My Thoughts after "Mr. Bruce, do you Swear?" (WARNING: Contains offensive Language.)

You want to know what offends me?

There are plenty of words out there that offend me. There are plenty of ideas that I find disgusting, horrible, offensive, and damaging. There are movies I won't watch, shockingly enough. There are books I won't read. There are songs I won't listen to, celebrities I find annoying, politicians who drive me up the wall, and there are plenty of words. I think the word "cunt" is probably one of the most offensive words I've ever heard, and it may be the most offensive term I can think of when scratching the back of my head for a decent insult. I could have gone with "arrogant, cruel, and vindictive bitch-woman", but I thought "Cunt" summed it up far better and much more succinctly. The fact that I already knew it was insulting and cruel and offensive was precisely what I was going for, because I wanted to verbally lash the victim of this horrible word. My favorite insult is "cum guzzling gutter fuck"... I dredged that out when I was a teenager and like to dust it off every now and again for shits and giggles. It's pretty offensive. It sends out red flags with a good many people and got me punched in the face once. The person who punched me in the face wasn't even the target of the insult, but rather his mother. I didn't think he would be appropriately insulted by the comment, so I threw it at him by adding "your mother is... " and found the words hit their mark. I find them offensive, and you're damn right I use them. Words are a fantastic weapon.

But you know what really offends me?

No, fuck that... you know what pisses me the hell off? I mean, seriously pisses me off and sets all sorts of red flags up in my own head? I get pissed when one person tells another person to "shut up"... whether it's me or someone else, or whether I'm saying it or not, it fucking burns me up and makes me want to scream and claw and fight. I once threw someone across a room for telling me to "shut up".  And then broke a wall and nearly made a goddamn door out of it. Yeah, I had anger issues when I was growing up so suck it up because that's not the point. I find censorship to be offensive. And you know what? I also find the passive aggressive version of censorship to be even more offensive... when someone says that free speech means having a responsibility to say the "right" things, to NOT be "offensive", to NOT be harmful. Fuck that bullshit because I already wrote this a little earlier, but here it is again: WORDS ARE A FANTASTIC WEAPON.

So Jody Gilmore is a friend of mine and we've had chit-chats about classic movies, monsters, and the controversial work of Lenny Bruce. Gilmore once played Bruce in a play written by Rob Foster, so we had plenty to talk about. I'm a big fan of the man. I've downloaded a number of bits onto my mp3 player and continue to update my rhapsody with a number of people who benefited from the fight Mr. Bruce took to his grave. And when Gilmore decided to reprise that role in Paper Wing Theatre's latest production, "Mr. Bruce, do you Swear?", I was super excited and eager.

Lenny Bruce was repeatedly jailed for being offensive, for using his words. He was punished for delivering a series of ideas to an audience that huddled in the dark night clubs and allowed themselves to laugh at dark material. He casually tossed insults toward Catholics and Jews, he dropped the F bomb, he repeatedly went to jail, and he had a reputation that continues to this day. They say he fought the system, you know that? They say he fought the system and he lost... he fought the fucking LAW, man! He stood before a judge and a jury and plainclothes Detectives and he continued to use his words in defiance and he was fucking punished. Nat Hentoff once wrote: "Bruce opened the door not only in the way we live, but also in the way we cover it up."

I like that.

And it's appropriate that the play at Paper Wing Theatre is a sort of modern day reminiscence or dream or other-worldly idea regarding a conversation between Hentoff and Bruce. Hentoff is a well known civil libertarian himself, having long continued the fight after Bruce's death. But if you watch the show, if you pay attention, you understand something that every rebel without a cause often miss when they think of Lenny  Bruce: He wasn't really fighting the system. He was fighting a series of judges who wanted to redefine the system, he was fighting small-minded police officers, he was fighting the lame repetition of cuss-words taken out of context by Herbert Ruhe when the agent took the stand, he was fighting for his words in a country built upon a word that begins with C... .and it may be the most offensive word to the ears of Lenny Bruces' critics. Lenny Bruce believed in the system. Lenny Bruce fought FOR the system, he fought FOR his rights, he fought for is words... every one of the offensive bits and pieces that made up the whole of the context of his act.

You know, I'm sure people are reading this and wondering when I'm going to ever get to the show itself... I've been telling you about the show the whole time if you paid a little bit of attention. This show is about ideas, it's about a performance that hits straight for the goddamn heart and shreds the mind and the expectations of its' audience. You want me to tell you about the lighting? It was there, it was appropriately used, and it helped to tell the story. You want me to tell you about Jay DeVines' fantastic portrayal of Hentoff and various others who appear throughout the remembrance of Bruce? Jay DeVine is a great actor, he tackles the material with enthusiasm and delivers Ruhe's well known testimony in the New York trial. Oh, but come on, what do you want from me? Pay attention to the context and maybe you'll start to understand what I'm saying. Sorry, what I'm writing. You can't actually HEAR what I'm saying, can you?

"Mr. Bruce, Do you Swear?"

You know what? I just had to suck back a few tears right there when I wrote that. That's a fucking awful question. It's a fucking rip-off of a question to ask a man who puts his words together to form a fucking goddamn idea and then to have his words ripped away from him. Do you swear? Is that what it came down to at the end of the day? Were a couple of people offended by some language, offended by an idea or two, offended because some guy stood on a stage and told jokes for a living? There are too many people in this world who are offended by something or another. They're offended by the word "Dyke", they're offended by the word "Nigger", they're offended by religion, they're offended by a lack of religion, they're offended by political discourse, they're offended by sex, they're offended by violence, and they point their fingers and then decry a belief that is slightly different than their own. And if I've offended you with what I've written, perhaps you needed to be offended... and I ripped that idea right out of a Suicidal Tendencies song, so don't credit me with some clever little sentence. I didn't put that idea in my head, they did. I've got a lot of really harmful ideas in my head, inspired by listening and reading a lot of words from a lot of people. I can thank Mr. Bruce for those ideas because he opened a door and he made so many of them possible.

Jody Gilmore is in the title role of Mr. Bruce. He inspires laughs, he inspires frustration, he inspires courage, and he brings one of the best performances I've ever seen on stage. He brings a lot of words to the show, also. Some of them are pretty scary. They are harmful, they are cruel and they are offensive. They are a series of ideas delivered in context. These words define a battle that started when a bunch of men decided to sign their names to a document that guaranteed that people could trade, exchange, and discuss various ideas and judge for themselves the worth and value of each idea. The battle didn't end in 1776, it didn't end when Lenny Bruce passed away on August 3rd, 1966. It didn't end when they decided to put "Parental Discretion" stickers on albums, it didn't end when Nat Hentoff was ousted from The Village Voice for sharing an unpopular decision, and it isn't over when the lights go down in Paper Wing Theatre.

Go see Jody Gilmore resurrect Lenny Bruce, because there isn't a better show on the silver screen or any stage in Monterey County.