THE FOX AND THE MOSQUITOES (From Aesop’s Fables) “That kiss packs a punch! Hit me harder than anything else I ever felt. Is this love or anaphylactic shock? Don’t shoo her away… I don’t want another to take her place.”
When Nathalie Tierce first approached me about reading her book, I thought to myself, I’m not an art critic, nor an expert on poetic prose, and haven’t read a kid’s book (This is not a kid’s book, so my reservations in that regard were completely erroneous) in many decades. My mind was swimming with all the reasons why I was the wrong reviewer for her book. Instead of sending her my standard thanks for thinking of me but… email response, I decided to go visit her website. I’d share that address right now, but I don’t want to lose you quite yet from my review because I know, like me, you will be spending a good hour flipping through her gallery, and you would be so bedazzled by the raw power of her paintings that you would forget all about my attempts to explain why I like Nathalie’s paintings so much.
Check out this little gem from R. Crumb about Tierce’s work: ”You are a genuine visionary artist with a direct line to your subconscious.” And what a marvelous subconscious it is!
I first discovered R. Crumb when I bought the R. Crumb illustrated edition of The Monkey Wrench Gang. This prompted me to search for more examples of his art, and I was soon ogling his Amazonian women and sometimes gasping with pleasure at his flagrantly deviant, but honest, art. (I once called a rather impressive looking waitress working in an Oklahoma bar in Bricktown R. Crumbesque. It was truly as if she’d stepped straight out of the lurid mind of Crumb.) I could see how Crumb, after perusing Nathalie’s art, recognized a fellow artist who is genuinely expressing her truest feelings through her art.
This book was inspired by Aesop’s Fables, but I couldn’t help thinking about the Brothers Grimm, especially before the brothers sanitized their folk tales for children. Even after being censored, those tales have gruesome and grotesque moments that continue to give children and adults nightmares and daylight shudders. I found Tierce’s work to be deliciously horrid and, at moments, wonderfully torrid.
Tierce worked on these paintings for two years, and during that time, as she said in her forward, “the world witnessed the most bizarre spectacle of politics.” She went on to say: ”Being in lock-down for Covid-19 made people examine disturbing, deeper currents running through our society in the U.S. that we were otherwise too distracted to scrutinize.”
We are living in a post-truth world, and I miss the world that existed before. It wasn’t perfect, but at least we could disagree about things and still be friends. Now, we are bludgeoned with information, some of it true, some of it completely false, and most of it is somewhere in the middle. We have been segmented into two Americas. Each of those segments believes the other half to be batshit crazy.
Tierce further stated in the introduction, ”The symbolism that developed in those works came from the turbulence, fear, and confusion we were experiencing and trying to wade our way through.”
Art provides us with a chance for self-reflection, and as you peruse Pulling Weeds from a Cactus Garden, you will find, as I did, that what I need in my life is more flights of fancy. The paintings in this book are playful and humorous, but also speckled with thorny truths. They are the ticklish parts of our imagination and what is accepted as reality brought together in a pleasing mixture to evoke realizations that remind the gazer of the things we used to be afraid of, the things we should be afraid of, and also the things we should still try to cherish.
“‘The drool on your chin tells me you're not listening.’ --- The Lamb and the Wolf Aesop’s Fables.” For me, this sentence sums up the last few years. We quit listening to each other. We quit caring about one another. The wolves have been turned loose in all of us, and we are a less kind society. Lambs, optimists, proffered kindness are all seen as naive. Toothy ruthlessness has run rampant. It isn’t about who let the dogs loose, but who let loose the werewolves?
Tierce’s paintings are visually amazing, and the longer you peer into them, the more you will see, so you will enjoy these paintings on a multitude of levels. I even turned each painting upside down and saw even more. That is a trick I learned from my professor in college while taking a survey class on art.
I see some Picasso in her horses, some Stephen King in her clown, a bit of Cortés in her skeleton, Jeff Goldblum in her southern belle, a smidge of Ralph Steadman lurking around the edges of many of her paintings, but in the end, these are what will be known as vintage Nathalie Tierce art.
You will look at these pictures and see your own marvelous things.
