Maggie Faris releases her sophomore album today on Audible. In A Dingus Among Us, she takes you on a cute tour of lesbian stereotypes about subarus, uhauling, crying, cuddling, and tea, that will produce some giggles, before taking you to less frequently traveled territory and bigger laughs.
Faris, with her adorable Minnesota accent, offers a very middle America, punny, goofball humor. She won the Minnesota Laugh Off, was voted “Best Comedian,” and served as the Public Address Announcer for the St. Paul Saints baseball team. She recently won The Advocate Magazine’s national search for the Next Funniest Queer Comedian.
If you, like me, were unaware that Audible has stand-up sets, this is a nice slice of lesbian representation to file beside one-hour specials by Jen Kirkman, W. Kamau Bell and Iliza Schlesinger and other well-known names. Audible also has a feature called Channels, which makes available weekly-updated content in the Audible app and for Amazon Prime subscribers. This was news to me, even though I’ve been subscribing to Audible for five years because I really needed Rachel Maddow to read Drift to me in 2012.
Maggie Faris is a goober and a sweetie, and she jokes about poop a fair bit, a detail which I offer because I know some people really like poop jokes. She’s not a gross-out comic, though. Her jokes touch frequently on sexuality, but never in a shocking way or an extremely NSFW way.
She’s a sweater vest and driving cap butch. Not a sports butch, in case you assumed. She says her butch powers are putting together IKEA furniture. (I think a lot of femmes would call that a femme power but I digress.)
I take just one issue with A Dingus Among Us: a bit about scissoring. “You guys know what scissoring is?” she says. She gears up for an explanation for the hetero and uninitiated, saying, “The boys made it up for their porno. It’s not real.” I mean I OBJECT. Let the record show, it is real and it is magic. Lesbians are always joking about how not real scissoring is and I’m just like, keep laughing. This merely enhances the element of surprise when I bust out my signature scissoring maneuvers.
A Dingus Among Us, was recorded at 2nd Story Comedy in St. Peter, MN, a club run by Michael Callahan. The album is a collection of Maggie’s new and old favorites, coupled with the signature brand of silliness that she has become known by and helped her to achieve so many accolades. The album was released today on Audible, and is also available on iTunes.
