"A Quick Moment with Carol" from Monday's Drink at Work Presents...

Yeah, I haven't posted a column in two weeks, but that's because I've been editing the first Drink at Work short film, Agoraphobic Superhero. Today I'm submitting the rough cut to the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham, AL, and I'm hoping against hope that we get in. The audio is really rough and I haven't added any music or closing credits to it, but it's very funny and looks pretty good for a first short if I do say so myself.

So in lieu of a proper column, which I promise to have next week, here's the transcript of my "Quick Moment with Carol" from this past Monday's Drink at Work Presents. It's not terribly quick, but it's mildly amusing. TTYL!

[Imagine me taking the stage to thunderous applause, the likes of which is usually reserved for Bono or Jimmy Carter]

Some of you may know that I’m from Alabama originally. I’ve been in New York for 7 years and one of the first things I noticed when I moved here is how much emphasis everyone puts on their ethnic identity. I’m talking about the white people. It’s like all the white people in the northeast are so jealous of the strong sense of heritage that other cultures have, they make this enormous point of identifying which part of Europe they came from. Oh, I’m Irish, I’m Italian, I’m Swedish… blah, fuckin blah.

But it made me realize that I’m sort of ethnically vacant. My family has been here so long, since the 1700s in fact, that we really aren’t anything other than white…I mean if you go back far enough we’re probably everything really.

Now my husband is actually close enough to his European roots that it’s pretty fair for him to claim some ethnicity. His paternal grandparents were born in Italy and his mother was born in Portugal and moved here when she was 12. So let’s face it, he’s not really white by my people’s standards. But when I first met his parents his mom was really curious about “where” I came from.

"Oh, you must be German."

"I guess."

"And Irish."

"Yeah, probably."

"Dutch?"

"Oh, yeah, we fucked some shit up."*

By the way, every family in the south claims to have an ancestor who was a Native American princess. Now, I don’t think they had princesses but even if they did I’m not really so keen on including the rape branch in our family tree.

Anyway, after being quizzed on this stuff repeatedly I just had to say to my mother-in-law “Look, I don’t know for sure and I don’t care. I’m just whitebread…deal with it, your son married beneath him.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. She’s from Alabama, she’s white and her family has been here since the 1700s. And the answer is, yeah, probably. We probably owned slaves. I mean, come on, there’s a town in Alabama named Hartselle**, so my family was obviously well-heeled enough to have a whole town…it would have been embarrassing if they didn’t have slaves. It would be like being the only family in the gated community without three SUVs, a Mexican gardener and an invisible dog fence.

But I was thinking about that and I started to wonder, do you think there were people back during slave times who didn’t own slaves but not because of any particular moral objection, just because they thought it was too trendy? Like people who refuse to buy iPods? Like they started their farm with poor white indentured servitude and dammit, they’re going to keep it that way!

Anyway, my point is…I support reparations. So if we have any black people in the audience***, meet me at the bar and I’ll buy you a drink. It’s the least I can do.

xoxo,
Carol

*That's a colonialism joke, just one of the many highbrow notes I hit every single time I open my mouth on stage

**Someone spelled it incorrectly at some point...probably just some dude who painted the sign

***There was exactly one black person in the audience and I did buy her a drink...debt paid