If you need a chuckle and a shudder in equal measure, then this book will give you exactly what you are looking for. This book is preceded by a book called Fairy Tale Remnants that looks fabulous as well. I will also be reviewing that book in the very near future. For that slightly quirky person in your life who is almost impossible to buy for, these books will make a perfect Christmas/birthday gift.
Nathalie Tierce provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
”Donald Trump broke something fundamental in our politics: the value of facts and truth. He alters the truth based on whims, and spreads both accident”Donald Trump broke something fundamental in our politics: the value of facts and truth. He alters the truth based on whims, and spreads both accidental and deliberate misinformation. His more cynical followers view this as part of his five-dimensional chess game, but America is now a post-truth republic, to our detriment.
In 2020, Trump is counting on his ability to lie his way to a second term. He will do so shamelessly, constantly, and even proudly.
Trump’s endless, torrential outpouring of outright bullshit has become a primary feature of American political life, a Colorado River of mendacity slowly carving itself into a Grand Canyon of lies. This corrosion of value and power of truth is a political weapon in the hands of a man with so little regard for it.”
Americans have replaced truth with what they want to believe to the point that what they want to believe becomes the truth. Truth is irrelevant. If truth is irrelevant, what point is there in being truthful? Why should a politician admit he was wrong? They might as well deny, deny, and deny some more, and wait for another media event to shift the spotlight from their misdeeds to someone else’s. We used to hold politicians to some level of accountability, but this is the post-Trump era, and believe me, I want the Trump era to end as soon as possible. He has warped and corrupted any sense we once had about the proper way a person of honor (and yes people snicker now when we use words like honor) should conduct themselves.
If Trump read that sentence, he’d laugh and think...what a rube.
Speaking of conducting oneself with integrity, I don’t trust Rick Wilson. There I go using that word “trust” that rides in the sidecar with “truth.” He is one of those people who never found a line in the sand he wouldn’t brush away or ever embraced any idea of morality to use as a guiding star. When he was working for Republican candidates, he was willing to do anything to win, and he is telling Democrats they need to understand they are not in a fair race governed by rules, but a junkyard dog fight and the dog has rabies. Wilson says in this book that, when Trump won the election, he grew a soul. Maybe so, or maybe this is just one more way for Rick Wilson to win...by selling books to those people most concerned with Trump winning four more years of power. Regardless of his motivations, I have to admit that most of his advice is sound, and we would do well to follow it.
Even though I think of myself as a jaded political junkie, there was one thing that Wilson revealed that rocked me back on my heels. ”A meaningful fraction of the Green Party candidates you see in races around the country are creations of people like me. Not all of them, to be sure, but enough. They can break off 3 or 4 percent in the odd race here and there, particularly in swing districts. There are GOP consultants who specialize in finding the local college-age dipshit who wants to sit in his apartment, smoke weed, and play Fortnite in exchange for a check for his ‘campaign committee.’” So those of you who were so smugly proud of yourself for voting for a third party candidate, how do you feel about that vote now? You weren’t protesting the two party system; you were shoring it by giving Republicans oxygen. Take for example three states who swung the election for Trump, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Michigan 4.7% of voters voted either for the Independent or the Green Party Candidate...Clinton lost by .3%. Wisconsin 4.6%, and Clinton lost by .7%. Pennsylvania 3.2%, and Clinton lost by .7%. If a fraction of those “protest” voters had voted for Clinton, then Trump’s smirky face would be... out of our faces.
The other surprise for me on election night was when the results started coming in from white suburban women. I wasn’t alone; Rick Wilson was, too. ”Let’s be honest with ourselves. The number that blew every campaign analysis in the 2016 exit polling was that educated, suburban women voted for Donald ‘Pussy Grabber’ Trump. It was a shock to the system because he was every single thing we were told women hated: a vulgar, abusive bully.” In the midst of the #metoo movement, these women voted in alarmingly large numbers for the poster child of a white privileged male who believes women were put on this planet first and foremost for his pleasure. It is simply baffling.
