Road Trip Season

(episode 5)

JAMIE: It's The Broadly Entertaining Podcast for all you Femme Broads, Them Broads and Dude Broads out there. [ukulele strums fading up in the background]

GIANA: We have got fun, games and feminism coming at ya. Thanks for letting us entertain you. Let's party!

[playful ukulele theme music]

GIANA: Welcome, welcome! I am Giana and I'm usually the last person you'd come to to talk about sports.

JAMIE: Ooh, enticing! I am Jamie and I am ready to celebrate all kinds of love and romance!

[ukulele theme reprise with whistling coda]

GIANA: We’ve got some big news that you won't hear anywhere else, friends. You can now see our faces along with hearing our voices if you hop on over to the Broadly Entertaining YouTube channel.

JAMIE: Woo, yes! We are just audio and video editing fools over here! [Giana giggles] Or just fools in general because we keep giving ourselves jobs that, honestly based on our skill levels no one would hire us to do.

GIANA: [laughing] Hey man, in Shakespeare plays the fool is always the character with the most wisdom and we are definitely just continuing to learn and learn and learn about how great it would be if we could afford to hire professionals. [both laugh]

JAMIE: Yes, well, we will sure know what jobs we are handing off to those professionals when the time comes that we can do that again. Anyway, I guess soon I will have to start making myself presentable for these videos, too. I'll have to like, I don't know, put on pants and wash my face?

GIANA: Eh. You do… only what feels right. You do only what feels right, and no one can see you below the waist unless you want them to see below the waist anyway, so you know, wear what you want down there. Or not.

JAMIE: Mmm… true enough, true enough. I have been outside today so I do have shorts on and I did not sleep in this shirt, just for the record. Just puttin’ it out there. But it's like, it's weird, it's like it's an acting exercise where you wonder if the director is an absolute genius or a creepy predator, ya know? “You shall rehearse without your pants!”

GIANA: [laughing] And that reminds me of a time where I maybe rehearsed without my pants, and a not-predator director, a genius director tried to rectify it.

I don't know if you know this one, actually, Jamie, but I started theater when I was five years old and my dad was my very first director and he would be—I would put him in the genius category of directors. He is, to this day, one of my favorite directors that I’ve ever worked with. He loves acting and loves actors and so he was a real, like, actor’s director. Like, so good. But when I was five in my first play I had to learn some lessons. 

I was in A Christmas Carol. In this particular version the opening scene was like a, we’re rehearsing and getting ready to put on a show, type of scene so we were all in like our rehearsal costumes, right? And there's this other cast member who I just wanted to be just like. She was beautiful and I just wanted to be just like her. She had this platinum blonde hair and her rehearsal scene costume was her dance shorts and a leotard and some ballet flats, but she also had her makeup done so she had a bright red lip and she looked fabulous and I decided that my costume that I was assigned (which was an ankle length rehearsal skirt and leotard as well or whatever) was not gonna do it for me. I just took that rehearsal skirt off and I was probably just wearing my leotard, I don't think I even had shorts on, and I probably stole that girl’s lipstick and put it on, and I was five so it was probably just like all—it was probably just not very accurate—and my job was to do cartwheels across the stage and I got about halfway across and I remember so vividly my dad like, stopping rehearsal and was just like, “STOP!”, because this 5-year-old lips with legs was just like whipping her legs across the stage and it was just like, What are you doing?! 

So I learned a couple of lessons. One, like, you know, my dad clearly thought I was too young for bright red lipstick and no pants. And also, you know, don't change the costume last minute like that. Directors don't really dig that when you just go rogue; they like it much better when you do what was agreed.

JAMIE: Mm hmm. Yeah, not every director is there for collaboration and you know, even the ones that are, you have to pick the right moments. Not every moment is a collaboration.

GIANA: Right. Exactly. 

JAMIE: Aw.

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: Well, yeah, that sounds adorable. I did not know that story, I'm glad I do now. And, yeah, that is absolutely a success because you learned a little bit more as an actor about how to exist in that professional setting. What a professional 5-year-old!

GIANA: You have no idea. [they both laugh]

JAMIE: So I'm going to continue on this topic that I am going to call foolishness with positive outcomes. Can we jump, can we jump that way?

