Have you ever had a caricature drawn of you? No? Come to San Francisco sometime. Some charming artist on the Fisherman’s Wharf will talk you out of 20 bucks and 20 minutes and proceed to draw your picture. When the artist turns his drawing around for you to see, you smile. Obviously, it’s not your exact reflection looking back at you. It IS you, however, with all of your distinct features exaggerated and cartoonish. Your real life full lips are drawn out to look shiny, glossy, bubbly, and Jessica Rabbit-esque. Your hipster beard has been rendered to take up half of the sheet of paper and there is a little tweety bird living in there. Your caricature is you, hyperbolized.
Pedestrian Polyamory, too, is a caricature. Gavin and I take tiny parts of ourselves and blow them up. We are, in many ways, partially fiction. There are things we say on the show, things we think will be funny or entertaining in some way, which we would never say in real life. This can be a little confusing. So much truth and reality is mixed in with the play that it’s hard to tell which is which.
Gavin and I have similar goals for the show, but our roles are very different. We want Pedestrian Polyamory to be one part ‘reality podcasting’ (for lack of a better term), one part education, and one part entertainment. My focus in the show’s production is to get the tips and lessons communicated effectively and honestly while maintaining a lightheartedness that reflects my assessment of the absurdity and preciousness of life. Gavin’s focus in the show is to bring entertainment, to give the underdogs of the world something to relate to, and to build a community.
Occasionally the entertainment portion of our show is better in the creator’s head than it is in execution. We’ve had a few episodes where we’ve let the jokes get in the way of the message. (A great many episodes, it seems.) We’re adjusting. We’re figuring out the balance, still. The cartoonish proportions of our show will be given nips and tucks.
We don’t know what the show will look like next week, or next year. We will be surprised along with you guys. However, it’s important that you guys know that we will continue being honest about the details of what is going on over here… however we may dress it up or down. Shit has gotten weird in the Katz house, but it’s still a house full of love and compassion. We’ll try to minimize making shit too weird on the show.
Thanks for hanging in there, guys.
<3
Shira B.
2 Comments
Thanks for letting us know, Shira. I listened to the newest episode last night and really didn’t know what to think of Gavin’s antics, because as you probably know, sarcasm and humor are the best masks for anger and hurting. But I was thinking that I probably read too much into it. I hope everything is alright because I love the show and I love all three of you guys.
Shira & Gavin:
You be who you want to be, say what you want to say, and act how you want to act. If people are upset or offended, then they can tune out. The rest of us are listening because “blown up charecters” or not, we are entertained by you, interested in you, invested in finding out what happens next; and not for nothing, but some of us are actually hearing things we NEED to hear. Whether you are saying them from your life experience, or because it sounded like a good line in your head in the moment you were recording, really doesnt matter to me when in the end *I* am hearing things that touch me, make me look at my non-monogamy with new eyes, open me to a different way of looking at a perceived “problem”, or show me a part of me I need to look at.
Whoever you are, we must like it, or we wouldnt be here. Just sayin’ 😉