Wilson calls Trump a lot of creative names in the process of making fun of him. I know there are a lot of comedians who make a living out of Trump standup routines, but I don’t find anything funny about him, at all, and sometimes I believe these liberal comedians, by making everything he does into a joke, are making politics into a joke. We have a hard time getting people to take it seriously without them believing politics is just another part of their entertainment package of being an American citizen. Trump would be hilarious and frankly unbelievable if he were cast as a fictional character in a novel, but the fact of the matter is, he is not fictional, even as he is fictitious. ”For Democrats, this really is a Flight 93 election--except the emergency isn’t to elect Trump, but to beat him. Unless Democrats put aside their internal grievances, beefs, ideological wish lists, and purity-posse threats to stay home in November, they might as well expect Trump for another four years, and his spawn in the White house for decades after.” We have to stop Trump here and now.
Needless to say, I was relieved when Wilson switched from his stand up comedian routine and started talking about the nuts and bolts of running successful political campaigns.
We can not afford to be naive about politics anymore. We can not believe what we want to believe and reject what we don’t want to believe so that we can live in a bubble of our own making. If a story sounds like bullshit, even if it is about a candidate you don’t agree with, don’t repost it and send it forward. We need to start demanding truth from our journalists, from our social media, and stop being click bait morons for Russian trolls. If a story says Clinton was running an abortion ring in the Midwest, you can probably ascertain that isn’t true. You can dislike someone or disagree with someone without believing the absolute worst things said about them. Do not be part of the problem, because by being part of the problem, you are in league with Russian trolls or guys like Rick Wilson, who are chortling as they send out what they call a “good deep fake.” They know enough people will believe it because they will want to believe it. They call it the power of dumb.
So as Democrats, let's try to understand the very people we want to vote for our candidates.
”They hate politics, but they love leadership. They hate partisanship, but they love passion. They’re flawed and frail and uncertain much of the time, but they still imagine a bigger, better life. Tell them you’re listening. Tell them they matter. For once, tell them it’s not about you, or your party, or some book of policy proposals but about them.”
We can’t help them if we are sitting on the sidelines. We’ve got to get in the game and pull them onto the playing field with us. We have to win the game by convincing them that we CAN win the game. We have to assure them that we will do a better job, that we will listen to them, and that we will act. Pick one person you know who is a family member or a friend and convince them to give the Democrats a chance. You won’t sway Uncle Ralph because he is convinced that Democrats are pinko commie faggots coming after his guns, but how about cousin Charlie or your niece Natalie or your FB friend Sarah? We need every vote we can get. We can’t afford to lose, because if we lose this time… the nation loses, the world loses, the planet loses. Everyone loses.
”I often think about what it would be like for my grandfather to see me now. What would he think about me saying all of the disgusting things I say on”I often think about what it would be like for my grandfather to see me now. What would he think about me saying all of the disgusting things I say onstage? How he would feel about his granddaughter talking about what she lusts after? How I obsess over the most trivial problems. How I make a living by talking about what I want. How people pay to see his granddaughter just talk. He’d probably think I was some sort of magician with ancient powers, derived from behaving very well in a past life. Or a witch, I guess. At the very least, he’d definitely have the opposite opinion of all those jealous-ass white male comedians who say things like ‘People only like your comedy because you’re female and a minority.’ My grandpa would be like ‘I can’t believe people like your comedy! You’re a female and a minority.’”
I have heard of Ali Wong and have seen her referenced a few times, but have never seen any of her standup. So needless to say, I was leary about reading a memoir about her. This book was recommended to me by someone I trust or I would have never picked it up on my own. I usually like memoirs or biographies by people in the twilight years of their lives or, better yet, dead. I think that comes from being a completist. I want the whole story, not just the first third of someone’s life.
So here I am writing a review of a memoir by a woman in her 30s. How extraordinary! What is more amazing is that I gave the book five stars. How is this possible?
It is simply impossible not to.
Anyone who knows me well has heard my diatribe about movies billed as comedies. It’s not that I don’t like to laugh. I find life a series of comedic events, but I like comedy that occurs naturally, and comedic movies always come across as forced comedy, which ultimately starts to feel flat and fake. I’m soon wishing I’d put in something like In Bruges, where a serious plot is frequently enlivened by comedic elements.