GIANA: Yeah let’s do it! Let's jump! You know I love a silver lining. I love foolishness. [they both laugh]

JAMIE: I do! I do know these things! I appreciate these things, and in the interest of continuing to share our story with our listening friends, how about we share some of Broadly Entertaining's successes that are failures that are successes?

GIANA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like where you're going with this and immediately what comes to mind was our— It wasn't our first bar gig 'cause that was Catfish and Catfish is awesome and we love Catfish, but it was our second bar gig and they— 

We got a lot of work out of them but it was not a bar that, like, Jamie and Giana would hang out in. It wasn't like, our kind of a bar, but it was a gig and we had several with them and we ended up meeting our first private client through them and so, like you know, a lot of positive things came out of this gig but these people were very much not like us and I remember the first time that I really realized it was, we were doing a trivia night there and we didn't see eye to eye on content, which— Trivia content was one of the major reasons we got into business together, 'cause we were noticing that what we were presenting was not— It wasn't a reflection of what we were seeing. It didn't jive with what, the audience we were seeing, and so we were like, “We'll do better! We'll represent marginalized people better and we'll just do this better.” 

Anyhoo, we asked a question, a trivia question, about the first openly gay Congressperson, and that was— That got— They gave us feedback on saying that that question was a little too political for us to ask on a trivia night, and to us we're just like, This is just history—

JAMIE: Mm hm.

GIANA: —it’s just a fact and we are wondering if you know it. Do you know that fact? That's all, that's all this is, but we— that was, I don't know. We clearly don't work for them still, and we didn't work for them for too too much longer after that, but that was definitely like, we succeeded in just presenting ourselves the way we want to present ourselves, but maybe it was the beginning of the end of that relationship.

JAMIE: Yeah. Hey, you know, some facts make people uncomfortable and there's nothing we can do about that. The fact is still a fact, and the fact is it was Barney Frank. He was a congressman for Massachusetts and he was the first openly gay Congressperson in the United States House of Representatives.

And yeah, you know, talking about facts that are facts that make people uncomfortable that we think absolutely should not make people uncomfortable, that reminds me of some feedback we got at a different bar. It was from a player but it came to us through the bar owner. It was indirect feedback during Women's History Month. Some dude wanted to know if we could ask more questions about men. He felt like there weren't enough men in our Women's History Month set; our feminist trivia company’s Women’s History Month set, not enough men. I will say— 

GIANA: [laughs] Oh god.

JAMIE: Yeah. Luckily the previous month being Black History Month nobody asked us to include more white people in the Black History Month set.

GIANA: That’s good.

JAMIE: It is good. I don't know— Somebody may well have had the thought but at least they had the, you know, the composure of mind to not share that thought with us.

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: And you know, so it's a failure in that we could not bring that person along with us in that moment, but it was a success because it meant that we were doing something that was unusual and that we were putting something out there that people hadn't really encountered before, and maybe the people who didn't speak up were really psyched that we were doing that and somebody just had the absolute chutzpah to say there should be more men in our Women's History Month set. But maybe we planted a seed.

GIANA: Yeah! Moved the needle a little bit; I like that. And that wasn't the last of it and I'm sure we will continue to experience this as we are very open about our political and social standings as a company which more and more people do all the time. You know, people want to give their money to people that share their values and we enjoy working for people that share our values, so for us it is a major success when somebody who shares our values finds us! That means that we're doing something right. Like when we get queer couples that come to us that's like, “Great!” Because it means that we're doing something right, that they found us and felt safe enough to want to reach out to us to do their wedding. So that's a major win, right?

JAMIE: Yeah.

GIANA: But you know, so what if we alienate a half that doesn't believe that gay people should be married? At this point I just feel like there are things that are more important.

JAMIE: Absolutely. And the idea that it's a half I think is misleading anyway, ya know?

GIANA: Yup, that’s absolutely true.

JAMIE: But I do agree, it is nice even just from a strictly entrepreneurial perspective, when we find out that our marketing is successful and that we are drawing the clients and the people who are able to find and like what we're putting out into the world. Because you don’t always know if your marketing and your advertising is successful or to what degree—

GIANA: Yup.

