Thursday, August 13, 2009
Become my fan on Facebook
Is that lame to ask for fans? Well I'm not gonna beat around the bush. As Anthony Michael Hall said in Breakfast Club, "My mom always said if you want something, you gotta ask for it." (RIP John Hughes!)
Check out this cool FB widget and become a fan. It's a good way to hear about my upcoming shows and happenings and read my terribly witty updates - I guarantee it's 10 times funnier than Sarah Palin's facebook page.
Check out this cool FB widget and become a fan. It's a good way to hear about my upcoming shows and happenings and read my terribly witty updates - I guarantee it's 10 times funnier than Sarah Palin's facebook page.
Mandy Donovan on Facebook
Friday, June 05, 2009
It's all downhill from here. In a good way.
Ever since I was 22, I’ve been feeling like it’s all-downhill. It was like life had hit a high note and would never again reach such an altitude. That sounds illogical, I know. At 22, there's more in front of you than there is behind. But logic tends to appear like a digital sign on the highway. (The ones that tell you there’s an accident and to take the next exit to avoid a massive delay.) I always get passed it before my mind actually registers the information.
It was a little while later that I realized the ages of 22 through 26 were going to be definitively, empirically without a doubt, the best years of my life. I lived in Manhattan. I worked on Madison Avenue. I made enough money to go out to trendy bars and buy my share of rounds for friends whose names I can’t remember now. I bumped into celebrities in Starbucks. They filmed movies on my block. Anything was possible.
At 25, I went to grad school. I borrowed magic money I could never conceive of paying back and my job was only to learn, to share ideas, and to write them down. I ate French fries with gravy and drank chocolate milk shakes at diners at 2 am. I hadn’t quite yet figured out that smoking was bad, and drinking didn’t lead to the all day hangovers I experience today (after three measly beers.) I sat in coffeeshops, wrote deep thoughts in notebooks and tried to appear mysterious. And succeeded. I met friends I still have today and lovers I still tell stories about. I had summers off.
Then I turned 27 and moved to New England, where the weather and the people are sometimes colder than seems necessary. I got a real job, a 401(k) and a student loan repayment plan. And as predicated, it’s been all-downhill since.
But then again...I got married last year. In Italy. On a terrace over looking the Mediterranean Ocean. To a guy who everyone falls in love with about 4 minutes and 12 seconds after meeting him. Or maybe 4 minutes 30. But less than 5, I’m sure. We got married on a Thursday at 4:30pm. (That is absolutely the coolest thing you can possibly do on a Thursday at 4:30pm.) It was just the two of us and two dear friends and a gorgeous May afternoon.
The day before the wedding, we arrived in Positano, which is beautiful even under buckets of rain – a different kind of wild, restless beauty. We climbed down the steps through the tiny ancient village, even the dirt we picked up on our shoes was romantic. We checked into our extravagant hotel room, snuggled against the lashing rain, then went down to the hotel restaurant, ate fresh fish and drank wine made right there on the Amalfi Coast - on a hill we could see out our window. Then we stopped by the church, the one with the famous golden dome that lets you know you’re in Positano. My husband-to-be thought I was crazy, because I’m not Catholic and hate the concept of sin, but I got down on my knees and prayed for the sun to shine on our wedding day. I think I may have even crossed myself (which I think is a sin if you’re not Catholic.) When we woke up in the morning, I felt the sun shining on my eyes before I opened them. And it was as if we never doubted it would.
So 33 then? 33 and all-downhill after that? Maybe this will be the one that sticks. It’s a double digit. A nice-looking number. It’s a third of my life (if all these rumors about red wine and antioxidants making us live to be 99 are true.)
These days, I’m staring 35 in the face and thinking yep. 33. That was it. Doesn’t get any better than that. Of course, just yesterday I was sitting on the sofa next to the instantly loveable husband, who put his arm around me as I pet my dog whose fur is as soft and delicate as a dandelion you can blow on. That was pretty good, too. If that’s on the downhill, maybe it’s not going to be such a bad ride.
It was a little while later that I realized the ages of 22 through 26 were going to be definitively, empirically without a doubt, the best years of my life. I lived in Manhattan. I worked on Madison Avenue. I made enough money to go out to trendy bars and buy my share of rounds for friends whose names I can’t remember now. I bumped into celebrities in Starbucks. They filmed movies on my block. Anything was possible.
