On stage, 86-year-old Lynn Ruth Miller hugs a gorilla and rips off her clothes

The incomparable Lynn Ruth

Lynn Ruth lived in San Francisco for nearly 30 years. In her last blog, she mused on the changing face of the city. But she was really visiting there to perform…

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My first real performance in San Francisco this time was a comedy gig at Ashkenaz in Berkeley. 

My favorite comedian of all time, Aundre the Wonderwoman, came on stage.

Besides being amazingly funny. Aundre Herron is my hero. During the day, she is a lawyer for the people on death row. She was one of the first black women accepted to Radcliffe College and has worked her way through undergraduate and graduate studies to become a first-rate lawyer and a top-notch comedian.  

She is highly political and a staunch defender of the underdog. One of my favorite of her succinct observations on current culture is when she says (I paraphrase):

“Kids these days murder their parents. I didn’t know it was an option.”

When you listen to her comedy, you cannot help but see the illogical injustice that permeates our world. Her comedy is what I think all stand-up should be: words that open a window to social issues that no-one else dares to discuss.

The headliner was a new breed of comedian who had no idea that she was supposed to tell jokes. She gave us lots of poses and contorted facial expressions and went on and on about her mother and her life for a very long time. I am not sure if this is the direction American comedy is going and if the old fashioned pattern of set up/punch has gone out of style.

The next night was my one-hour stand up show I Never Said I Was Nice at The Marsh Theater.

It was a huge privilege to perform at The Marsh. When I lived in San Francisco, I applied several times to perform my Edinburgh Fringe cabarets there and I was never accepted. Now, because they became aware of my UK and European successes, I was able to do I Love Men there last year. I filled the house thank goodness and the show was a success.

Will I ever be a confident performer? I was a nervous mess as I sat in the lovely spacious dressing room in The Marsh, but my delightful tech lady, Raye, was so encouraging that I finally relaxed and did my performance to a combination of friends old and new.

One woman in a wheelchair informed me that she had seen me ten years ago at Gazo’s Grill in Pescadero, California, and that I had not changed a bit. All I could think of was: Did I look this old and wasted at 76?

When I finished the Marsh show, my trusty driver Leo (who has traded babysitting my dogs for caring for me), drove me to the DNA Lounge for Hubba Hubba’s Murder Mansion Show.  

Hubba Hubba was the first burlesque show that started booking me regularly in San Francisco. It was created and is now run by the delightful and very funny Jim Sweeney who MCs each event. He adds special comic touches that embody the original spirit of burlesque. In his bigger shows, there is a gorilla who welcomes each act and prances about when the going gets boring.  

I love that gorilla.  

Lynn Ruth was billed as “The Stripping Granny” at the Hubba Hubba this year

He is the sweetest living thing on the Hubba Hubba stage and we often have a quick cuddle during my act. But then I have always been a sucker for hairy men.  

There is always a scantily clad lady on the stage as well, waving a sign at the audience saying HOORAY! just in case they do not express their appreciation loudly enough.

When I first started performing at Hubba Hubba, the shows were in a tiny bar in Oakland where there were only a few seats along the side of the room. The majority of the audience stood to watch us all rip off our clothes on stage to a screaming, clapping, joyous audience. 

Burlesque is not just twirling tits and wiggling bums in Jim’s shows. I have never been in any production there that doesn’t have a great deal of tongue-in-cheek repartee. This time, I sang to a backing track while the gorilla helped me fiddle with my clothes but, sadly, I had sent the wrong version of the song to the sound engineer.  

We had had no time for a sound check and the result was that I was ripping off robes and chemises singing my heart out long after the music stopped.  

The gorilla didn’t care and thank God neither did the audience. They roared with delight.

I was a hit.

Saturday night was my big local show, Crazy Cabaret at A Grape in The Fog.

This place was one of my former stomping grounds.

I lived in Pacifica for almost thirty years and I never believed anyone knew who I was. My neighbors called me The Dog Lady. The rest of that world didn’t notice me at all.  

Although I had two Public Access TV shows that ran for almost 15 years, it wasn’t until about a year before I left town that someone stopped me while I was walking the dogs and said: “You are the TV Lady!”

Newspaper column spawned two books

Chris Hunter was the editor of the Pacifica Tribune while I was writing my column for that paper. He asked me to do a regular column. He had written a feature about me while he was just a reporter and when he was promoted to management, he decided he wanted to add a little oddball humor to the paper. This was the first real break I had in the newspaper world. I was paid $25 a column. I called it Thoughts While Walking The Dog and that is the title of two books that are compilations of those columns.  

I have never forgotten what Chris did for my ego and my writing career. To my utter joy, he and his daughter came to the show at A Grape in The Fog. It was his birthday and we celebrated with a drink and a lot of songs.

The real highlight of the evening, though, was when Ruby Finklestein did her warm-up introduction for me. Ruby is ten years old. Her father Judd runs a winery in Napa. Ruby has always wanted to be a stand-up comedian – a profession I didn’t even know existed until I was 70 years old. I told her she could tell a few jokes to start the performance and, I assure you, she stole the show.

I also have a friend in Pacifica who was a student in one of my adult art classes. Her name is Ursula and she is from Germany. Her father was a Nazi. I am Jewish. She told me story after story of how the German people starved during World War II and how her father had to join the Party to save his family.