JAMIE: So that's very cool.

GIANA: Yeah!

JAMIE: It’s very cool! 

We did potentially lose a gig recently that, honestly, you know, would have brought us some bank. That just on a personal level, like, it would have been nice to know that my rent was covered for a few months because of this one gig. We had a client that came to us in 2020, we only ever worked together virtually— Giana I think you know where I'm going with this.

GIANA: Mm hm. I do.

JAMIE: And we had a great opportunity, we were invited to create and present some entertainment for their first in-person retreat in several years now, but we found out that that retreat was taking place on land that was owned by a slave trader, by an enslaver, and a seemingly proud one at that (I mean I guess a lot of them probably were very proud of it). But even the owners of the land now, they didn't really delve into their history. They were just like, This used to be owned by this guy— and we looked up who this guy was and he was not a good guy. You know, but we wanted a job and we wanted the opportunity to present something that just acknowledges the truth of history and that gave this client’s employees a safe and enjoyable way to be on this land that may otherwise make them feel very unsafe and uncomfortable in the setting that's supposed to be fun for them, they're supposed to be relaxing and getting together and playing games! So we started toying with an escape room that would have had the players in some sort of, like, seance with abolitionists and just kind of acknowledging the history of what the land is. Not putting down the current owners, not even making it the main focus; the main focus was we're here to have fun, we're gonna have a good time but we want it to be in a way that is safe and comfortable for everyone. [ukulele fades up slowly in the background]

And we did not get that job, and we don't know for sure if that is a coincidence or if that is why we did not get that job, but sometimes not getting the job is a success because it means that we stuck— We were able to stick to our grounds, we were not complicit in a way that we don't wanna be complicit in this world, and who knows down the line what that might blossom into.

GIANA: Yeah. [four ukulele notes]

Let's, I don't know, let's, like, I think it's time for a game. Let's like, let's boost this up, let's get a little game time in. 

JAMIE: Yes! / GIANA: I love playing games with you.

JAMIE: Same!

[bright ukulele chords]

JAMIE (cont’d): Do you have a particular game in mind?

GIANA: Well, since you asked… We are actually recording this episode just after Memorial Day weekend, which is sort of the unofficial, Yay it's summertime!, here in the U-S-of-A and summer always makes me think of road trips, which I love and I am far overdue for one; I just love love love, I love a field trip— A field trip?

JAMIE: You could take a field trip on a road trip! You stop at the sights on the side of the road, you check out the world's biggest rubber band, go to a museum, you know?

GIANA: Yeah, all those things! But I— One of the things that I love to do on a road trip is play games and I love a good road trip game, so maybe that's our game.

JAMIE: Oh a road trip game, yeah! Yes you do love a good road trip game. Almost as much as you love a silver lining and foolishness.

GIANA: Oh I love foolishness!

[they laugh]

JAMIE: Okay, so road trip games. Awesome. A few definitely come to mind, and I'm gonna keep putting this on your shoulders because I wonder what road trip game you think we can play since we're not road tripping.

GIANA: Not on the road? I was thinking we could play Who Am I?.

JAMIE: Ooh, a classic! I love it. It's like 20 Questions but you already know that the answer is a person, or, you know, an animate being of some kind.

GIANA: Right, right. But we can't— we don't— we're not on a road trip so we can't have this last forever; five hours while we're on a road. So, I thought that we could make it a little more challenging and cut it to 15 question cap—

JAMIE: [gasps]

GIANA: —but we can help ourselves a little bit by choosing a category. And then we could take turns, one yes or no question at a time, back and forth, and at the end of 15 questions we'll just have to guess our answer no matter what.

JAMIE: Okay! That is definitely a challenge; I'm not sure I've ever gotten a Who Am I? in 15 questions—

GIANA: Aw, I bet you can.

JAMIE: —but I like that we can put a category onto it. How about— what do you think about cartoon characters?

GIANA: Yes. I think cartoon characters is perfect.

JAMIE: Okay.

GIANA: Okay. Can I ask first?

JAMIE: Okay!

GIANA: Okay! My first question is: Am I female?

JAMIE: No. Am I human?