At 25, I went to grad school. I borrowed magic money I could never conceive of paying back and my job was only to learn, to share ideas, and to write them down. I ate French fries with gravy and drank chocolate milk shakes at diners at 2 am. I hadn’t quite yet figured out that smoking was bad, and drinking didn’t lead to the all day hangovers I experience today (after three measly beers.) I sat in coffeeshops, wrote deep thoughts in notebooks and tried to appear mysterious. And succeeded. I met friends I still have today and lovers I still tell stories about. I had summers off.
Then I turned 27 and moved to New England, where the weather and the people are sometimes colder than seems necessary. I got a real job, a 401(k) and a student loan repayment plan. And as predicated, it’s been all-downhill since.
But then again...I got married last year. In Italy. On a terrace over looking the Mediterranean Ocean. To a guy who everyone falls in love with about 4 minutes and 12 seconds after meeting him. Or maybe 4 minutes 30. But less than 5, I’m sure. We got married on a Thursday at 4:30pm. (That is absolutely the coolest thing you can possibly do on a Thursday at 4:30pm.) It was just the two of us and two dear friends and a gorgeous May afternoon.
The day before the wedding, we arrived in Positano, which is beautiful even under buckets of rain – a different kind of wild, restless beauty. We climbed down the steps through the tiny ancient village, even the dirt we picked up on our shoes was romantic. We checked into our extravagant hotel room, snuggled against the lashing rain, then went down to the hotel restaurant, ate fresh fish and drank wine made right there on the Amalfi Coast - on a hill we could see out our window. Then we stopped by the church, the one with the famous golden dome that lets you know you’re in Positano. My husband-to-be thought I was crazy, because I’m not Catholic and hate the concept of sin, but I got down on my knees and prayed for the sun to shine on our wedding day. I think I may have even crossed myself (which I think is a sin if you’re not Catholic.) When we woke up in the morning, I felt the sun shining on my eyes before I opened them. And it was as if we never doubted it would.
So 33 then? 33 and all-downhill after that? Maybe this will be the one that sticks. It’s a double digit. A nice-looking number. It’s a third of my life (if all these rumors about red wine and antioxidants making us live to be 99 are true.)
These days, I’m staring 35 in the face and thinking yep. 33. That was it. Doesn’t get any better than that. Of course, just yesterday I was sitting on the sofa next to the instantly loveable husband, who put his arm around me as I pet my dog whose fur is as soft and delicate as a dandelion you can blow on. That was pretty good, too. If that’s on the downhill, maybe it’s not going to be such a bad ride.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Change We Seek
There was cheering, actual cheering in the streets at 11:01pm EST when the words “President Elect Obama” appeared on screens in homes across America. In Boston, it looked like the Red Sox had won another World Series. How proud I felt that finally my sport (politics) received the same kind of lavish celebration. A tear touched my check when I heard a car had been overturned in Brooklyn.
We deserve to be celebrating, feeling proud to be Americans, overjoyed that we have gone from enslaving African Americans to electing one our President in just 150 years.
Last night was powerful. And Barack Obama is a transformational figure for sure. But most powerful of all is the realization that it was not Barack Obama creating this change. It was us.
I was skeptical when Hillary and Barack both latched on to the word “Change” as a campaign theme. Those six letters fit nicely on a lawn sign, but “change” is not really an ideology to get behind…change into what? It’s the political equivalent of my favorite bumper sticker: “Anyone but this guy.”
But as the debates, speeches, interviews and SNL sketches made clear, things in America have gone so wrong that it’s funny. Without knowing how long or how far we’d been falling, we landed here. Here, the place and time where simply pointing out the need to do something (anything!) but what we have been doing for the last 8 years takes a certain amount of courage. Asking for change becomes a bold statement.
After the Primaries, I realized the c word (the nice one) wasn’t going away. John McCain jumped on the Change-wagon as well. “Yeah. Change. What they said.” He realized a while back that he better get on board, and that it was probably already too late. You could tell when he gave his concession speech that he’d been practicing it—a lot. Probably for about 7 months.
When I think of McCain’s campaign and the state of the country over the last 8 years, I think of another charming aphorism: “When you realize you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Maybe we needed someone as articulate as Barack Obama to very eloquently tell us, “Hey Jackasses! Stop digging.”
Actually he phrased it more like this…“We are the change we seek in the world.” He’s one smart man. He seemed to get it long before the rest of us did. And that’s possibly the greatest gift Obama gave us…the courage to change the things we can.
The last 20 months weren’t easy, but we survived it. The grunting frat boy chants of “USA.” The crazy white haired lady who picked 400 random Floridians out of the phone book and sent them letters telling them that Obama is an A-rab. (Classy.) And empassioned statements that don’t actually mean anything (like Joe the Plumber’s outrage at his tax hike when we later discover he’s neither a plumber, nor will he receive a tax hike).
