Ode to Catherynne Valente
Her latest is a deep take on the Nazi-esque event last weekend at MSG, and why the Puerto Rico joke by Tony Hinchcliffe wasn't funny, because it wasn't really a joke.
I know I have written about Catherynne Valente’s substack, “Welcome to Garbagetown” before. Recap: She writes a lot of SciFi and Fantasy, and some killer YA targeted fiction. I have read several of her books, and they are great.
But her substack is where she unloads. And being a professional wordsmith, she brings a flair for the dramatic, and like my writing, she is an artist in the use of profanity.
The only downside is that because of her day job, her Substack is on the bottom of the priority stack. I understand that, and I pay for her ‘stack because when she delivers, it is just perfection.
That is a long way of saying that when I see a post from “Welcome to Garbagetown” hits my inbox, I get a little fan-boy crush as I race to MASH the read button.
Wednesday, I was in that interregnum at my eye doctor appointment after the vision test, but after the dilation drops and awaiting for them to take effect for the health check, Catherynne’s latest missive dropped. I opened it as my ability to focus was being destroyed by the opening aperture of my irises, I was basking in her indignant rage.
As is the custom.
Here is the post in its entirety, I do encourage you to read it, and if you aren’t subscribed, to get on her mailing list.
What I love about Catherynne is that she is a master of the hot take. In a prior post she discussed her extended Italian family and heritage, so I am going to use the phrase “spicy meatball” to describe her writing.
An example? Glad you asked.
Was I surprised Donald “Art of the Happy Meal” Trump decided to round off an election bid that has been echoing through the last four years like a long, wet, deafening Dadaist fart in the fascist fucking wind machine by utterly mat-assing the dismount via one big ol’ Madison Square Garden Nazi struggle session full of ids let off the chain, smug gloating over their unstoppable supervillain plans, and absolutely crusted racist, sexist, and homophobic mouth-vuvuzelaing with a side of murderous rhetoric?
Look, I love Jeff Tiedrich, and I await his missives every morning, this opening salvo from Cat? It is just masterful.
If you have yet to click on that link above, the P. R. in the subject is not Press Relations. No, it is a reference to the US Territory Puerto Rico, whose citizens are — to the dismay of the MAGA crowd — US Citizens, and thus if they are residents in a US state, they can and DO vote.
She continues:
And that the media cycle hasn’t instantly buried that for them? (Don’t worry, they’re working on it. Very busy at the moment pretending Biden called all Trump supporters garbage, which he didn’t, and also it really wouldn’t be the same if he had, he called their comments on Latinos garbage, but no reason not to try to pull a Mortal Kombat fatality on democracy at the 11th hour, right, Fourth Estate? Honestly it’s so predictable and I’m so exhausted pitching myself into the cold and unforgiving sea is starting to sound pretty all right.)
Yes, thank you Cat! Gonna admit I was disappointed watching the Never Trump former Republicans at the Bulwark do the teeth sucking thing about the Biden gaffe. Be like Cat!
Honestly, maybe I just don’t actually understand politics that well. Maybe I should scuttle this whole political essay thing entirely. I don’t get it. What? Why this? Because this isn’t even the worst thing Trump himself has said about Puerto Rico. My friends, he has hated you from the minute someone managed to get it through his hot buttered brain scramble that Puerto Rico wasn’t a fantastical land invented to flesh out the worldbuilding in West Side Story like Middle fucking Earth. This illiterate cousin’s uncle, who turns up every year to an intensely awkward Harkonnen Thanksgiving table cranked out of his diaper on ornithopter wiper-fluid has never said the words Puerto Rico without sounding like he just wiped something off his shoe.
Alas, I think she gets politics a lot more than she alludes to here. Because she really gets to the crux of the matter like a surgeon.
But it was all a joke. I believe I quoted the inimitable Lyz Lenz that if it isn’t funny, it isn’t a joke (she was referring to predominately white men who try to be edgy with racist jokes). While I love reading Lyz, Cat brings the fire. And she spreads it out to how poorly “conservative” comedy lands:
Have you ever seen one of this ding-dongs actually try to tell a joke? First, there’s only one punchline: I’m amazing, you’re a piece of human filth, and you deserve suffering while I deserve to watch. They almost always fall directly onto their faces and then blame liberals for not laughing. Dennis Miller, one of the funniest people ever, sent himself off to the hinterlands because even he couldn’t make conservative thoughts funny and relatable.
They also never say it was a joke when their attempts to comprehend comedy, an art form about catharsis, shared experience, speaking truth to power, and upending expectations to make people look at life in a different way, thus entirely antithetical to conservative ideals and goals, fail to get a callback. That would mean acknowledging their joke didn’t land and they’re the bestest at everything.
Holy shit, she mentioned Dennis Miller! That is the epitome of how a seriously funny comedian fell off the earth when he tried to go full Conservative in his sets.
Then goes on to explain clearly what a “joke” is, and why Hinchcliffe’s tight five failed:
A joke relies on an unexpected reversal of expectations or upending of the audience’s everyday assumptions somewhere between the set-up and the punchline. But this specific audience never expected or assumed a set-up about a floating island of garbage in the sea was going to actually be about how we fucking created a floating island of garbage in the sea with all our consumerist hog-snorfling and short-sighted maritime policy. They assumed and expected it was gonna turn into some kind of insult at the expense of some group of people, because that’s their fetish, and no one turned up to Madison Square Fucking Garden on Discount Nazi Night to NOT get their fetishes seen to. They got what they expected, they just didn’t know which group of people, and were maybe mildly surprised it wasn’t Haitians, probably. That makes it a shit joke; the equivalent of yelling WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD in someone’s face and then blarfing back WE ALL FUCKING HATE CHICKENS AM I RIGHT FRIEND before they can say anything back, then expecting a Mark Twain Prize for it.
Straight into my veins! More please.
I will not ruin the rest of the post, you really should pour yourself a cuppa get into your favorite recliner and read this masterpiece.
Please do subscribe to her Substack. It is worth it, even if the posts are infrequent. And if you can afford to click the “paid” button, you get a concrete benefit.
If you think this is spicy, it isn’t really. No, she writes these essays in pairs, one that is public, and (in her own words) restrained to prevent the trolls from swarming the comments. A few days later, she drops an extended rant, with tons of more writing and profanity and fiery verbiage.
I assure you that it is totally worth the money to get the paid posts.
Disclaimer: I am a Founding supporter of her Substack, and I also am a member of her Patreon, so I might be biased.
And the award for best creative visual goes to: “homophobic mouth-vuvuzelaing” 😂😂😂
Off to subscribe now - thanks, Geoff!
Well fuck, I like your bias!👍🏻