GIANA: Yes. Am I human?

JAMIE: No. Am I a child human?

GIANA: No. Am I an animal?

JAMIE: Yes. Am I a Disney cartoon?

GIANA: No. Am I, like, would I be considered an adult cartoon?

JAMIE: Uh… yes. At a point in your story, yes.

GIANA: No, not adult age; I mean like, the cartoon show that I'm in, is it adult versus a children’s cartoon?

JAMIE: Oh! No, not specifically.

GIANA: Okay.

JAMIE: Oh, squeezed in some extra information out of that!

GIANA: I didn’t mean to.

[they laugh]

JAMIE: Am I a main character?

GIANA: Yes. Am I a main character?

JAMIE: Yes. Umm… do I have a job?

GIANA: I don't think so.

JAMIE: Okay. It's not relevant, then.

GIANA: No.

JAMIE: Okay.

GIANA: Am I… Am I Disney character?

JAMIE: Yes. Was I created after the year 2000?

GIANA: No. Am I a dog?

JAMIE: No. Was I created before 1990?

GIANA: Yes. Am I cat?

JAMIE: Yes. Was I created before 1980?

GIANA: Yes. Am I a black cat?

JAMIE: No. Am I female?

GIANA: Yes. Was I made after 1990?

JAMIE: Yes. Am I a television show cartoon?

GIANA: [makes a throaty noise of being unsure] Umm… Yes.

JAMIE: Which you learned by just looking up right now, okay.

GIANA: Was I made after the year 2000?

JAMIE: No. Am I known primarily from a movie?

GIANA: Um, no… is what I learned… [trails off mumbling, then laughter]

JAMIE: [laughs] Am I in a movie?

GIANA: Probably. I mean…

JAMIE: Okay. Oh shit, was that my 10th or 11th question?

GIANA: I don't care. Keep digging on the stuff I don't know about. [laughs]

JAMIE: Just trying to find the nuance. Just trying.

GIANA: Okay, am I an orange cat?

JAMIE: Yes. I would say.

GIANA: [whispered] Oh! 

JAMIE: You think you just figured it out?

GIANA: I think.

JAMIE: Did I start in literature?

GIANA: No. Is what I’m in a musical?

JAMIE: Yes. Oh gosh… I don't even know where to go from here. Okay, do I— This is probably a stupid question for a cartoon because the answer is always yes, but do I always wear the same clothes?

GIANA: Yeah. Am I an orphan cat or like a street cat?

JAMIE: No.

GIANA: That was my last question.

JAMIE: Oh really? I must have stopped counting at some point. Okay, so I get one more question—

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: —and it is: am I a parent?

GIANA: No.

JAMIE: Okay. You should guess first, 'cause I think you have an answer.

GIANA: Am I Oliver?

JAMIE: Nooo!

GIANA: Oooh!

JAMIE: No. Um, I don't even have a guess. I started thinking maybe I was Nanny from Muppet Babies…

GIANA: No, I don't even know who that is.

JAMIE: —But she's not a main character, really. You don't know who Nanny is? From [starts to sing the TV show theme song] “Muppet Babies will make your dreams come true. Mu—” I won't sing anymore, that was terrible.

[Giana laughs]

JAMIE (cont’d): She's an adult who you only know, like, up to the knees.

GIANA: [big laugh] Okay.

JAMIE: And it's not Disney, but I'm human so I'm not from, like, An American Tail which is after 1980, anyway, and this is before 1980, but it's not Disney so it's not Snow White or Cinderella or any of the classic princesses. I— I'm honestly— this is gonna go on for another 20 minutes which is not fair so you should just tell me and then I'll tell you.

GIANA: Okay. You are Betty Boop.

JAMIE: Ooh! Yeah that's a good one, that's a good one. I think she does have a job, I think she's a singer. [small laugh]

GIANA: And I also may have misled you 'cause I think she came from a comic, which is literature I guess?

JAMIE: I would say so, but that wouldn't have necessarily—

GIANA: Helped you.

JAMIE: —opened it for me either, no. And you were Simba.

GIANA: Simba.

JAMIE: Who is technically a cat.

GIANA: Yes! Simba! Ooh, good game. Good game!

