Viva Variety Is Almost Over
BY SISTER DANA VAN IQUITY
3 November 2005
Viva Variety is about to take its final bow, with just one more show scheduled in November. The series, which started in April 1999, has featured over 480 acts. Each queer-friendly show has been a fundraiser for a different charity. The Oct. 25 show was the 49th, a fundraiser for Community United Against Violence, and featured some of producer/emcee Steve Murray's favorite performers.
The opening act was winner of the SF Cabaret Competition, Kevin Dozier, a sweet lyric tenor, who gave his last SF performance, as he is moving to New York in a few weeks. He sang "What More Can I Say": "We laugh, we fumble, we take it day by day," with the proper same-sex lyrics of man-to-man romance.
Kitten on the Keys, queen of piano-playing burlesque and a loquacious Libera-she, had returned from Paris on her way to Vegas. Kitten sang the title number from her latest CD, It's Not a Pretty Princess Day. She asked, "Does this piano make my butt look big?" and then sang, "Although my strudel intake ;;: has been frugal, I remove my girdle and I spread out like a giant sea turtle!" She also sang about her favorite fetish. as a "Pony Girl"; "My hoofies go clip-clop; your riding crop gets me hot. Strap a saddle on my back and stick that pony tail in my crack! Ow!"
The Auditorials presented political cabaret, mostly satirizing the feds. Concerning federal response to hurricanes, the man and woman team sang, "You should have been much faster; FEMA, you're the real disaster." Their ditty about being a conservative Republican came to the odd conclusion: "It's the little guy who needs our help, and not the rich fat cat; maybe I actually am a liberal Democrat." A Dick Cheney impersonator rapped, "I believe that liberty is a privilege for the wealthy, and every one of you is a potential detainee." The Shrub's message to Bush Sr. was: "I should be ashamed as I write this letter; Daddy, I know you hoped I'd do better." They finished off with "Green Government is Clean Government."
Connie Champagne has done nine different Viva Variety shows. She has appeared on stage in many forms, including her incredible impersonation of Judy Garland, but for this night she was the aging silent screen star, Norma Desmond, singing" As If We Never Said Goodbye" from Sunset Boulevard. But first she did a small monologue with those classic lines: "Comeback? I hate that word. It's return! Return to all those magnificent people out there in the daaaark, who will never forgive me for deserting the screen."
Aundre the Wonderwoman, semifinalist in the 2005 Standup Comedy Competition, returning from Comedy Day in the Park, opened her set saying, "I'm glad to see all the white people here tonight, because without you, I would have virtually no material." She added, "You will be pleased to know that I no longer blame my problems on the white man; because apparently it's Al Qaeda at the bottom of all this shit. Slavery? Al Qaeda. Can't pay my cable bill? Al Qaeda." She told us, "Bush has single-handedly destroyed the myth of white superiority."
Comedian Betsy Salkind, star of "Q Comedy" at the LGBT Community Center, has just released her latest CD, Squirrel Speaks. She opened her act with a hilarious takeoff on modem dance. Salkind said she wants to see George Bush die from bird flu, which he would get in a sexually transmitted form . . .from Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. "George Bush is evidence that maybe some children should be left behind," she said.
Dozier returned stating, "As I look around, I think" I've dated just about everybody in this room. And if I haven't, you've got three weeks left and the application form is at the door." He sang "Gimme Gimme That Thing Called Love" with lyrics such as: "I don't care if he's a nobody; in my heart he'll be a somebody who loves me." He finished with a very moving Edith Piaf classic, sung mostly in French, "If You Love Me."
Winner of the 2004 SF Standup Comedy Competition and guest comic on the Conan O'Brien show, Jim Short is a very witty Aussie. He did a bit about the bird flu, saying, "H a bird sneezes, I pretty much leave the area. I'm not gonna mess about with a sneezey bird. That bird should have taken that day off from work. Let someone else shit on a statue that day."