I’m out.

I hate burlesque. Or, rather, I hate modern hipster burlesque – the kind that is in a back of a bar on Wednesday nights. It’s like being a hipster junkie or street punk. You’re choosing a survival job – one that pays a ton, by the way – and doing it for fun and almost no money. I would love to see a burlesque dancer tell a stripper about her hobby.

Burlesque dancer: “So, me and a bunch of my friends put on wacky costumes and then dance around and strip. Oh, AND we get paid! In drink tickets.”

Stripper: “I make $800 a night.”

Burlesque dancer: “Well, I get to feel sexy on my own terms. It’s practically performance art.”

Stripper: “I own an apartment, and I don’t have a dayjob.”

Burlesque dancer: “Yeah, but you’re demeaned. And I get to wear a sailor suit!”

Stripper puts cigarette out in Burlesque dancer’s eye.

I feel the same way about fireworks. Why does everyone like fireworks so damn much? Stars – stars I like. But fireworks? It’s way too much stress. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO BE FOR THE FIREWORKS?” “DON’T MISS THE FIREWORKS!!!!!” “BE SURE TO FIND SOME SWEATY PLACE TO STAND WITH A BUNCH OF CRYING CHILDREN WHO CAN’T SEE THE FUCKING FIREWORKKKKSSSSS!!!!!!” Then once they start it’s just noisy light vomit.

BAH HUMBUG.

I can only hope that this post doesn’t destroy my chances for getting invited to parties ever again. Unless they have fireworks or burlesque dancers.

Anyways, that leads me to one of my growing side gigs – comedy parody singing. Nothing has to be photoshopped out! I don’t even have to brush my hair. Or teeth! I just show up and sing in a closet for a few hours thinking about Beyonce or the Divynls and my job is done. Here are a few I’ve done:

Me and this lion, hanging in The Forbidden City.

OMGOMG ELIZA WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA WHAT WAS IT LIKE EXPLOSIONNNNNNN?!?!

I know, you are all super excited to hear about my trip to China. I am still sorting through the last 9 days, so my thoughts aren’t really organized. But I can at least answer the main questions I keep getting asked.

• Why were you in China, Eliza? I was doing comedy shows – improv shows and workshops. We were brought over by a company called ChopSchticks. (That is totally the real name. Genius, right?)
• That’s crazy! In English? Mostly. The audiences were primarily American and British expats, and their Chinese girlfriends, but we did do one workshop for a Chinese company where almost no one spoke English. We had to use translators – who were awesome and hilarious at their job. This workshop produced the craziest round of Bippity Bippity Bop I have ever seen. Like, Japanese game-show-level craziness. I would not have been surprised if someone smashed a window and dove into the street screaming after saying “Charlie’s Angels.”
• Where in China were you? We were in Shanghai for the first few days and then in Beijing. Shanghai is known as the “Paris of the East” and they are hosting the World Expo this year, so there was cool stuff to explore everywhere. Beijing is a odd mix of ornate old beauty and staunch communist stoicism – I found myself thinking “this looks like Warsaw” as often as “this looks like Epcot”. Yes, I view foreign countries through an Epcot filter.
• How was the food? Great. Weird and good. Dim sum for breakfast and Tsingtao for 70 cents! We had amazing Hunan-style and Taiwanese food, always for tiny amounts of money. No, I did not eat the fried scorpions or cicadas – I chickened out. Speaking of chicken,  I would be ok with never eating Chinese chicken again ever. It was like they put a whole chicken into a wood chipper.
• What about the shopping? That stressed me out. You have to bargain – hard. Generally the guide books say you should pay about 10% of what they quote you, which feels really rude. To shop in China you have to get very comfortable with people laughing at or acting offended by the price you offer them – if they don’t you are getting really ripped off. But then, “getting ripped off” means paying $10 instead of $1 – things are really cheap there. You know how cheap stuff says “made in China” on the back? Same China.
• Did you bring me anything? No. I did bring Ben a t-shirt with Chinese writing on it. My plan was to let him think is says “I love my handsome boyfriend” for the rest of his life. Unfortunately he believed me and got really excited, so I felt bad and told him the truth: it says “Kung Pao Chicken.” Man, that would have been hilarious. Oh well.
• How come you didn’t post more? Or Twitter? Or update Facebook? Um, because I have a life? Just kidding, I don’t. Internet access was pricey and hard to come by. Twitter and Facebook are blocked entirely. Yep, blocked in the whole country. One of those little reminders – like the tiny soldiers everywhere – that it is still a communist country. (Their army is so little and cute! They are my size, but with miliitary caps! Is this racist? Sorry.)
• Did you go to the Great Wall? Yep. And the Forbidden City. AND the Temple of Heaven. As an American tourist in, say, Europe – you spend a lot of time thinking “Wow! This castle is HUNDREDS of years old! The Liberty Bell is practically new!” In China it’s more like “Holy shit! This is THOUSANDS of years old!! People knew how to paint and make shoes that long ago? Fuck me, I should get a job.”
• Wait, but haven’t you been to Egypt? Isn’t that even older? That doesn’t count – they were taught everything by aliens.

BUT, in defense of the show, it was created and directed by Ali LeRoi – co-creator of the Chris Rock Show and Everyone Hates Chris. Not a bad start. It’s produced by Ice Cube, so that’s awesome, and a bucket-list check off right there (“Guest Star On A Sitcom Produced By Former Member Of NWA or Star of Boyz In The Hood”. My Dr. Dre and Cuba Gooding Jr. projects fell through.) Plus the show stars Terry Crews, who is both hilarious AND jacked. Seriously, you might not notice on screen, but that dude is ripped like a bodice (Ripped like an MP3? Ripped like a def leopard t-shirt? Whatever, he’s muscle-y). PLUS, on a personal note, it’s on TBS so I’m really just a time slot away from working with Tyler Perry – my own personal rapture.