JAMIE: Oh, that was a definite success failure.

GIANA: Absolutely.

JAMIE: Yeah! I might actually need a break from all this excitement. I need to fill my water glass, so I think we should hear a word from our sponsor: Broadly Entertaining weddings.

[gentle ukulele fades up in the background]

GIANA: Love is love is love, and it's also a beautiful motivation for marriage. From true elopements to big parties with all your friends and family on the dance floor, Broadly Entertaining is here for you. From New York to Texas to the destination of your dreams.

JAMIE: With a team of ordained ministers, event planners and coordinators, musicians and DJs, we are ready, willing and able to support your wedding. From traditional to unconventional, heartwarming to hilarious, or short and sweet to a multi-day festivity, it is our honor to bring your vision to life.

GIANA: Broadly Entertaining is now booking weddings in and around the New York State area for 2023 and beyond, while our Texas team still has some dates available through 2022.

JAMIE: LGBTQ+ couples should ask about our SCOTUS Special. A portion of your ceremony officiation fees will be donated to the queer-focused organization of your choosing.

GIANA: Find Broadly Entertaining pages on The Knot and WeddingWire to read our five-star reviews! Email broadlyentertaining@gmail.com to start the conversation today.

JAMIE: Broadly Entertaining weddings. Because love is universal, but your love is unique.

[ukulele fades out]

GIANA: Now it is time to celebrate women in our ongoing segment: BE A Feminist! [segment title echoes, with a short maraca shake on the tail end] 

GIANA (cont’d): I am going to kick it off this month with a little sports for you. Surprised? 

JAMIE: What?!

GIANA: Oh I know, I know. I don't always talk about sports, but I just happened to come across this NPR article and I thought there were some really great things that I could pull from here to just share with you really quickly. First things first, a surprise to no one, but in 2020 annual earnings for women in the U.S. were just 82.3% of what men earned. But in the WNBA in particular this— the gap is even wider, it's kind of crazy. The average NBA base salary this season is about $5.4 million compared to $120,000 for the WNBA. Base salary, which is insane. So that means that the NBA players make 44 times what the average WNBA player makes and there's a couple of things that— I mean I'm sure that any dude listening to this is probably gonna be like, well they play fewer games and— Which is true. The WNBA plays 36 games versus 82 games in the NBA, so that makes sense. And there's a lot of stuff, like the NBA has been able to be funded to make themselves a little more of a global company, like there's just so much more opportunity that the NBA was given to make more revenue and to have more games and to do all of this stuff that the WNBA just wasn't given the same opportunities. 

In fact, they have been penalized for treating their players too well. In particular Joe Tsai, who is the New York Liberty team owner. He also owns the Brooklyn Nets. But he took his players for an R&R trip type of thing in Napa for Labor Day weekend and they were— His players were quoted in saying, like, what a lovely, how great it made them feel and it was lovely; and this is not a out of the ordinary thing for the NBA players to do. He also chartered private flights for them to go to games which also sounds very fancy but it's not really fancy when you are almost seven feet tall and it's difficult to fit in planes. In fact one player was saying that she has to pay out of pocket for her first class ticket, to upgrade her ticket because the dub— they just said that they— the, I think it's the L.A. Sparks said that they can't afford to. But it's like, it's not just first class to be fancy. It's first class 'cause they literally can't fit in coach. Like, I am 6-foot-8 and I cannot fit in coach. 

So, Joe Tsai took them on this weekend and chartered them private flights—again, nothing out of the ordinary—but the WNBA decided to give him a bunch of shit for it, and in fact, they said that they were in violation of the collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players, and that because of it, they— for the infraction, the Liberty was threatened with losing draft picks and even termination of the franchise. Eventually they were just fined $500,000 but as we learned, that's almost five women’s salaries on the WNBA. 

JAMIE: Oy.

GIANA: So the WNBA fined the team for treating them too well. So, luckily other sports, women’s sports like the women’s U.S. soccer team have sort of trailblazed on a few things. I don't know if you guys remember this from a ways back but their practice facilities have been upgraded, they sued the NCAA— Oh sorry, that wasn’t soccer.

