Fuck Yeah Poetry Slam!

🎭 Upcoming Shows from Team Wonder Dave Productions 🎭

Hello Fans and Friends and Friends of Fans who are also friendly!

Whether you're in lucky in love or filled with the snark of the perpetually single best friend in a Rom-Com Mental Health Comedy Hour has two shows ready to bring you the laughs this Valentine’s Day. Safe Words is back with Black Out on February 26th.  Quick break down of highlights for you TLDR folks:

Feb 14th Mental Comedy Hour  2 shows 8pm, and 9:30pm

Feb 26th Safe Words presents Black Out an night of Queer Black Comedy

Give Wonder Dave a follow on 🦋🔵 Blue Sky: @wonderdave.bsky.social

Ruckus Revival is tonight Want more details? 💃 Let’s get ready for love entertainment:

Every 2nd Friday in Oakland

2 shows for Valentine’s Day 🩷

🛋️ Mental Health Comedy Hour: Valentine’s Day Special! 💕

Do you struggle with Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, or Bipolar disorder? Why not laugh about it? Join us for a night of jokes, mental health insights, and good vibes.

✨ Featuring interviews with mental health professionals alongside the Bay Area’s funniest comedians!

Hosted by Wonder Dave & Kristee Ono, with Stage Manager Lola. Guest Mental Health Professional Eric Rubin!

📅 Friday, February 14th

⏰ Two Showings:

8:00 PM with Corde Snell  and Abby LaPorte

9:30 PM with Cathy Zhao and Eric Rubin (comedian and Mental Health Profesional)

📍 All Out Comedy Theater

2550 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA

🎟️ Tickets:

$15 Online / $20 At the Door Student discount tickets $8 online

👉 8 PM Show Tickets 👉 9:30 PM Show Tickets

🤳Insta @mhcomedyhour 😐 Facebook facebook.com/mentalhealthcomedyhour/ 🦋 BlueSky mhcomedyhour.bsky.social

🎨 Laugh in Color This February! 🌈

We’re teaming up with Laugh in Color* for an incredible All Black, All Queer showcase:

2️⃣ Safe Words: Black Out 📅 Wednesday, February 26th 7pm 📍 SF Eagle 398 12th Street, San Francisco Special guest host Jalisa Robinson. Featuring Ava LaShay, Becky Lynn, Cynthia in Public, Becky Lynn and Headliner Marcus Williams.

Mark your calendars—you won’t want to miss this  show! 📲 follow @safewordscomedy on instagram 🦋 and now we’re on BlueSky safewordscomedy.bsky.social

Tickets available  on www.teamwonderdave.com * Laugh in Color is an event happening throughout the Bay Area this February of local shows featuriing all black line ups. We’re delighted to be part of the event if you’d like to find out about more shows participating a complete list is available at www.laughincolorproject.com and give them a follow on instagram @laughincolor

🎭 The Ruckus Revival

🗓 When: Every 2nd Thursday of the month Doors at 7 PM, Show at 8 PM ⏭️ Next Show:  TONIGHT Feb 13th annual F*ck Valentine’s Day 📍 Where: Continental Club, Oakland 🎟 Tickets & Info: Join the chaos BUY YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE this show often sells out 📸 Follow: @theruckusrevival and on BlueSky 🦋 theruckusrevival.bsky.social Hosted by Jamie DeWolf and Wonder Dave, enjoy an evening of circus, aerial, burlesque, comedy, and SO MUCH MORE! California’s largest and longest running variety show has been called "The Fight Club of Underground Art" by the Huffington Post.

FREE COMEDY: Hysteria Comedy Open Mic 4 Women & Queers

🗓 When: Every 2nd (and 5th) Wednesday of the month.

⏭️ Next Shows: Wed March 12th 7pm 📍 Where: SF Eagle, San Francisco 📸 Follow: @hysteriacomedy 🎟 Register for free

Stay tuned for more upcoming shows. Our newest show the Castro Comedy Cabaret at Beaux returns March 8th.

✨ Support Us Online!