Ursula is an example of someone who takes her responsibility as an immigrant to a new country seriously. She has her citizenship; she speaks English beautifully; and she worked for years tutoring children in English grammar as a volunteer. She is a talented artist and has continued working in soft pastels long after I stopped teaching and turned my attention to comedy. We have continued our friendship and no visit to Pacifica world be complete without Ursula.

But she is currently facing what we all will have to face one day. Her husband Werner is finally succumbing to the multiple sclerosis he has had for years and years. Ursula was forced to put him in a care home because she could not possibly care for him at their home. She visits him every day. She is also dealing with the prospect of preparing to be alone without him.

She and Werner have been married for at least fifty years and now my dear friend realizes that she will have to explore new avenues to fill her life, once her beloved husband is gone. One of her granddaughters is living with her now to help her through this terrible, demanding and frightening transition. The granddaughter has a dog and that dog has been Ursula’s solace. We sometimes forget how comforting it is to sit with a dog in your lap stroking its fur and absorbing its calm.

… CONTINUED HERE …

Lynn Ruth Miller on being back ‘home’ in the US and being disliked as a Jew

Lynn Ruth Miller – an American performer now based in the UK – continues her tales of returning to the US for three weeks of gigs in and around San Francisco after four years away…

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That night was going to be the big one. I was going to perform my show This Is Your Future at Beth Lemke’s A Grape in The Fog – her wine bar in Pacifica – and this was the city I lived in and loved for thirty years.  

This Is Your Future makes them laugh in Australia and the UK.

But would I get a giggle from the Americans?  

A Grape in The Fog is Beth’s baby (along with her special child, Daphne, a teeny tiny Chihuahua with a gigantic attitude). 

Pacifica is a bedroom community filled with restaurants and services for people who commute to San Francisco or to Silicon Valley. The level of sophistication one needs to create a successful wine bar for the beer-drinking, hamburger-guzzling local residents does not exist.  

Daphne the Chihuahua with a gigantic attitude

However, Beth is very innovative and staged events like jazz-and-wine, art-and-wine, games-and-wine, even a Yappy Hour so Daphne the Chihuahua could show off her new costumes to other less pampered pets.   

It has taken Beth eight years of persistence and creativity, but she has now established a stable, niche market for her fine and very expensive gourmet wines.

To my delight, A Grape in The Fog was packed with people who knew me back in those halcyon days of walking too many dogs, writing columns for their newspaper and telling dirty jokes.

Every person who came to the show was a gift to me, but, as with all things, every good bit of news brings bad news to counter it. 

I learned that my really young fifty-ish neighbors across the street had both died. Way too young. So had my neighbor to the east who was blind and very old when I lost my house. We all knew that was coming. The man of the house on the west had died too, but his harpy of a wife – a woman who reported me to the police for giving her son champagne for his high school graduation – still spreads her venom. 

There is no justice or logic to those who continue and those who stop, is there?

Just one of Lynn Ruth Miller’s books

One very special guest at A Grape in The Fog was Lennon Smith who helped me formulate my very first one woman show Farewell To The Tooth Fairy – a series of stories from my book Thoughts While Walking The Dog. It was she who began me on the path that led to the Toast Award and the cabarets I do regularly in London and Edinburgh.

So there I was, my past clustered about me, drinking exquisite wine and smiling indulgently as well-meaning, kind people insisted I had not changed one whit even though I am two inches shorter and look like something someone soaked in the bath two hours too long.  

They laughed at British jokes they could not understand because they cared about me.  

‘Dogging’ to them is following someone too closely.

‘Bums’ live in the street.

 But so what?  

I was once theirs and they wanted me to know I was not forgotten.

The next day was my day with Pattie Lockard.

Pattie has been not just a fan but a promoter and a helper for years and years.  

I discovered her doing PR for Menopause the Musical and now she is the founder and spirit behind Nurse Talk – a call-in and political radio series that explores nurses’ rights, health issues and adventures in the nursing profession. It is a beautiful mix of humor and information and I did several short pieces on the show.

Pattie and I met that day at The Cheesecake Factory which serves portions that would make an elephant flinch and then tops it with a slice of cheesecake that would send the slimmest among us to Weight Watchers.  

Then we drove out to her new home in Napa.

Napa is the place that makes all those California wines we buy at Sainsbury’s. It is a charming place filled with vineyards and wineries, Victorian houses and boutique shops.

Pattie’s partner is a working nurse. She is directly involved in the health care system in California and sees first hand the way the insurance companies have profited at the expense of the sick. She is a strong advocate for single pay insurance, as is Pattie. But she is not fond of me.

When I had the misfortune to stay at their home years ago after I broke my heel, Pattie’s partner screamed at me: “You and your Jew ways!” and asked me to leave the house, when I was doing nothing but sitting in her living room with my leg in a cast.  

When she heard I was visiting Pattie this time, she left the house to visit a relative.  

I spent the night in their home and, at ten the next morning, Pattie came in to tell me I had to leave immediately because her partner was on her way home,

I have encountered many people who do not like me and I have always believed that is their right. After all, if everyone loves you, you are really nothing to anybody.  

However, this time I felt a bit miffed because, as far as I know, I have done nothing offensive to this woman to ignite this level of disgust.  

I am beginning to understand the insult people feel when they are discriminated against for something that has nothing to do with who they are… and I also realize nothing I can do will change that attitude.  

We are all different people and that is a good thing.

I believe this was a very good experience for me to learn compassion for others.   

I understand much more completely now how invasive and illogical racism is and how it feels to be hated (such a strong word) by someone you have hardly had a conversation with.

… CONTINUED HERE …