Created by Hailey Boyle on January 31, 2014
LOS ANGELES, CA Creative Arts, Music, Film
The Basics: After 11 years I am finally recording a comedy album. "FUNNY LIKE A DUDE" will be recorded live at The Glasgow International Comedy Festival this March (details below) and will be released in May 2014. Meanwhile I have theater rentals for the previews, sound guy, video guy, editing guy, plane tickets, train tickets, and maybe if I'm real lucky a shirt off the clearance rack with no holes in it. So if you know you want my album you can donate now, and when it comes out I send you the greatest comedy album of all time! Basically it's like when I wanted to make shirts. That worked out awesome by the way, thank you guys! I am much more financially stable now that I have shirts to fluff up my income on the road and I could not have done it without your generosity.
Lots of folks have asked me why I don't have an album already. The answer is because I want all of my albums to be kick ass. 1 hour of material doesn't necessarily mean 1 album for me. Lately as I have more chances to headline and I realized that my favorite jokes, the ones I really love, now run about an hour and 15 minutes or more. So now is the time. Like to over analyze stuff? Me too! That's why I wrote the next few paragraphs, so enjoy.
The Back story: I think the reason so much of my new material is becoming my favorite material is because I am at a really cool phase in my life. I am old enough now that people are no longer wondering when I'm gonna have a baby (never), or when I am getting married (it doesn't matter cause you're not invited anyway), and it has been ages since somebody tried to talk me into going back to college. It's a great time to be me huh? I also feel like the last year has been a big one as far as starting to comprehend my own personal responsibility for the impact of my comedy. Now I'm using my brilliant dick jokes to change the world for the better. Also I may be suffering from delusions of grandeur. But speaking of personal responsibility, I should probably explain the album title.
I'm calling the album FUNNY LIKE A DUDE because that has been my little slogan since I started comedy. It has always said FUNNY LIKE A DUDE SINCE 1979 on my business cards. It's a tricky little phrase. It's not very feminist, a fact I have been side stepping by being a dick about it. "It's a statement ON feminism" I would say like a giant gaping asshole, "but forgive yourself, it is very subtle". Spoken like a true self loather. I know I haven't always been fair to women, and I am working on that. I also know that I don't believe that separate can ever be equal. Take the WNBA. I have nothing but respect for those women, but it's not fair to pretend it's like the NBA. The NBA, not the MNBA. I just feel like the job is the job and the bar should be the bar. Gender should be irrelevant. I don't know how many, if any of the women of the WNBA would be in the NBA if they were eligible, but I bet the number would grow in relation to the number of years little girls grew up believing they could be in the NBA. BOOM! Mind blown. Back to me. Right now the most common compliment I get as a comic is that I have met/exceeded the expectations the complimentor has for men. I didn't think women were funny but you were hilarious. You are my favorite female comic. It's a catch 22! On one hand I get mad at them for saying female, not comic, and on the other hand I'm mad at me for feeling like female is an insult. Those are both bad, dirty hands. When I moved to NYC to be a comic 10 years ago I learned fast that if I wanted to get on a show the fastest way was to say I was funny like a dude, thus saying I am actually funny, and probably won't complain about your sexism as I am also a sexist. Not very cool on my part, not very cool on societies part, not fair to the women who came before or will come after me. It's all around lame that those words that got me the chance to show that I am truly talented probably cost other women the chance to show what they can do. This year has been about a shift for me. From a woman that thought standing up for myself was enough, to a woman who thinks standing up for equality is more important than protecting herself. It is a process, and I have just begun. At first I thought that being a feminist meant I had to support all women, be on the side of the sisterhood or what have you. Turns out feminism is really just another word for equality and I know I like that. I don't have to like all women to be a feminist, I have to respect all life. I have to make an effort not to perpetuate the behavior I have been a victim of. I have to try to be fair, which does not come natural for me. I have spent 34 years looking down on other women, and to be perfectly honest, it is still my default setting. Luckily some terrible things happened this year and for the first time I had to look at my roll in making the world less fair, less just, and less productive. I wrote a blog you can read here http://haileymailogram.wordpress.com/ and got a lot of crap for it. I got rape shamed and called a bunch of names but I also started being a better citizen because of it. I have a long way to go just to fix myself, but I'm hoping since the whole thing is making for some great jokes that my "journey" if you will, could inspire some other folks to start trying to do better themselves. Pretending I am a perfect feminist or that I have always been one doesn't help anybody. Admitting that it is a struggle and I have to work at it just might do some good. So the album is called FUNNY LIKE A DUDE cause I have been saying it for 11 years and now I am gonna talk about it instead of pretending it never happened.
The taping itself will be on Saturday March 22nd at The Glasgow International Comedy Festival. This is my third time touring Scotland and Glasgow happens to be my favorite city in all the world to do comedy. I'm told that this is odd because it is mainly industrial and known as the stabbing capitol of the world, but I feel very happy there indeed. I love the comedy community there and the way people regard comedy as an art and a skill, which it is. When I got booked for this festival the first time I had lost faith in my ability. I felt that as a woman who lacked extreme sex appeal I had no place in the world and I would even say that booking saved my life. It seems perfectly fitting now that my first album should be recorded in Glasgow, surrounded by the very women that reminded me that being female doesn't mean anything outside a medical office unless I believe it does. Thank you so much for your support!Additional dates and cities TBA
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OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4 (and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD).
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