Margaret Cho Shines at Moontower Comedy Festival
Moontower Comedy Festival lit up the city in the midst of a pandemic to give us something we all need, laughter! Margaret Cho has always found places to voice her opinions and she did it in hilarious form Friday night on the Paramount stage with local Daniel Webb (who now lives in Los Angeles) opening the show. Since they were in Texas with the current conditions, the talk of Texas politicians came up by both of them, especially Governor Greg Abbott.
Daniel Webb warmed up the crowd with his jokes talking about quarantine just making him so angry! He kept yelling out "angry" over and over again as he made his point. He talked about how obsessed he was as a kid with Princess Diana and he loved her houndstooth dresses. Webb joked, "the more houndstooth she wore, the gayer that I got!" Webb went on that certain people over a certain age should delete Tik Tok. He said if you know who Baby Jessica is, you should delete Tik Tok.
Afterwards, Moontower Comedy surprised the audience with Jonathan Van Ness. He's Margaret's hairdresser and she told him that he was born to do stand-up. "I was born to do your hair," he told Margaret. Well, now he is doing stand-up opening up for her! Queer Eye filmed in Austin and now Jonathan lives here along with his husband. He said his guy puts up with a lot from him and they have 5 cats, 2 dogs, and 4 chickens. He said that COVID-19 wasn't the first pandemic for the LBGTQ community, AIDS was. With the pandemic and being inside so much, he decided to take up gardening. He felt like it was relaxing and loved it until he encountered the squash vine borer moth. He went from meditative to angry with these pests and felt like he turned into a Texan wanting to shoot 'em up!
Comedian, entrepreneur, and advocate, Margaret Cho, who encourages people to use their voice to promote change, exclaimed, "we have to take abortion back!" She has always lit the path for other women and other members of underrepresented groups. Subjects still dear to her heart are feeling alienated and left out even in the midst of all her successes.
Cho talked many topics. Referring to all the dispensaries that are around and how much easier it is now, she said, "I use to have to buy weed from child molesters!It came in a sandwich bag rolled up too! We didn't have sativa and indica. We didn't have choices!" She commented that this is her generation's complaint similar to her parents having to walk to school.
Cho joked a lot about her parents, especially her mom and did a stereotypical accent as she would quote her. Her parents bought a gay bookstore in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis. Her mom once said, "If you survive AIDS, you ugly." Cho went on to talk about having to go to the therapist in 1999 because of issues from her parents. She has a cassette tape that the therapy session was recorded on and doesn't even have a cassette tape to play it, but anytime she wants to hold how screwed up she is from her parents, she just shakes the tape at them.
Her parents now live with her on the other side of this 100-year-old house. She said that her mom would complain all the time about how hot is was in the house. "My mom was looking for a fan and went on Amazon. There were too many choices for her so she ended up going on Only Fans!"
Furthermore, Cho talked about being bisexual. Amusingly, she said the the "B" is often silent in LBGTQ because no one really hears you if you say you are. She says no one ever really believes that you are bisexual because they think that a gay person coming out is actually trying to soften the blow of the news to their friends and family by telling them that they like the same sex along with the opposite sex. Most people think it's the first step of really saying that you are gay, like a connecting flight at the DFW airport.
With online dating on the apps, Cho has a range between 26 - 71-years-old. "One time, I went out with a 71-year-old man, but he didn't show up to the restaurant. I thought, 'he must have died.' He's ghosting me! He is literally ghosting me!"
Born and raised in San Francisco, Margaret says the experience helped shape her world-view. "It was different than any other place on Earth. I grew up and went to grammar school on Haight Street during the '70s. There were old hippies, ex-druggies, burnouts, drag queens, and Chinese people. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time."
Before COVID hit, Cho had the Fresh off the Bloat tour going on and it continues to go on. When asked how her performance will evolve she said, "When we go back out into a semblance of normal life, the show will take on everything that has happened while we were social distancing. It was a deep period of reflection where all comedians had to figure out how to live life without hearing laughter. It felt suffocating but also uplifting. I learned so much about myself and the world by staying still. I want to share the things I laughed at, alone, with the world."
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