Love what we do? Here’s how you can help:

🌟 Patreon: patreon.com/teamwonderdave 🔗 Website: teamwonderdave.com 🎥 YouTube: youtube.com/teamwonderdave 👤 Facebook: facebook.com/teamwonderdave 📸 Instagram: @teamwonderdave 🔵 Blue Sky: @wonderdave.bsky.social

Thank you for supporting comedy that makes a difference. See you at the shows!

Pat Robertson walks past thousands of souls, smugly and full of pride, and cuts to the front of the line at the velvet rope in outside the entrance to his version of Heaven.

The bouncer looks up from their clipboard, observing Robertson with thousands of eyes in a swirling cascade of light.

“Pat Robertson,” they say. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Pat Robertson silently congratulates himself. He swells with joy. All those people who died from AIDS, natural disasters, even 9/11 … they all deserved it. They were sinners!

The bouncer speaks into their headset. “He’s here.” They listen. “Yep. At the front of the line.”

The bouncer turns most of its gaze back to Pat Robertson. “Just wait here for one moment, please.”

Pat Robertson steps to one side and waits.

After one thousand years, he begins to wonder if there was a miscommunication.

“Excuse me,” he says to the bouncer, “I am Pat –”

“Robertson. Yes. We know. We’re just getting everything in order for you. It will just be one more moment.”

Tens of thousands of victims of gun violence walk past him and enter Heaven. The population of an entire village, lost in a typhoon that was intensified by climate change, is welcomed. And still he waits.

They file past him, all the people he looked down on. All the people he hurt, directly and indirectly, don’t even notice him as they pass. It’s like he isn’t even there.

Another thousand years pass. Pat Robertson realizes he hasn’t had a thing to eat since he died and he is so very hungry.

“Hey!” He shouts at the bouncer. “What’s the problem? Don’t you know who I am?”

The bouncer rolls half a million eyes at once. “We know exactly who you are.”

“Well, alright, then!” Pat Robertson spits out, exasperated, “if you aren’t going to help me, get someone here who will!”

The bouncer speaks into its headset again. “We’re ready.”

A gibbering mass of what is mostly human flesh – or was, once – slithers / rolls / flops into Pat Robertson’s view. It is covered with mouths that bleed and weep and click their teeth together. Enormous open sores swirl and burst and close and reopen and drip pus and viscera across blistering skin. The faint memory of a smell surrounds it, something like very old cigar smoke and very expensive liquor.

Pat Robertson tries to scream. Arm-like stalks extend from the quivering shape. One resembles a hand at the end of an arm, dripping viscera.

In a flash, it grabs Pat Robertson’s hand and shakes it. Something hot and acidic splashes up on his arm, blinds him in one eye. He feels weak. Afraid. Alone. Confused.

Hundreds of mouths try to speak. Dozens of them vomit acrid bile that splashes across his chest. Dozens more silently spit out the lies they’ve been cursed to repeat for eternity to an audience who will never hear them again.

One mouth speaks clearly. So clearly, it’s inside Pat Robertson’s head and everywhere else all at once. “I’m Rush Limbaugh,” it says. “I’m your new roommate. Come with me.”

And that’s when Pat Robertson knows. That’s when it all hits him, all at once. He’s getting everything he deserves.

The line to get into Heaven does not see or hear or notice him, or the Limbeast. They can’t hurt anyone, anymore.

The cancerous mass of hate wraps its arm around his shoulder and just like that Pat Robertson finds himself in a vast parody of a cathedral. It’s built of bones and flesh and lies. The walls writhe, and he sees that they are not bricks and lathe but bodies wrapped in confederate flags and wearing red hats.

The pews are filled to capacity with the souls of people who followed him in life, hated who he told them to hate. Only their hate is now focused on him, hot and unforgiving. Relentless.

Pat Robertson looks for his companion, but it has vanished. It has left him alone to suffer.