No one knows what the right answer is, but finally more than 50% of the country realized that this ain’t it. It’s like we all took one of those V8 juice smacks in the head….Ohhhh. We coulda’ had change. And now, we will.
As we continue to heal from the paralysis of fear after 9/11, we are finally, joyfully, taking our first wobbly steps toward the America we all just realized was still there.
We deserve to be celebrating, feeling proud to be Americans, overjoyed that we have gone from enslaving African Americans to electing one our President in just 150 years.
Last night was powerful. And Barack Obama is a transformational figure for sure. But most powerful of all is the realization that it was not Barack Obama creating this change. It was us.
I was skeptical when Hillary and Barack both latched on to the word “Change” as a campaign theme. Those six letters fit nicely on a lawn sign, but “change” is not really an ideology to get behind…change into what? It’s the political equivalent of my favorite bumper sticker: “Anyone but this guy.”
But as the debates, speeches, interviews and SNL sketches made clear, things in America have gone so wrong that it’s funny. Without knowing how long or how far we’d been falling, we landed here. Here, the place and time where simply pointing out the need to do something (anything!) but what we have been doing for the last 8 years takes a certain amount of courage. Asking for change becomes a bold statement.
After the Primaries, I realized the c word (the nice one) wasn’t going away. John McCain jumped on the Change-wagon as well. “Yeah. Change. What they said.” He realized a while back that he better get on board, and that it was probably already too late. You could tell when he gave his concession speech that he’d been practicing it—a lot. Probably for about 7 months.
When I think of McCain’s campaign and the state of the country over the last 8 years, I think of another charming aphorism: “When you realize you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Maybe we needed someone as articulate as Barack Obama to very eloquently tell us, “Hey Jackasses! Stop digging.”
Actually he phrased it more like this…“We are the change we seek in the world.” He’s one smart man. He seemed to get it long before the rest of us did. And that’s possibly the greatest gift Obama gave us…the courage to change the things we can.
The last 20 months weren’t easy, but we survived it. The grunting frat boy chants of “USA.” The crazy white haired lady who picked 400 random Floridians out of the phone book and sent them letters telling them that Obama is an A-rab. (Classy.) And empassioned statements that don’t actually mean anything (like Joe the Plumber’s outrage at his tax hike when we later discover he’s neither a plumber, nor will he receive a tax hike).
No one knows what the right answer is, but finally more than 50% of the country realized that this ain’t it. It’s like we all took one of those V8 juice smacks in the head….Ohhhh. We coulda’ had change. And now, we will.
As we continue to heal from the paralysis of fear after 9/11, we are finally, joyfully, taking our first wobbly steps toward the America we all just realized was still there.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Men are Dogs.
Looking at him, laying there asleep on the couch in front of the TV, snoring, I am reminded that my dog is indeed—a man. Another species, yes, but I believe gender roles transcend species. Sometimes he looks at me, and I swear he is thinking that I talk too much. The moment I come home, I can see the question in his eyes, the question no man of the 21st century dare speak…”Where’s my dinner?” While Rusty was chasing cats, inhaling rawhide bones, and peeing on everything in sight, the sexual revolution came and went. Every day I take him out for walks. Has he once offered to take me anywhere? Nope. I buy him expensive toys. Have I ever returned home to find him clutching a dozen roses in his teeth. Of course not. I look in his eyes and see how he views me. I’m a cook, a maid, a personal assistant. Certainly not an equal partner in this life we share. No wonder man is a dog’s best friend. I am coming to realize they have everything in common.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Pre-Presidential Syndrome
Some men say they can’t trust a woman president because she could get PMS, go psycho and push the button. That’s ridiculous. We don’t want to kill everybody when we have PMS. Just men.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Laughing Liberally Boston, 1/17
Hey Y'all,
We've convinced the Laughing Liberally folks to let us start a spin-off version in Boston. If all goes well at this show, we're hoping to hold one once a month. So tell your friends, cause we need to pack the house!
Laughing Liberally @ The Comedy Studio
8pm
Mass. Ave. in Harvard Sq.
Check thecomedystudio.com for more info.
We've convinced the Laughing Liberally folks to let us start a spin-off version in Boston. If all goes well at this show, we're hoping to hold one once a month. So tell your friends, cause we need to pack the house!
Laughing Liberally @ The Comedy Studio
8pm
Mass. Ave. in Harvard Sq.
Check thecomedystudio.com for more info.
