Week 50: Tangoing with Jo Anne Worley
“tangoing with Jo Anne Worley”
Collage, cut New Yorker Magazine paper, 9" x 12"
First off—WEEK FIFTY!!! Secondly—JO ANNE WORLEY!!!
If you know, you know. If you don’t, it means that you are too young to remember Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. I might actually be too young to remember. I would have been 5 or 6 when Laugh-In went off the air.
But that groovy show is imprinted on my brain—the costumes, the set, the silly one-liners, and that cast. This show may have been my earliest training in funny.
Those women! Lily Tomlin. Ruth Buzzi. Goldie Hawn. Jo Anne Worley. There were more, but these were the ones who stayed with me. Just thinking about them makes me smile.
“Strike Zone” by Mark Ulriksen @markulriksenart
The New Yorker, May 1, 2017
In this week’s New Yorker issue, when I saw Jo Anne Worley’s name in a poem by Dan Chiasson, I heard her loud, sing-songy voice, pictured her big hair and mod outfits, and started laughing.
There was no escaping this week’s destiny.
Once I completed the collage, I realized that it is essentially a life-size image of what one might actually see if one were tangoing with Jo Ann Worley. And I laughed.
This week I went to the Tube of You and looked up clips from Laugh-In. Y’all, it has its own channel. You can find playlists of just Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann or Ernestine characters, if you are so inclined.
Yes, the show is dated. Yes, it’s a product of its (even-more-than-now) sexist times. But it was also satirical and subversive, especially when it came to the Vietnam War, which reached its horrific zenith during the five years that Laugh-In was on the air.
I have a certain nostalgia for all the funny TV ladies I learned from during the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Jo Anne Worley may not inspire deep thoughts. But she inspires laughter. And big-and-boldness.
I don’t know if Laugh-In actually helped end the Vietnam War, but it reminds me that humor just might be the fastest way to reach hearts and minds.
INNER CRITIC URSULA: Psst. You probably should insert something funny here.
INNER PERFECTIONIST PRISCILLA: She has a point.
INNER CHEERLEADER JULES: Don’t put her on the spot!
ME: (Pause. Blink. Pause.)
URSULA: For feck’s sake. Just say goodnight, Dick.
ME: Goodnight, Dick!
ME as JO ANNE WORLEY, Halloween 1989
Dress created (when it was actually in fashion) by my sister, Kelli Shadwell at Blue Bottletree Farm
DETAILS – “tangoing with Jo Anne Worley.”
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED CARTOON
