MAMA CAT IN PRAISE OF THE ISLAND OF DISCARDED WOMEN
Scenes from the before times: some random evening on the streets of Manhattan.
TLDR: You have GOT to listen to this: https://www.islandofdiscardedwomen.com/
OK, where were we before the VO Atlanta, food poisoning, the Sassenach thing, and the corned beef & cabbage? Aahh, yes, the Invisible Target Demo. Creating the content for the Elder Goddesses, the real live golden girls of our society, acknowledging the potential for human women to still be actual people after the childbearing years.
I knew if I kept looking hard enough, I’d find someone has beaten me to it, because as Goddess is my witness I have never had an original thought in my life. In fact, the secret to my listener success in radio (whatever that was) may have been the fact that I’ve never been the one to create the next big thing, but I usually had my finger inadvertently on the pulse of the zeitgeist. It’s a gift. And a curse. You have no idea how much I identify with Mr. Monk and in what ways.
First of all, whoever came up with the title, “Island of Discarded Women,” congratulations, here’s to you, that’s brilliant and I openly confess I wish I’d written it. It’s Right up there with the “Last F*ckable Day” video. I hear you. We hear each other. I’m going to go right out on a limb and say that I think most likely, the host and creator of “Island of Discarded Women,” Sue Scott herself, probably wrote that line.
Secondly, if you don’t know who Sue Scott is, she is one of the most successful people in radio, which incidentally put her in the movies, too. She’s someone I have admired for a long time, like since I was married to my first husband and living in Denver, listening to her work on that long-running radio show on public radio. If I had a wonderful career, she’s still having a legendary one. I can’t touch her level of success on my best day, but I do get what it’s like to have been “that lady on the radio,” as one of the bits in her show’s opening sequence says.
It was awesome, in many ways. Terrifying in others. More on that later, whether in today’s post or a future one.
Anyway, here, listen to their pilot episode. It lays the whole thing out. Seriously, her discussion of what she’s good at, what she’s done for years as her profession and identity, is like she’s reading my mind. No, go listen, it makes so much sense right around :08:00 - :08:12 in. She’s literally discussing, in a beautifully produced pilot episode dated May 6, 2019, the things and ideas that I began toying around with about a year and a half later with lovely Renee in Atlanta. When they were recording this pilot episode, I was about three months away from the rehearsal injury in New York that would shut down my musical comedy work.
Which just tells me that my odd talent for inadvertently having my fingers on the pulse of the zeitgeist, of being just far enough behind the curve to sound involved, is just as sharp, just as peculiar, and just as useful as ever. It tells me that the Invisible Target Demo is, in fact, capable of becoming visible to itself.
We are an interesting animal, O My Sisters Over A Certain Age.
I don’t have a blueprint for aging, a template, a role model. The women in my family weren’t exactly sharers. Certain of them leaned towards being walking talking Tennessee Williams tragic figures, but none of them were into passing on Elder Goddess wisdom or anything like that there. And (knocks wood) so far, perhaps attributable to much dancing and fairly healthy eating, I show signs of good health. So I’m in unexplored territory here. Growing older without a family roadmap or living elders to relate to, I do a lot of looking around for good examples – for me, for you, for us all who have washed up upon Sue’s Island.
This is a marvelous show, way over my paygrade, highly produced, well written, with guests and features and MUSICIANS AND EVERYTHING!!! They incorporate humor, pathos, issues, entertainment. It isn’t the show I want to do, but it’s a show I’m glad I found. It isn’t a show I’ll imitate, because (a) that’s called plagiarism and (b) let’s face it, these ladies sit at the cool kids table. I have never been there.
What it is, is a show I would not have you go one more minute without. Please enjoy. Turns out somebody is creating content for ladies of a certain age, and here is some which is very good. You shouldn’t have to go looking for it. Here it is.
They’re probably on Facebook. I’m still not going back to Facebook.
But if you find them on Facebook you should reach out and support them. You can tell them MamaCat sent you.
Meow, darlings.
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This is cool from a marketing standpoint. If we’re going virtual, you still get to get your conference badge. I’m an OG in the audio (radio) game, but I’m still a student of the game. Always be learning. #radiolife #audiolife #lifeisgood (at Planet Earth) https://www.instagram.com/p/CN7nc4wlZMx/?igshid=kj31vrnrq7iz
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