So what I’m saying is that I’m a terrible risk for a book like this.
Ali Wong chooses to write her book as a series of letters to her children. The title reflects that, but my first reaction is...I’m a guy, so she isn’t really interested in men reading this book. Won’t I feel like I’m peeping in on revealing secrets not intended for me? Of course, the whole idea of Ali Wong having a secret she hasn’t revealed to the world is rather hilarious. Though I do wonder what secret could possibly be so horrendously embarrassing that Wong would not use it for her stand-up comedy routine?
So the title does throw me, but I quickly shake it off as I become caught up in her narrative. It isn’t long before I am thinking...don’t tell your daughters that! My lifetime of brainwashed conditioning showing itself, sporting a wagging finger and disapproving look. By the end of the book, I feel like Wong has taken a scrub brush of whitewash to those elements of my mind. Full disclosure: I did watch her ass wiggle as she scrubbed. I would apologize, but then she’d have to bring her scrub brush back to have another go.
Reading this book is going to make you uncomfortable. It may even offend you, but keep reading because not only is it good to occasionally be uncomfortable, sometimes you also learn to reserve being offended for those things that most deserve it.
I was about half way through the book when I decided to watch her Netflix special Baby Cobra. I wanted to put together the Ali Wong being revealed to me in the book with the stand up comedian and found that the honest evaluation of her lusts, wants, and defects were syncopatico. If there is pretense, it is well hidden.
This woman is refreshingly uninhibited. To some that might be code for rude, but it is hard to consider this level of truth to be rude.
While watching the special, I loved it when the camera would pan to the audience. Those sideways looks that couples were giving each other, the hand to the face as someone laughed at something they found to be embarrassingly true, and as her husband describes it, “laugh-so-hard-you-pee-reactions.” As compelling as it is to watch Ali’s physical reactions, it was equally fascinating to watch the crowd. If I ever attend one of her events, I’d be tempted to spend the entire skit turned around, observing the crowd. I sort of sprung Baby Cobra on my wife, no warning, no gentle explanations to prepare her for what she was about to see. She is frequently a test subject to gauge normal reactions to abnormal conditions. If I was laughing, I looked over at her so that I would laugh even harder. She was one of those audience members with her hand over her face as she chuckled. She laughed so hard at one time she had trouble breathing. I didn’t ask her if she had a pee reaction. My wife never sweats, but insists she only glistens, so her admitting to any “vulgar” body reactions would be most unusual.
The book is hilarious, but it is more than that. She talks a lot about the amount of hard work and dedication it takes to make it as a comedian. She often performed several sets at comedy clubs after working all day. She discusses the added hazard of being a female having to perform in...dives. Can you imagine that walk from the club to her car in the early hours of the morning? She believes that safety is one of the contributing factors as to why there are not more female comedians.
She talks about her heritage and her relationship with her extended family. Every immigrant family has an interesting story, and her parents are no exception. She is half Vietnamese and half Chinese, and those two cultures may seem similar in the eyes of many, but they actually have vast differences in philosophical approaches to life. Her husband is also half and half, and she describes their relationship as having the “exact same amount of Asian.” They were both raised as Americans, but their Asian roots heavily influence who they are.
Her husband writes an afterward, also addressed to their children, and he is pretty honest about his own personal journey dealing with being frequently the subject of his wife’s comedy. If she were making it all up or exaggerating the circumstances, that would certainly be less of a problem, but the issue, of course, is that she is sending arrows right into the bullseye. I love what he says about her. ”Asian cultures often teach us to be silent about our sexuality and filled with shame. Your mother breaks that up and transmutes pain and shame into power, like a mystical priestess.”
So as unlikely as I am to be an Ali Wong fan, I have to say it has happened. Yes, this book is hilarious, but it also touches on serious issues and, for this reader, even proves to be an inspiration. Keep chasing your dreams, work harder, and don’t give up. Few of us want to be as famous as Ali Wong, but most of us wish we could be more successful at something we love to do. Patience grasshopper. Wax on. Wax off.
I want to thank Mimi Chan of Goodreads and Random House for supplying me with an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.
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