traditions I noticed:

• New comics
• It was a comic's first time performing this night.  The said that he had some rules for the audience for the new comic's set
• No judging
• Be supportive
• Applaud the new comic as he comes to the stage
• Additionally I noticed that the comic had his own tradition- he brought many friends.
• It is interesting that a new comic is given so much support, when the host and the audience could easily have reversed their positions by basically giving him no mercy.  Intead the new comic is cherished and coddled.s
• 3 item minimum
• The host only said this once
• May not be a tradition, and more of a business requirement.
• Headshots
• A headshot is a picture that a comic has to give to promoters.  
• When the host introduced one comic, he said that this comic could host, but first he needed a headshot.
• It seems strange that a headshot is needed when comedy is all about the jokes, there is no need for a headshot on stage.  However, there is a need for the headshot for the advertising and promotional materials.
• Additionally, the comic is judged by their headshot. The host said that the comic's previous headshots were not good enough, he needed to get better ones.
• Audience Participation
• Many comics engaged in a call and response segment of their performance.
• They would ask a general question- "Anyone hear smoke weed?" And the audience would yell back
• This may not necessarily be a tradition, but may serve as a confirmation to the comic that he is still being heard.
• Thinking quickly
• One comic was given many laughs and applause for thinking of a joke on the spot.  That is probably "worth more" to be a quick thinker than to be well rehearsed.
• Timeline
• The general timeline indicates the status that one has as a comic.
• The opener is given respect.  It is an honor to open the show.
• After the opener, the various amount of open mic comedians perform while the host introduces each comic.
• If a comic has high enough status, they are invited to jump in the line up of open mic comedians and do a few minutes, even though they did not sign up to perform that night.
• Finally, the feature comic performs, he is given at least 15 minutes to perform, while the open mic comedians are given 3-5 minutes.
• It seems that the more time you are given to perform, the higher status you are among comics.
• Age and High Status
• It also seems that comics are given high status based on the amount of times that the have performed or if they are retired and coming back to perform.
• It also seems that older comics are well respected and that exceptions to that are pointed out.
• One comic was young and the host pointed that out.  The host said that the next comic was going to make the older comics mad because this comic was young and had a lot of talent.
• This suggests that older comics are given a higher status or more respect, but having more talent overrides that

Some of the comics discussed race and the demographics of the room.  One comic asked for the people of different races to shout out.  Based on his audience participation, it seemed like there was a lot of white males, but not too many black males.  There were also white females, but no black females nor any hispanics.  The comic did not ask about asians.  I'm not sure what the point of the comic doing this was.  One comic admitted to having white guilt twice.  He said that he watched Tyler Perry movies and then at the same time accused Tyler Perry being racist in his portrayal of Blacks in America.  This comic also seemed to note his privilege as a white male, while making fun of a female comic that had performed before him, he made a joke about her sexual promiscuity.  He then apologized saying "I'm sorry, I'm just a white guy who..." He did not finish the sentence, but it is curious he noted his race and sex while apologizing, as if noting his privilege.

I left the open mic once all the comics finished performing.  I did not stay long, but I did not notice many of the comics talking to each other, instead I saw them speak to the friends that had come with them.

I will follow up with this next week, however I may have to give up on the ethnography idea and just study the performance of comics through a sociological lens.

Comedian Ethnography

Tonight I engaged in a thought I've been having since I graduated college.  When I was trying new things, I started doing some comedy at open mics.  At the same time I was reading books like Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Black Like Me.  Both of these books are ethnographies.  The former is a book that a journalist wrote after attempting to live off of a minimum wage job for a year.  The latter is written by John Howard Griffin, a civil rights activist who discovered what it was like to live as a black man in the south during the early civil rights era by artificially darkening the color fo his skin.  Since I was already engaged in both activities, ethnographies and stand up comedy, I always wondered what it would be like to combine the two.  I decided that one day I would do an ethnography of comedy.  Today was my first foray into that venture.

I recently read Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds.  Authored by one of the premier sociologists, especially among ethnographers, Gary Alan Fine.  This ethnography covered the rituals and traditions of Pen and Paper Role Playing games, as told by a participant-observer. It is a very good book that I highly recommend.  From this book, I reverse engineered that questions that an ethnographer should ask.  In the future I'll write those questions, but today I wanted to write about my first attempt at conducting an ethnography.

I visited a bar near my house that has an open mic every Wednesday.  I wanted to see what an ethnography of comedians would be like.  I knew that other people have thought of this before, but that wouldn't matter.  Plus this would be my research.  It also might look good in my cover letters for grad schools. Ha.

Much more than Fair Housing

While my agency is in the business of fair housing, it should be recognized that fair housing is an all encompassing field.  Some may think that the point of fair housing is only to ensure that all persons are given equal opportunities to housing, but it’s more than that.  Where one lives determines so much more about their life.

A person’s place of residence determines where their children go to school.  If minorities are unfairly segregated into neighborhoods with poor performing school districts, then those children will unfairly receive a subpar education.  Meanwhile, children who are privileged to live in better performing school districts receive a better education.

Additionally, fair housing serves as a way to protect consumers from being swindled into unscrupulous loans and purchases from not entirely trustworthy agents.  The recent settlement Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler and Wells Fargo reached is an example of that.  Utilizing fair housing principles, the Attorney General held Wells Fargo accountable for its mortgages practices that unfairly discriminated in prices and terms against minority populations in Maryland.

My agency also serves as a platform for grassroots organizing.  My agency regularly works with other organizations across the state and the nation to ensure that the voice of the people is heard.  My agency recognizes that people are still unfairly steered into areas that they would rather not live because of their source of income, or their sexual orientation.  Together with other like-minded organizations, my agency will work to change that.

Last but not least, my agency is a civil rights organization.  It is impossible to be an advocate for fair housing without being an advocate for civil rights.  After all, the fight for justice in housing rose out of the civil rights movement.  One of the most famous examples of fair housing testing is during the campaign for civil rights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held in Chicago.  During that time, multiple black and white activists went to various real estate agencies and compared their results.  Their results showed the true discrepancies that black and white home-seekers face.  Because of the actions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., city leaders supported the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, an organization created to promote fair housing throughout Chicago.

In reality, a fair housing agency like my agency does much more than promote equal opportunities to housing for all. Instead, my agency is an organization that supports civil rights, grassroots organizing, consumer protection, and promotes equal opportunities in education.

Tick Tick

My girlfriend got me a watch while she was on vacation.  This watch is an analogue watch and makes an audible tick tock sound.  For someone who is easily distracted and spends time on other projects than the tasks he has been assigned, this is perfect for me.  It makes me more aware that time is passing by and encourages me to get to work on the tasks I should be focusing on.  I'll sign off this blog post with a relevant song from one of my favorite bands.

Fair Housing is all encompassing

It really is

Earlier today I was thinking that Fair Housing is pigeon-holed. We tend to just think that Fair Housing is all about people having the freedom to choose where they live. But really, Fair Housing is more than that. Fair Housing organizations operate under the realm of Education, Consumer Protection, Employment, and Civil Rights.

I'll expand on this soon in the future.