[both laugh]

GIANA (cont’d): See? Sports. This is why I don’t talk sports. [laughter] But in the NCAA you may remember that their practice—their practice gyms? their practice places?—were far less equipped than the men's teams and so that sparked a lot of good things happening out there. The U.S. soccer agreed to pay twenty-two million dollars in back pay to members of the U.S. women's national soccer team as part of their settlement for suing them, so, you know, things are moving in the right direction, but I thought I'd share that article with you.

JAMIE: Mm. Nice. Yeah. Love to see a wage gap closing, love to hear about back pay, but god damn a half-million-dollar fine for, like, going on a team building outing.

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: It’s crazy. 

GIANA: Yeah.

JAMIE: I have a BE A Feminist this month that is definitely not about sports, and I think it's just gonna be a little lighter and more fun in general, of things we have talked about in the past, so… 

I watched a documentary yesterday called Naughty Books, and it followed three authors—Kristen Proby, C.J. Roberts, and Kelly Maine—who are, I think at least two of those are pen names, but they're authors who, in the wake of the success of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey started self-publishing their own steamy fantasy romance novels and the market kind of opened up. A lot of people started buying these books after Fifty Shades, so it follows these women on their journey leaving their, you know, 40-hour-a-week whatever their previous traditional jobs were, showing how they were able to buy a house and be the breadwinner for their family based on their literary success, but then how the market itself became flooded with lots of people self-publishing romance novels and how it became hard to stay on top and keep that success going. It's hard in creative pursuits, period, to keep your fan base with you and grow it on top of that.

But it was just, it was a really fun documentary, very interesting. There were some interviews with publishers and literary agents, people who read the books, people who attend conventions (because there's always a convention for things). There were a couple of bookstore owners of this store called The Ripped Bodice, which is in Culver City just outside of Los Angeles and they were super fun interviewees, and there were some segments of the documentary that were animated takes on passages from some of these main character author’s books?

GIANA: Uh-huh. Awesome.

JAMIE: And one of them— Yeah, they were all narrated by different people. One of the sections was narrated by comedian and actor Aisha Tyler, whom you might know as the voice of Lana on the cartoon Archer, which is a cartoon made for adults.

[they laugh at the callback]

JAMIE (cont’d): And yeah, it was just, it was a lot of fun. It was, I think, less than half an hour. It's called Naughty Books. I watched it on Hulu; I'm not sure if it is available anywhere else. But very cool story about women standing on their own two feet and giving romance the due that it deserves in the literary world, because like a lot of things that are associated with women, people put the romance genre down and say that it is somehow less than other kinds of writing and books and stories, but it is the highest selling by a large amount. I don't have the numbers but if you watch the movie there are charts! It is the highest selling, most financially successful genre and yet people still try to find a way to poke holes in its legitimacy, so it was just really nice to see this movie celebrating that and to learn a little bit about these women that I didn't know previously.

GIANA: Thanks for sharing. 

JAMIE: Yeah.

GIANA: Listener friends, we hope you feel better than when this episode started. It's been a rough stretch for a lot of us, and we appreciate you stopping by and having a good time with us.

JAMIE: Yes, absolutely. [ukulele theme starts to play in the background] Check the show notes for links, a transcript of this episode, or more information on Broadly Entertaining events and offerings mentioned in today's show.

GIANA: The Broadly Entertaining Podcast is written and produced by GianaDeGeiso and Jamie Rosler of Broadly Entertaining.

JAMIE: Giana writes and performs all the theme music and segue songs and is also in charge of sound mixing and podcast audio editing.

GIANA: Jamie takes care of the transcript and the episode’s video version on YouTube.

JAMIE: If you like what we do, please rate, review and follow us in a podcast feed. Share us with a friend, and Venmo a tip to broadly [dash] entertaining, or click the support button at anchor [dot] FM [slash] Broadly Entertaining.

GIANA: You could always find out more at Broadly Entertaining [dot] com and follow us on Instagram [at] Broadly Entertaining. Thanks for joining us, Broads, and we'll talk to you again soon. Bye! [music fades out]

[outro jingle - Giana harmonizes with herself, a cappella: A Broadly Entertaining Podcast]