Oh Stephen you made me blush with your show on Monday night… many times. And now that I have a laptop in my comfy bed, I can write down what I think without freezing my ass on a plastic chair. Which explains my recent long posts.
Do you know what Stephen Colbert does? He interviews serious guests in his blowhard conservative pundit character. He also talks directly to his viewer which can sometimes be freaky. On my birthday Stephen said that if I was a 35 y.o. woman today, my chances of finding a man were nonexistent… Hmmm, that was a really strange coincidence.
By now his guests know what he is going to do to them. There is one video of Stephen out there showing him interacting with John Kerry pre-interview however, it has never been clear how his guests are prepared.
Both Stewart and Colbert have high quality guests on. Many are unassuming and geeky authors who probably don’t have to put up with such a character on a regular basis. What I have figured out is that he will ask one question to let his guest “plug the product” but after that the gloves come off and the rest is an unexpected avalanche of rhetoric and twisted logic. His guest are left to fend for themselves. Some give him all the room and some manage to get a word in edgewise. They are unlikely to shut him up but it has happened.
I am most entertained when Stephen has women guests on. On Monday he had TWO female guests: Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist and Bethany McLean, author of “The Smartest Guys in the Room”.
McLean was absolutely delightful as she brought really serious issues to the table. She managed to get a lot of good points out even though Stephen was like a pittbull with her! I have absolutely no idea what went through her mind but I had the feeling I could see her heart miss a beat a few times… By the end she seemed upset in a “what the fuck just happened?” kind of way and as the camera went wide and faded Stephen seemed to notice and immediately grabbed her hand to do the aftercare!
Parker, who was the featured guest, seemed to enjoy her “conversation” with Stephen… and by that I mean “really enjoy it” the way I would… This episode is available online (Oct. 13, 2008) and I don’t want to read too much into the body language of people who will Google themselves to find that I have put their serious interview into a kinky context. Some people are quite masterful at putting serious politics into a kinky context (Dana Gould, 8mins+)
I can tell you what Stephen Colbert does to me though! One cannot expect what Stephen is going to say next and that is really exciting. He will bring something to the table and commit to it in a powerful way. He can completely overpower a conversation with gems of irony that make heads of state explode (pun intended.) Stephen has a huge set of brass balls and he is very proud of them. When Stephen speaks I cannot help but listen to everything he says and then try to dissect the layers of comedy and irony that he and his writers pack-in so tightly. Stephen has the best writers (with Emmy and Peabody to support that) but he must be praised highly for his delivery.
I am guilty of trying to drive conversations like Stephen and when my friends bite, it’s all sorts of fun… but I want to be on the receiving end of that conversation!
Something really awesome happened to me a few weeks ago and I am still giddy about it. Mr. M. and I were chatting through Skype and for some reason my mute button became activated. While I could hear him, he could not hear me but I assume he could see me. So as I was looking for which of the 3 ways the mute could be on he proceeded to verbally assault me for a few minutes. I was really impressed with how he berated me (incessantly and in a funny way.) I guess I could have been upset but instead, it tickled me in a very naughty way. He was essentially giving me a verbal spanking making it impossible to find what I was looking for. He made me giggly, shocked and excited but could not hear the results of his effect on me as my mute button was still on. I truly hope he saw me laughing and withering!
I have gotten into trouble with Mr. M. for assuming that what he does is deliberate and planned… Does he improvise or is he premeditated? I wonder this because I know I can be very premeditated as I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can steer conversations toward absurd comedy or make someone laugh. There is an enormous amount of intent in me and I am becoming more comfortable telling the world that I am not the wallflower I sometimes pretend to be.
I am not evil but I wish I was and I was able to play that character officially in a gamers magazine interview a few months ago. This interview was unanimously defined as hilarious. Moreover, the reaction male readers had was exactly on mark, they were shocked and scared of me, the evil dominatrix bent on taking over the world! I can’t ask for anything more!!!
Mr. M. can be Machiavellian in the way he puts forward his ideas and perhaps does not realize the exciting and awesome evil villain he brings to the table. This is but one of his Mad Skillz. He is a Valmont, but unlike the cruel ways in which the Vicomte has been portrayed (and I have avidly eaten all iterations), Mr. M. seemed to come along with a promise to reveal the humanity behind the man who corrupted Cecile and destroyed Madame de Tourvel. Are you seeing a theme here? What is improvised and what is premediated? Is it “I couldn’t help myslef” or “I actually meant to do that”? I know he is not evil but he is so good at the craft as he commits to it in very powerful way. While I admit that I did get drunk on this experience I retained a lot of my petulant self. Perhaps I hoped that Mr. M. would be a formidable opponent. I saw him as superior to me! In many ways, he was going to be the most fun and challenging person to lose to. At least I hoped he would win. However, when I clearly needed to be put in my place, he chose not to… so as not to be hurtful…
There is a duality in that… While being called on what I did or said could be construed as a bad experience, for me it is an enlightening experience. It is not just about being disciplined for doing something wrong but it’s also about realizing the exact consequences of my actions by hearing it from him, learning from that and hopefully reveling in how masterfully the lecture or correction is delivered. Sure the correction could be delivered constructively but also with a wide variety of emotions like anger, disdain, coldness, etc. but it is what it is and unfortunately it is not something I get to experience in play and too rarely in life.
Almost ten years ago I began a working relationship with a man who was loud, grumpy and impulsive. He even had a reputation for making people cry but I later learned that those people were easy cryers. He had one quality that I had never encountered in someone else: he could have a shouting match with me and never step out of line or bring the conversation down with irrelevant stuff. At first it was surprising! I don’t yell but I won my points enough times that he eventually handed over the keys to the castle. So I won… or did I? Because dealing with him so intensely on a daily basis made me feel really happy, excited and alive. It was awesome fuel. Today, we are attached to each other in blissful way… His love, acceptance and encouragement has effectively fueled my ability to deal with really hard situations and challenges. We don’t fight anymore. We seems to agree on everything. We seem to understand and trust each other fully.
I can honestly say that it is where I had wished to go with Mr. M. so I gave him the opportunity to define a place for me that I agreed with (check!) and then put me into it officially an masterfully. I know it’s a huge expectation. I am a dominant person (a survivalist) which seems at odds with the developing dynamics between Mr. M. and I but the “negotiation” process I am referring to is just that… a back and forth planning process that can come across as un-romantic. For me, it’s really exciting, because I like procedures. Also, it is what I learned from my Lady and from Midori over the years. It is the only way that I know to get to SSC or RACK. However, it comes from a very clinical BDSM framework and it killed the magical meeting of the minds that originally happened between us.
Sigh…
