Today I was at the Gay and Lesbian Business Expo with the gay cheerleading squad. I jumped up and down and cheered and did stunts for seven hours. I am exhausted. Tomorrow I have several more hours to go, so I will conserve my strength and contain myself to one event that simply cannot go unremarked, which was that Robin Byrd was there. I’m not sure if those of you who don’t live in New York are able to have the Robin Byrd experience; if not, know that she is a 47,000-year-old woman who hosts a show on public access television on which porn stars (gay or straight, depending on the evening and time) appear and dance and strip. Then she interviews them. At the end of the show, all the porn stars who have appeared on that episode sit in a semicircle and, while the closing music plays, Robin Byrd sucks on the nipples of the women and simulates oral sex with the men. It’s truly a sight to behold.
Anyway, Robin Byrd was at the Gay and Lesbian Business Expo, introducing performers from the off-Broadway show Zanna, Don’t (a theatrical experience I highly recommend), and she was clearly trashed out of her mind. She could barely pronounce words of more than one syllable, and words of more than two syllables were completely beyond her. She kept almost dropping the huge card on which her patter was printed, and she couldn’t quite stand up straight. She was everything I might have hoped she would be and more.
I wonder if she’ll be there tomorrow.
Oh my god! Robin Byrd was at my opening night party (for Zanna, Don’t!, a theatrical experience I’m so glad Faustus highly recommends) and she was totally terrifying. She’s a very sweet lady as far as I can tell, but also a complete lunatic. Does she still wear that same crochet bikini on her show? ‘Cause she’s, um, larger than I remember her.
I visited New York back in Feb and was able to watch her show – a true cultural highlight of the trip (forget La Boheme) – the simulated blowjobs are truely inspired. We have nothing like on that on our cable access in Texas.
I finally reread this entry and saw that you said “public access television” and not “public television.” The world makes a little more sense again now, but not much more.
Robyn Byrd cracks me up.
Hm. I saw “Zanna, Don’t” back in 2001 at the Yale Cabaret. I thought it was a bit weak, but it could have just been woefully underrehearsed.
I wonder how much it’s been revised and expanded since then.
Zanna has changed a great deal since it was a cabaret at Yale. I wasn’t involved in it then, but from what I understand it’s grown immensely. Check it out!
(Not like I have a vested interest in this or anything…y’know, like employment…)