Yes, that was indeed me in my other incarnation on Korean-American comedienne Margaret Cho’s new reality-sitcom show “The Cho Show” on VH1. And in response to the question: yes, the ventriloquism lesson I gave her was most assuredly for real with NO script, no instructions about what to say or do — and Cho was as much fun in person as she appears to be on the TV screen.

The episode airs again early this Sunday morning (I have not seen it at this writing or even have a copy of it but I have a VH1 “extra” video embedded at the bottom of this post that shows a bit of it) at 12:30 a.m.

The whole thing is an interesting story due to my own personal story, Cho’s journey and the experience.

The premise of the episode is that she has a ventriloquist come to her house to teach her, her mother and her comedy sidekick the ancient art of ventriloquism, so she can then try to use it in a live performance during a pageant.

When an entertainment agency agent called me about it this spring, I was hesitant and pretty much said no. It was NOT a matter of the low pay. When I left a full time journalism job in 1990 I wanted to go into entertainment AND do lots paid freelancing or paid writing jobs. Now, 18 years later, I was still trying to get the entertainment portion completely setup and had yet to do the serious paid writing (except for two major research writing projects for two nonprofit agencies). I’d be unbelievably busy by the summer, when I would do 8 fairs in Wyoming, Montana and Iowa in a 7 week period.

But when I got the call, it was at the height of America’s Spring 2008 bad economy when many people, including me, found phone calls dropping off. But money was not the issue. I told the agent that if this was something making fun of me as an entertainer or ventriloquism itself I would really prefer to pass on it because I did not feel my life wouldn’t be complete if declined a chance to be on a TV show that was closer to “Borat” than to a genuine TV credit I could use or an experience that wouldn’t be humiliating.

I was assured that this was absolutely for REAL — that Cho truly wanted a lesson and for her reality-sitcom show. Someone on the show had seen my website and apparently the visuals and blurbs looked like what they wanted. I would not wear make up. No dressing up. No costume. No actual performance. A real in-house lesson. I’d show up, give her the lesson, and leave.

And so it was. I showed up at her house where I was introduced to her, her mother (who she jokes about in her act) and to her 3 foot 10 inch sidekick Selene Luna. Staff said that they would tape a 25-minute lesson and use a few minutes at most. But the three of them had so much fun that after about 40 minutes the director had to tell them over the monitor that he knew they were having fun but they were behind schedule and “so it’s time to say goodbye to Joe…”

Yes…it was for real. I brought several soft puppets with me, but the crew liked the “classic look” of wooden star-dummy John Raven and a broken down blond haired dummy who needs a new body who I use to teach kids. And that’s what you see on the show. There were no instructions to me except that Cho has her own style and try to go with the flow. Which I did. Although I do mostly family style humor, if she tried to use her new skills with more “adult” words, I showed her the proper letter substitution for them.

When it was over and I got ready to leave, several crew members said how great it looked because the three of them truly were having a ball learning how to be ventriloquists. And it had been enjoyable experience — I kept thinking “And I was paid for THIS?” — since Cho, her on-camera associates and crew were like a real family.

My previous TV credit — a hidden camera prank on NBC’s SPY TV where my dummy came “alive” after I left the room and asked a four year old to help him run away from me — was far more stressful since it involved performance art and trying to elicit a response from kids (they taped kids for nearly 5 hours for that one until they got the “perfect” non-crying kid who believed the dummy was really his friend and was really alive). The Cho Show was a matter of giving a lesson in a room in a big house with some very funny and very nice people.

As this review in the LA Times notes, Cho has received awards and suffered her own share of stress:

She’s been given awards by NOW, the ACLU, GLAAD and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. And her helpers — “assistant” Selene Luna, makeup guy John Stapleton, hair guy John Blaine and wardrobe guy Charlie Altuna — are also her friends, and they seem to be there happily, because they love her and not, as is often the case in reality TV, fearfully, because they need her.

