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Review of Suzanne Westenhoefer's CD "Guaranteed Fresh"
Sarah Warn, May 2003

One of the most refreshing things about lesbian comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer is that she is one of the few comics who assumes a gay and lesbian audience--and not just when she's performing at the Dinah Shore weekend. Whether she's on HBO, a gay cruise, or Letterman, Westenhoefer pokes fun at the things many lesbian and bisexual women find funny without slowing down to pander to clueless heterosexuals.

In her third comedy CD, "Guaranteed Fresh," Westenhoefer makes fun of lesbian-specific topics like Provincetown's Women's Week ("9 days long, because lesbians can't count"), lesbian hair ("she hasn't changed her hairstyle in 25 years"), and how straight women are always complaining about men ("Have you ever partied with straight women? It's unbelievable....They hate men! I'm the big lesbian and I find myself about two hours in going 'I'm sure he didn't mean it'").

She also talks about more general subjects, too, like airplane travel and Martha Stewart's current legal troubles, but even these usually end up related to lesbianism somehow.
Her new CD is broken up into fourteen sections:

1. Airline Trauma
2. Waking Up Forty
3. In Prison With Martha
4. Driving With My Girlfriend
5. Long-term Relationships
6. Gifts On The Road
7. Living The American Dream
8. Lesbian's Hair
9. Ultra-Low Riders
10. Denial Of My Judaism
11. "Friends" In Couples
12. Lesbians & Their Animals
13. The Needy Cat
14. Renovating Woes

My least favorite sections on the CD are "Lesbians and Their Animals" and "The Needy Cat." There are two kinds of people in the world: animal people, and non-animal people. Animal people love to go on and on with stories about their pets, and most non-animal people get bored with that very quickly. They're both valid life-style choices, but I'm definitely in the latter camp; if you're an animal person, though, you'll probably love these sections.

The rest of the sections more than make up for these, however, especially her rants on the nuances of long-term relationships and her puzzlement at constantly being cast as a heterosexual Jew in movies (she's neither).

Just like her first two CD's, "Nothing in My Closet But My Clothes" and "I'm No Cindy Brady," Suzanne Westenhoefer's new comedy album "Guaranteed Fresh" delivers exactly what it promises: fresh laughs from one of the best lesbian comedians in stand-up today.