Part THREE!!

For the newest, visit Part ONE! For in-between, visit Part TWO!

This is the Pile of Questions that are mandated to be those which are what I consider..well, typical. Okay. FINALLY you get the details. Happy now??

The usual stuff:

What's your full name?
CatheB, aka Cathe Jones, yeah, Catherine ALPHA Jones

How many jobs have you had?
Previous Employment: Former phone sex operator, Porky Pig at Magic Mountain, Security Guard, college professor, animator, film store room clerk, nurses assistant, author, radio host, day care instructor. (Yeah, I know.) Horse back riding instructor, (english), camp counselor, comedian, musician, actor, (recovered), office manager, art geek.

Weren't you an artist? What did you go to school to study?
Jazz Vox at SFSU, Compgeek stuff at Sac State, MFA from Calarts in animation, film and video, BFA in Interrelated media from Massart. (Stay in school and owe the big bucks, just like your old auntie cb.) Second City, Groundlings, various stand up "workshops", self taught geeking. I've also studied 9 languages... thanks to that all important 6 years of Latin in junior and senior high. Thanks to a serendipitous meeting with a personal hero, the art work seems to be pouring out of me again.

Who are your biggest comedy influencs? Music influences?
Biggest comedic influences: Phyllis Diller, Bill Cosby, Moms Mabely, Mae West, Mina Kolb, Roscoe Arbuckle, George Carlin, Carol Burnett, Ernie Kovacs, my dad. Kerouac was a great comic.

Biggest musical influences: Arlo Guthrie, Black Flag, Queen, Elton John, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Motown..the early years...., BB King, Kate Bush, Native American music, (not the flutes, I don't like the flutes), Bessie Smith, Janis, Blue Oyster Cult, Neil Young with and without Crosby Stills and Nash, James Taylor, African Drum Music, Krupa. (and about a million other indie and different bands.) I'm also a big fan of Rochmonanov, Tchaikovsky, Shoenberg, Cage, and Copeland.

What is the scoop on you being disabled now?
I'm disabled, but not unabled. I have a genetic connective tissue disorder, and it's caused so much problems for me that now I'm having to retrain my body how not to snap...one guy said I'm like "Mr. Glass in Unbreakable, but nicer". It's made it very hard to do the stand-up stuff, but I'm still able to write and do music. It's amazing how differently people treat me now that I'm using a cane.... we're a weird mob of folks, this human race.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Alive.

Why don't you do television?
I don't audition. I like radio alot because I can be who I am. I have turned down alot of the television offers that came my way because I was worried about being typecast. Also, unless you are doing your own writing, you're kind of stuck with what you are thrown. I'm best at improv-ing. Also, television puts you in the "you gotta be skinny" world of the cruelty of the double standard. I think women should be allowed to look like women. (silly me!)

But wouldn't you be more famous?
Okay, here's the honest truth about comedy. We don't all do it to be famous. Can you remember the names of all the famous folks who did Vaudeville? Neither can I, and they were wonderful and pretty damn famous in their day. The big picture is, fame is a temporary thing. My ego isn't big enough to make it a permanent goal. Maybe that doesn't make sense. I don't know, the point is I love to perform. The folks who know who I am really support me. Do I want people to know who I am, YES. I adore it when I get recognized, it means I made an impression. BUT I adore it when I get recognized as a former professor as much as I do when I meet someone who has just seen a show.

What are your regrets?
Truth or dare time, hmm. People who say they have no regrets are liars. I regret every time I hurt someone's feelings. I regret not being able to have a better understanding of my birth mother. Having a regret doesn't mean I'd change anything, though. It just means I have learned something about myself. I regret when I don't follow my instincts. Usually I'm kicking myself afterwards.

Is it true you're leaving comedy?
Sort of. Over the last few years my performance have gone down from over 200 shows a year to about a dozen or so. I started in the business at the age of 17, so we're talking over twenty years. (SHH, I'm not middle aged I'm not I'm not I'm not.) I've really worked to focus on my music ventures. I'm recording now, and as you can see from the lyrics on the website, I'm not hurting for material. I've studied vocal techniques, and I find that I'm far more comfortable on stage singing than I ever have been doing comedy. In fact, I'm more honest doing music than anything else, and I really want that to be my main form of creative release.

Update 2007- Retirement premature. hmmmm Seems there are too many things going on in the comedy community for me to say no to at the moment, and I think that there's no such thing as retirement. (Comed-o-Therapy.com!)

Do you have stagefright?
Oh god no. I do have Post-stage-itis. After I go up I spend too much time asking folks "did I suck?", "was that funny?", "did they laugh?". In music, I just feel like HEY, THIS is cool.

How can I be a comedian?
Rule one, don't try to be funny, try to be the best story teller you can be. That means, be you. Also, screw up. Screw up alot. If you can't survive messing up, you cannot survive being a comedian. Train yourself to believe that every time you get onstage you can etchasketch away all of the bad feelings you had the previous time, if there were any. Watch comedians you like. Go to the clubs, see how they act before and after a gig, not just on stage. You can learn a lot from a comedian by seeing how he or she approaches just being in the club. Don't be afraid to talk to comics. Real people won't blow you off, only the egomaniacs will. Finally, write write write and perform perform perform. You can't judge what will work or not from one audience reaction, or from one performance. Stuff I say in Orlando many not translate well in Scotland. Oh, wait, one more "finally", don't do it for anyone but you..... if your friends are telling you not to, that means they aren't your friends.

How do I get into radio?
If you do it like me? Accidentally. I was an intern at a station, (hint, internship), and one of the engineers asked me to talk into a mike he just got so he could set levels for a deejay. Next thing you know, the producer asked me if I'd do a commercial spot. NEXT thing you know, I'm the traffic reporter. I didn't do radio for years after that, when out of the blue, I got a call from a student asking me to help co-host a woman's show. It kept getting weirder from there. Now you can hear me on all sorts of things, and I don't even know where they all heard of me since I have never done the right thing by sending out tapes or anything.

Why don't you update the website more often?
I don't know. Because I'm working on other things and answering emails?

If you were single, would you go out with me?
You'd be suprised by whom I have dated, and more suprised at how I've met whom I've dated. Let's just leave it at that. I am single, I'm just not available. [NOTE, MARRIED APRIL 16th, 2005]

Do you have brothers and sisters in the business?
My sister Colette is an awesome actor. She also has a perfect figure. Dammit. My brother is funnier than I am, but won't do standup... he'd be the next Jim Carrey if he did. I'm the oldest. He's eleven years younger, and my sister and I are three years apart. All of us write, and my brother hopes to do sports writing now that he's done with school. But he does these great video comedy bits and he's like Buster Keaton funny.

Are your parents in the business?
No, my dad is an electrician, plus he runs an adult education school, and he's a closet standup; my birth mother and my step-father --I'm not sure what they do, but she's very creative. My foster mom, who recently passed away, was a retired Shakespeare Professor, and she's the one who put into my head that I can do this stuff. She's also the one who got me writing, and put me into art school at the age of 9.

last question

What's your real hair color?
Right now, I have about 11 colors going on, and two of those are looking a bit grey to me. My hair used to be maroon, as you can see above, (I LOVED that color, can't find it anywhere.), and blonde for lots of years, as you can see in the pictures on the words pages. I have dishwater blond hair, and that's okay for me.

So, there are the FAQ's for 2003. Other ones, here. Newer stuff? They're here.