Although Cho’s career and personal life took a downturn in the mid-1990s, after a dispiriting foray into network sitcomedy(1994_TV_series) left her with kidney failure — she starved herself to get thin for the pilot — and an identity crisis (was she too Asian, or not Asian enough?), Cho bounced back at decade’s end with the one-woman show “I’m the One That I Want.” It’s been tours, concert films and kudos ever since.

USA Today adds:

The actress and comedian stars in VHI’s The Cho Show, her first series since 1994’s short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl, an experience from which the outspoken San Francisco native still appears to be recovering.

Told she was too heavy, Cho lost 30 pounds, which led to serious kidney problems. Told she wasn’t acting Asian enough, Cho shifted tone, only to be told she was acting too Asian. The show’s problems, along with her drug and alcohol addiction, provides comedic fodder for Cho and Cho.

Cho, 39, says her new network’s execs exhibited little corporate meddling. “VH1 has been incredible,” she says, adding she was averse to another series unless she had creative control and it had the frank, edgy quality that marks her stage performances.

Edginess also has driven several of VH1’s recent hits, from Hogan Knows Best to Rock of Love. “It just felt like a fun, fresh choice as fans of Margaret will get to see the real characters and the real life that fuel her comedy,” says programming exec Jeff Olde.

The semi-scripted seven-episode show mirrors some of the shtick comedian Kathy Griffin displays on Bravo’s My Life on the D-List.

But Cho says her series also has the irreverent flavor of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. “It’s not a reality show. It’s like a sitcom starring real people.”

The LA Times again:

She further remade herself in the Hollywood underground where performance art, comedy, bodyworks and the new burlesque all bump up against one another — the witty Luna, a 3-foot, 10-inch Tijuana-born burlesque dancer and comedian, comes from that scene — and if the not-thin, extravagantly tattooed Cho has body issues now, she faces them head on. We see her tonight half-naked, clad mainly in body paint and rhinestones. (The show is rated TV-14.)

Still, comedy subsists on pain, and the show, whose tenor is largely happy and light, goes for fuel to still-painful memories of darker times.

“I totally forget,” she says, tearing up. “Like, I’m so, like, fabulous now, I’m so glamorous now. But I really didn’t feel like that when I was a kid at all — it was really hard.”

So in answer to the typical question: yes what you see on it is the way she really is like.

What got me is when I was doing the lesson I could spot that look of fascination in her eyes, as she, Luna and her mother had almost childlike fascination while trying to make a puppet “talk” without moving their lips. Sure, it was PG14. But they were kids again.

This isn’t always the case with celebrities. A famous TV comedy actor who I will not name here years ago went on a book tour. I was hired to walk around the bookstore with a few characters. The staff and those working with him could not stand this guy. He was an arrogant, bloated-with-self-importance TV star who treated everyone with disdain. A bookstore staffer asked him to get a picture of him with her and with one of my dummies. He was angry even hearing about the idea and said no way. His image on TV was nicer than the arrogant millionaire full of himself as he signed his book for the lowly public.

But Cho?

I’m rooting for her and her show.

I hope she finds a whole new audience. I’m hoping she films more than her 7 episodes and it does another season. After meeting her, I’ll be looking for any books or DVDs she puts out.

I’m hoping she’s a hit. And, no, my little appearance is unlikely to get me any commercials, or ventriloquism jobs. But it was an honor to meet someone so nice in a business that I so adore.

I’m rooting for and hopeful for her.

Because sometimes nice people do finish first.

Here’s an embed from VHI in which she and her cast members talk about their ventriloquism experience (and it shows a little of me). WARNING. Some adult language:

RELATED WEBSITES AND STORIES:
Margaret Cho Official Site
Margaret Cho Bio
Margaret Cho Quotations
Margaret Cho’s Blog

UPDATE: Here is the ACTUAL SEGMENT in which I appeared on “The Cho Show” exactly as it aired. Some adult material:

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

themoderatevoice.com/