Yeah, you guys! With no Gossip Girl episodes to keep me on the straight and narrow with posting, I am a total wayward child!

The past couple weeks have been pretty busy, getting a lot of personal administrative (and some creative) stuff out of the way before I disappear into six weeks of 50-hour work weeks! I am “balancing” two jobs: UES summer camp teacher/counselor and Downtown theater accountant. It gets a little crazy like this every once in awhile, but I’ll gladly emerge from this whirlwind with a slightly bigger pile of cash than I had before (ESPECIALLYINTHISECONOMY).

And not only has my work/life ratio been dramatically – albeit temporarily – shifted, I’ll also be attending more weddings this year than I have in the last three years combined! I hear that this is only the beginning – that I should look forward to several more weddings a year as (my peers and) I travel unwillingly through my late twenties. That means (my peers and) I will have less than two and a half years left to make fun of people in their 30s…. Oy, that’s mean, isn’t it? It’s pretty awful. Well, at least that means that will I probably deserve what’s coming to me, which I’ve heard includes: increasingly slower metabolism, increasingly eye cream-resistant wrinkles, increasingly valid anxiety about whether or not I’ll ever reach my full potential as a human being, and increasingly pathetic realizations that my boobs have (probably?) ALREADY reached their full potential as boobs.

Plus, there’s nothing like working with little kids – BORN IN 2002 and 2003!!!!! – to really drive the point home that I am a grown up. And that I should probably not be eating these fruit roll ups for dinner at 9:21pm at night.

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I went through and taped a whole bunch of Comey Central stand-up specials, as I do from time to time. De temps en temps. I JUST realized that they were all dudes. EVERY single one of ‘em. This is going back about ten years work of shows: Kevin Nealon, Hugh Fink, Jamie Kennedy, Pete Correale, Daniel Tosh, Mike Birbiglia, Leo Allen. The only female stand-up special I’ve watched in months is Wanda Sykes (who, btw, is getting her own late night talk show this fall).

Dear Jesus, I am not really one to complain and I’m definitely not a feminist, but this is really wack!!! (Should I also now mention that they were all WHITE guys too?) Do I come off kind of angry? Maybe it’s just because I’m surprised – surprised that I’m so used to it that I didn’t even realizeit was a sausage-fest until three hours later!

If I had to guess – TOTALLY guess, I’d say that of comedy shown on Comedy Central, the breakdown is this: 90% guys, 10% women

Ethnically? 95% white, 3% black, 1% hispanic and 1% “everyone else” (asian, native american, etc.)*

When I’m around the New York stand-up comedy scene, this is what I thiiiink – TOTAL guess – I see: 70% guys, 30% girls

Ethnically: 85% white, 7% black, 5% hispanic, 3% “everyone else” (asian, native american, etc.)

I’m sure this is huuuuge progress compared to the past, when I’m sure the distribution was even more fucked up. But sadly, the gender numbers are still only slightly little better than they are in, say, jazz. Or landscaping.

No doubt that others and myself are going against the grain simply by doing comedy while being who we happened to be born. A close friend in comedy once told me – somewhat annoye – that I have it easier being an Asian girl and NOT “just another” white guy. Well, maybe in some ways, like getting on an all-Asian show or an all-female show (there’s yet to be an all-Asian girl show, although it could happen if literally all five of us decided to do it). Yeah, I stick out, but as far as making it easier? This is far from an affirmative action industry.

And if you look at the end product – if you flip on the televesion as I did, it’s very evident that the glass ceiling still remains. Let’s see how long it takes to smash through.

Maybe in 10 years I will watch Comedy Central and be happy if I see:

60% men, 40% women

80% white, 10% black, 5% hispanic and 5% “everyone else” (asian, native american, etc.)

Or maybe I’d still be disappointed.

Filed under: Comedy by jenkwok
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