A sermon rises in his chest and pushes against his throat. Pat Robertson is compelled to speak, and as he does each word tears through him like broken glass. He spews his hate and his lies, just as he did in life. Only in this place, he doesn’t feel the glee and the satisfaction he always did. No, he feels the pain and the suffering and the agony of every human being who he deliberately hurt. He. Feels. All. Of. It. He tries to stop speaking. Of course, he can not. He can not ever stop.

And Pat Robertson’s eternity begins.

by Andrea Gibson

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables, said if I could get down thirteen turnips each day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight, said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty and she said, “Stop worrying, darling, you will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho-therapist said I should spend three hours a day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth,  said focus on the out breath, said everyone finds happiness if they can care more about what they can give than what they get.

The pharmacist said Klonopin, Lamictal, Lithium, Xanax.

The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poem.” To the lamplight considering the river bed, to the chandelier of your faith hanging by a thread, to everyday you cannot get out of bed, to the bullseye of your wrist, to anyone who has ever wanted to die:

I have been told sometimes the most healing thing we can do is remind ourselves over and over and over other people feel this too.

The tomorrow that has come and gone and it has not gotten better.

When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried, but when I thought I’d hit bottom, it started hitting back.”

There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine so let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets while you break down like the doors of their looted buildings. You are not alone in wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame.

You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside.

Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside some days. I know my smile can look like the gutter of a falling house but my hands are always holding tight to the rip cord of believing a life can be rich like the soil, can make food of decay, turn wound into highway.

Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says,  “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”

I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound. Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down.

What I know about living is the pain is never just ours. Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window, when I can see what I couldn’t see before through the glass of my most battered dream I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin don’t try to put me back in. Just say, “Here we are” together at the window aching for it to all get better but knowing there is a chance our hearts may have only just skinned their knees, knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming

let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You, you stay here with me, okay? You stay here with me.

Perhaps the World Ends Here

Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Suggested Scots lit:

Trainspotting (cult classic about the life and times of heroin addicts, mostly known for the movie adaptation, but it was a book first. Probably the easiest to read on the list for people who know English but don't know Scots.)

Be Guid Tae Yer Mammy (a darkly comic family drama, involves interesting topics like invisible disability, is in fact very funny)

But'n'Ben A Go-Go (Scots cyberpunk! Suggest you start with one of the other books above and get used to Scots before tackling this one though. This is written in "What if Scots, but it's the future so it evolved some?" so reading it is definitely hard mode. But if you're up for the challenge, it's some solid SF.)

These are just three. Please add on with other books in Scots if you have any recommendations.

Online Comedy May 8th and May 15th

We’ve got two great shows coming up this month TONIGHT we’ve got Bri Pruett at SMILF Comedy Show and May 15th we’ve got Margaret Cho and Guy Branum at Mental Health Comedy Hour!

SMILF (Straight Men I’d Like to Friend) Comedy Show Online Saturday May 8th 7pm Pacific Join your hosts stand-up comedians and noted homosexuals Wonder Dave and Marcus Williams as they try to find out just what is going on in the minds of heterosexual men in SMILF: Straight Men I’d Like to Friend! Each show Wonder Dave and Marcus will gather some straight male performers to objectify….er… showcase! Then we’ll quiz these fine men to test their gay knowledge. BUT because we have no interest in running a show that only showcases Straight men we’ll also be bringing you an amazing queer/female spotlight performer! This month we’re joined by the amazing Bri Pruett! Also featuring Jefferson Bergey, Red Scott, and Danny Ramos! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smilf-straight-men-id-like-to-friend-online-comedy-show-tickets-152590140217

Mental Health Comedy Hour Online Saturday May 15th 7pm Stand up comedians tell jokes and talk about their mental health. All in the jovial environment of a late night talk show. Also featuring interviews with licensed professional therapists and more! This month’s special Guest comedians are Margaret Cho and Guy Branum!

At the Mental Health Comedy Hour we’re not OK, and that’s OK! Hosted by Wonder Dave and Kristee Ono.

This show was made possible by the San Francisco Arts Commission

#SFACFunded https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-health-comedy-hour-with-margaret-cho-and-guy-branum-tickets-152144695881