More specifically, to address the complaints in the reviews, sitcom pilots are never awesome. They are introductions to the characters and the show – in this case a blended family that mostly likes each other. Pilots, by necessity, have to do work not just have fun.

But I can personally assure everyone that to call it “harmless” and “nice” is just inaccurate. At least episode 9 (or as I like to call it “the TV appearance that will make black people hate or love me”) isn’t. I don’t want to give it all away, but I will say that one of my most terrifying showbiz moments was when the director asked me to improvise as much racist stuff as I could come up with, in front of an approximately 90% black crew. (And one of my best showbiz moments was when everybody laughed.)

I am also writing this from my hotel room in Shanghai, China. So far I can tell you that actual Chinese towns smell a lot better than Chinatowns.

Besides that I haven’t seen much yet. I spent the last 2 days on flights to get here. The second one – the 13 hour one – I was seated next to a man who started the flight by screaming at his assistant for seating him in coach “like a fucking pauper.” Soooo, he was a treat. To be fair, the rest of us were begging for tuppence and eating mud paste to keep warm, and I was hiding a baby in my skirt. He had a point.

You might be thinking “Hey, Eliza – these are little thoughts you’ve got. Why don’t you just twitter them?” Well, I’ll tell you, celebrity follower: you can’t twitter in China. You also can’t visit Facebook or Youtube. The government blocks them all, so a lot of ex-pats and foreign nationals have to get special VPNs to break through the firewall. Or get around it. Or however you deal with firewalls (I imagine with a motorcycle and a kevlar suit.)
Oh, so that’s another thing: all the movies were right. In the future the government monitors what you do and what you access on the computer and they put microphones in the taxis. Spooky!

More later…from the FUTURE future….

I never got my ears pierced as a kid. Well, I did, but after about 2 weeks I decided that shit was for the birds and I had too much roller skating to do to be messing around with ear-hole-maintenance, so I took them out. Now, 20 years later, I finally got them pierced again. Why now? Because I’m leaving for China tomorrow and want to give the chicken feathers and dirty communist street-smut plenty of places to get in and infect me. No, no, I kid (mostly. I’m definitely bringing antibiotic soap.) I did it now for 2 reasons: Costume ladies and bamboo earrings.

I am a disappointment as an actor on many levels. Starting with what I clearly think of your script, and ending with my inconsistency maintaining a French accent, there are scores of let-downs along the way. One that comes up a lot is when the costume department hands me earrings and I have to explain that I don’t have anywhere to put them except my pocket. The costume ladies take them back dejectedly, knowing that my entire character hinged on these Contempo Casuals pin-backs. It’s time to stop letting these girls down and get in the game.

Which brings me to the bamboo earrings. And the dangle-y earrings. And everything that you can’t clip-on. People – most notably my sister -  have been giving me pierced earrings for years. I’d throw them in the back of a drawer, just in case I ever needed a bulletin board tack, so by now I’ve got a pretty good stockpile of them. But it also opens up a whole world of shopping! I can suddenly accessorize in a whole new way! Bring on the amazon wishlist! (Does Amazon carry bamboo earrings?)

Remember Bob Ross? He did that PBS painting show, Joy Of Painting. I have a lot of questions about Bob Ross.

• He must have painted hundreds of canvases doing that show. So, where are the paintings? Do people own them? Is there someone whole proudly tells their guests “Oh, I have to show you my Bob Ross! It cost us a lot, but art is an investment…”.
• Why were the trees always so “happy”? Doesn’t that seem a little pathological? Who hurt you, Bob Ross?! I imagine as soon as they’d turn the cameras off he threw the newly finished painting onto a rotting pile of canvases, muttering “the baby boy’s so dirty….”
• At night, alone, did he paint the angry trees?
• Did anyone ever paint along with him? The shows were ostensibly instructional, but I can’t imagine anyone actually painting along. The programmers must have known that. Was it supposed to be entertaining? Therapeutic? Did Bob Ross have some shit on the PBS bigwigs?
• Why the same thing over and over? Again, WHO HURT YOU, BOB ROSS? What was hidden at the bottom of that idyllic mountain lake surrounded by happy trees? A body, obviously. But whose?
• Also, what the fuck? – http://www.livevideo.com/video/D19EBD5F63314AD7933EE0F31DC11521/bob-ross-feeds-a-squirrel.aspx (thanks David William!)

But my lack of sleep has given me the opportunity to watch the final episodes of both Lost and Sex In The City this week. And honestly? They were the same thing. In the end it’s not about the sexy sex or the answers, it’s about the people that matter to you. You never get all the answers. You just hope you don’t die alone.

And by the way, dying with someone else’s dog counts as dying alone. Ugh. That part sucked. (Almost as bad as Kim Catrall sucked. What what!)

A while back, I was on the 6 train going downtown when a fight broke out between the homeless man sitting across from me, and Jesus. I don’t know what Jesus had done to provoke the argument, but clearly the homeless dude did not want to get into it with him. He kept saying “Don’t do this Jesus, I don’t want to fight you. Leave it alone, Jesus!” Jesus was not leaving it alone, though, and finally the guy stood up and shouted “OK, fine, Jesus! You wanna fuck with me? Let’s go! Let’s GO!” What happened next was almost dancing, and almost fighting, and luckily he had enough room to do what he needed to do.

I loved this not because of how crazy it was, but because of how sane the guy was trying to be about it. It was pretty clear that Jesus was stirring the shit, and the homeless guy kept trying to diffuse the situation. I think Tyler Perry would agree that sometimes Jesus won’t let you take the peaceful path – you have to fight. Or dance. Whatever that was.