Photo by Jeannie

                                            by Jeanne Lieberman

Finding Netherland

Definition of nether by Merriam-Webster

Located toward the bottom or more distant part of something

 

That more distant part is, to use another euphemism, our “privates’ but Ms Cho certainly does not keep them private for long.

 

The major part Margaret Cho’s hour and a half performance at the Ice palace, August 8^th is largely unprintable!

Leaving no part of her Grove audience unexposed she covers the territory from lesbians to fag hags to gays and each group responded with roars of recognition.

 

Establishing her familiarity with Cherry Grove she immediately remarked that the Meat Rack was so dark she needed her cell phone to see.

 

Cho began her act relatively conservatively confessing she was booed at a 2003 Republican fundraiser but refused to leave the stage and followed that with some swipes at the current candidates including Trump “he is number 1, he’s so creepy and stupid”.

 

 She then reminisced about her failed 1994 TV show All-American Girl, the second Asian themed show ever. Her producers tried to alter her appearance

to conform to their image of Asian “until I looked like I was running from a burning village”. The show failed so badly “it took another 20 years and an entire generation before her next show will air this year.  About thgeir obsession with being PC she said  “I love it when white people try to tell Asian people how to feel about race because they are too scared to tell black people…Asian Americans don’t know what to do – we just want to pick the winning side” which prompted her new adage: ” Black Don’t Crack, Beige Don’t Age”.

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Citing Woody Allen her favorite comedian she declared ”we can make Jews do anything”. Joan Rivers was her friend “She took a care of me. I know she was afraid I would eat her dog”.  Cho also queried “how can Anderson Cooper not be gay…the son of a fashion designer!” and “how can Travolta not be gay, he is being sued by two massage therapists”.

 

Another friend, Anna Nicole Smith, “talked me into 10 years of being a drug addict…so bad Bobby Brown asked me for the best drugs. When she died I took all of her prescription drugs, pain killers made to be taken for pleasure. I took them with wine…I’m not a savage”.

 

From there the bisexual Cho ascended or descended (depending on taste) into a graphic lexicon of terms and shapes of vaginas (neck pillow, origami, muscular), and penises, especially black, which had something for all of her target audience, from lesbians to fag hags to gays, falling off their seats in the hilarity of recognition.

 On vibrators she commented they should be in the shape of an egg and passed between couples as in the March of the Penguins. Hers was so loud it caused a power outage in an entire block. She described a “butch” lesbian as “the kind of woman who rolls her own tampons.”

Relying on sounds, mannerisms and facial expressions, she described various sexual practices in intimate detail.

There is no denying Margaret Cho has an agile wit, and this performance, tailored to the Cherry Grove audience, had them laughing off their chairs.