(((((( obsessednyc ))))))

Best friends, comedy partners, and mother and daughter Julie Klausner (VH1, Free To Be Friends) and Jackie Clarke (92.3 WFNY FREE FM, Showgirls: The Best Movie Ever Made. Ever!) present an evening of comedy that will make Jerry Orbach rise from his grave.

Join the gals as they explore some of their favorite obsessions: Bob Fosse, self-help books, the power semen of Tom Brady, and Andrea Dworkin’s definition of rape.

Get mentally ready for an evening of hilarious short films, Powerpoint presentations, and competitive dancing.

Julie and Jackie will be there. So will a Carol Channing impersonator and some Myspace stalkers.

With special guests Broadway encyclopedia, Seth Rudetsky and competitive eater and rapper, Badlands Booker.

Thursday - 5/24
UCB Theater
9:30 PM

If Jackie were going to die of bites to the breast, I’d have already sung “Wind Beneath My Wings” at her memorial service.

I am no longer afraid that men will kill me. I am just scared that they will bore me. I freaked out the other night when a boy with a crush on me showed up at a bar I was at and proceeded to flirt with me, but was clearly not very smart. I was like “read.”

Brag Attack: I am reading a book!

And I’m loving it. It’s Donna McKechnie’s autobiography, “Time Steps”; and it’s FANTASTIC. For those of you who don’t touch dicks with other guys, Donna was the Tony award-winning actress and muse for A CHORUS LINE, and our January guest Seth Rudetsky showed some amazing footage of her dancing “Turkey Lurkey Time” from PROMISES, PROMISES as well.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve learned from her book so far:

* Don’t marry a gay theater visionary: Michael Bennett was a shitty husband, though Donna claims the sex was never bad, so maybe it’s a draw.
* When she was working with Ethel Merman on a show, “The Merm” sent her a note asking her to kindly stop perspiring so much, as it was distracting her performance. This is the definition of punk rock.
* Donna played Sally Bowles in a Chicago production of Cabaret next to (wait for it) Billy Crystal as the Emcee.
* Through extensive psychotherapy, Donna learned to “go where the love is,” the concept of which made me cry over my B&H Dairy Mac and Cheese.
* Dancers get Arthritis. Donna drank a lot of vegetable broth and didn’t eat any candy bars to get rid of hers.
* AIDS sucks. Yes, it took this book for me to finally get it through my head. Maybe if Carol Channing writes a book, I’ll learn how bad 9/11 was.

I am not done with the book, but I’m sure I’ll learn at least ten more things by the time I’m done. Isn’t reading great? Answer: yes, it is.

I am very high. So much of this may not make sense.

Julie is now worried that every guy she meets is going to kill her ala Bret Easton Ellis. I told her Julie, “Guys aren’t gonna kill you. They’re just gonna disappoint you.” Honestly the only BEE I’ve ever read was “Less than Zero” and that was finshed in less that 3 hours. BEE makes Jacqueline Susann look like Philip Roth. But she said that she was much more weary of casual sex, you know, in case someone wants to bite off her nipples. (And not in a fun way.) Maybe these are my displaced issues talking but I’m not afraid of getting hacked up from my next casual encouter! I figure most guys don’t want to kill you they just wanna see you naked from the waist up. And if they do kill you, you can be sure you’ll make the cover of the NY Post with some saucy headline. Like for me the headline might be “JACK ATTACK: Actress Jackie Clarke dies of bittes to breast.” I think we all have an obligation as citizens of the world to have a high resolution picture ready for the papers in case we are involved in a shooting or hijacking. I mean this is a city where 5 years after 9/11 a man flew a plane into ANOTHER BUILDING! People get those pictures ready.

I have it narrowed down tot his B&W headshot because it is really classy. And it is relatively innoccent, it says, “Why did you bite me?”

Or

Me eating a fake poo burger. Hilarious!

Based on a brief flirtation with loving/hating Huey Lewis, and a consequent recommendation from a person I am no longer dating, I picked up American Psycho (the book, not the movie) and gave it a try, wondering to myself, “who are the douchebags that this douchebag is writing about?”

I soon realized that by exposing myself to this yuppie snuff, I was looking to punish myself somehow. I’m not sure what the latest reason is; I’m always looking to punish myself for different things in different ways (It’s a fill-in the blanks game, like Clue: “I’m looking to punish myself for SLEEPING WITH SOMEBODY WHO CAN’T LOVE ME by EATING A PAN OF BROWNIES.”). But I think my intentions were to take a curious peek into the lives of men who are not pussies, as I have, of late, been flanked with the Weaker, Weaker Sex, and felt I needed some broadening. Now I’m convinced that straight guys are either Artsy faggots or Wall Street psychopaths. I am clearly making progress.

After Ellis started describing exactly how his lead character gouged out a homeless man’s eyes, I thought to myself, “this isn’t going to get any better. And it’s going be really mean to ladies, and, as a lady, I can’t handle reading really elaborate, sadistic descriptions about hurting ladies.” I skipped ahead to see how bad it got, looked over a sexy passage about two hookers making it, saw that the finale involved one of those poor babes getting her nipple bitten off, and there was a chainsaw? Then, I was like, “The End.” Closed the book; talked about why I picked it up in the first place with my shrink, moved on.

I know the movie’s different; as closure, I read the script to the film, and it’s funny and mean, and Mary Harron seemed to make better choices about how to present the violence. I like the Whitney Houston stuff. I get it. I’m sure Chloe looks great in the film. But it was also made pre-9/11, which is, as far as a “heart of darkness” piece is concerned, amateur hour. Like, remember when Se7en was the scariest thing we could ever think of? Leave it to a couple of planes to make Kevin Spacey with no fingerprints seem like grandpa with a sheet over his head on Halloween.

Anyway, I hate Bret Easton Ellis. I think he’s a horrible jerk, and a lousy writer, and he wrote a stupid book, and the fact that there are scores of straight dudes who think that a yuppie prick chainsawing the heads off of girls is boffo social criticism is really sad. If this is your favorite book, I can’t talk to you. I’m pulling a Scharpling; like Fight Club for Tom, if this book is in your Myspace favorites, consdier yourself de-friended.

I’m currently reading Donna McKechnie’s autobiography, Time Steps, and suggest you do the same.