Cat Alvarado: Sex and Sensibility

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of ill repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley. And Maureen Holloway.

Maureen Holloway  0:07  
Where do you have I told you I have taken up if

Wendy Mesley  0:10  
if, like if in vitro fertilization Wow, yeah, it's

Maureen Holloway  0:18  
a hobby. I'm doing it in the back room. Intermittent fasting, all the cool kids are doing it right.

Wendy Mesley  0:25  
Oh, so So how's that going? Intermittent fasting.

Maureen Holloway  0:29  
I've been doing it for about six weeks I can't believe I've been told you didn't want to talk about it and I eased into it and it's that 16 hour you don't eat and then you eat have all your food in one eight hour window. So

Wendy Mesley  0:40  
you eat non stop, like for eight hours?

Maureen Holloway  0:44  
No, actually, because you know, it's fine, actually. So I do that between two and 10pm. And I'm doing it to really you lose weight if you have to regulate your blood sugar, which is why I'm doing it and it reminds me of something that I heard Kat Alvarado say, Cut Alvarado. Well, she's our guest this week. But what did she say? That's why I bring this up because she she said that our emotions are often just digestive issues. And I thought this is so true. You know, like when you're we all know about being hangry or having low blood sugar or and sometimes he feels that you're just filled with rage and it's actually gas. So I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Wendy Mesley  1:21  
She's kind of Alvarado she she's not a dietician, she's a comedian and and she's so much more. So she does have a few views about well, maybe not about being hangry but she's an American, Nicaraguan. She considers herself a Latina misfits, whatever that is, we can talk about it. She has a huge background in theater, but she became a financial analyst. Yeah, as all of us have and then we got bored. But there are good ones anyway, she gave all that up and fell in love with stand up comedy. Cat

Maureen Holloway  1:52  
was also married on a personal note briefly. I don't think she still is at the age of 19 and she turned that she's shaking her head no no longer but she turned that into an award winning one woman show called best wife ever have a listen actually

Cat Alvarado  2:06  
got married and I was 19 Anyone else here bad judgment. Just me that's fine. Now if you know any teenagers who want to get married, pull them aside. Look them in the eye and like you're not in love. That is a sugar high. That's what's happened to me to my mid 20s and bigger up and half of my emotions are just digestive issues. Like the other day I was on a date, my palms were sweating and my stomach was in a knot and I was like, Oh my gosh, this could be this could be the one that I took a shin

Wendy Mesley  2:51  
that's Rados debut album. It's called Off White. Thank goodness that's not called beige. I hate beige. But anyway, cat. She's also off beige somehow that doesn't work off whites. Yeah. So she's an activist, and it's because she has strong roots in Nicaragua. And recently well, not that recently but presidents and Daniel Ortega he violent crackdown on peaceful protesters. He closed the Red Cross other civic groups that threatened his regime there was there was a massive revolution and she became very active on that

Maureen Holloway  3:22  
front. Well, she started a podcast called villains of history where she invites other comedians on to discuss bad guys of history to entertain and educate people on evildoers while making us laugh and so, so much talk

Wendy Mesley  3:36  
about so it was perfect for us so much to talk about are you are you ready to talk to cat I'm

Maureen Holloway  3:41  
just gonna sit here with my big cup of steam you know at two o'clock cannot come soon enough. Cat Alvarado. Hello, and welcome to Bill repute.

Cat Alvarado  3:49  
Hello. Happy to be here. You guys are hilarious. Oh my goodness. Such a witty banter.

Maureen Holloway  3:55  
Well, yes, we work on that.

Wendy Mesley  3:59  
So you may not fast but I want to know what what what are the links between emotions? And I mean, are you or maybe you're just a comedian. Maybe it's just funny. What are the links between dietary whatever's and issues and, and, and comedy? Well,

Cat Alvarado  4:14  
as you said, I'm not a dietitian or a scientist, but I have noticed in my own life, and I can only really speak to my experiences that when I get low blood sugar, it it totally dips my mood. So I'll be crying about something and just see everything in the negative and then my mom will give me tacos. And I'll forget what I was even crying without.

Maureen Holloway  4:33  
I would two tacos are a cure all for so many things. So your mother's from Nicaragua. So your father is American born I guess is American

Cat Alvarado  4:42  
born in Michigan of all places. And I think I get that whole mood and blood sugar thing. I mean, maybe that's all humans, but my dad had it especially bad.

Maureen Holloway  4:52  
So So tell us about being a Latina misfit when you're neither if why nor the other, is that what you mean or you're both?

Cat Alvarado  5:02  
Both of those things, I think it's really challenging being half and half. Because it's such a fragmented community. You know, even if I was full Latina, there's a chance I'd still be Latina misfit because I'm not Mexican, or I'm not Puerto Rican. Depending on where you are in the world. If you were in the northeast, you'd be not being Puerto Rican, then you'd be a misfit in Los Angeles. If you're not Mexican, then you're kind of a misfit. If you don't look the way the person you're talking to, or interacting with things a Latina should look, then they act like you're not one of them, like you haven't shared those experiences. In some communities, it's been more welcoming, like the comedy community has been fantastic. But I think that's full of fantastic people. And we mostly identify with being comedians. But when I was growing up, and in school, it was very much like, oh, well, you're light skinned. So you're probably rich, you probably haven't experienced anything we've experienced, which I wasn't rich growing up, it was kind of just regular middle class suburban, which, you know, a shrinking population, especially in the US. And so I didn't fit in with that crowd. And something they say about Los Angeles is that it's such a diverse city. But there's such thing almost as being too diverse. So there are so many subgroups in Los Angeles, that the new can't find a place you you fit into and belong, because everybody's fragmented in all these little pieces. And so that's what I mean, by being a Latina misfit, you know, I didn't fit in with the other Latinos. But then I also didn't fit in with the white kids, because I do have experiences in my family growing up in a Spanish speaking household. And the way I related to my white family and didn't quite feel welcome. I can't really talk about that to my white friends, they won't get it. So there's kind of no place to fit in. Until of course, I found stand up comedy. And that really was where I found my, my family outside.

Wendy Mesley  7:01  
Why do you love it so much? What is this about stand up already? What is this about making people laugh? What is it about stand up that you love so much?

Cat Alvarado  7:09  
It's the connection. I think there's something very powerful about storytelling, and particularly humor, that taps into something universal and all of us. When I was first starting comedy, I had a mentor Paul clay, he used to write for a show called Designing Women is he's a retired writer. And he lived in Santa Barbara, which is where I started stand up, and he was there the first night I ever did it. And he said, I want to teach you how to write my daughter's off in college, and I need to fill my empty nest. So he'd invited me to lunch, and we'd work on jokes. And the big thing he taught me was to always write truth. And in 10 years of comedy, that is the truest comedy advice I've ever received. When I have a joke that's not landing. If I go back and ask myself, Am I telling the truth? Usually the answer is no. And then when I fix it, and I make it more true, it hits because comedy is about connecting and resonating and reflecting back universal experiences. So it makes me feel less lonely. When I tell my story.

Maureen Holloway  8:17  
Can I just say, Wow, I'm so impressed. I didn't I did not know of Paul clay but Designing Women. If you go back and watch and I assure you, it holds up. That's a that was a real groundbreaking series and though you know, for strong women, and but also hilarious like really, really, really well written and I think you know what you're saying probably because it's they spoke the truth. So I think it was way ahead of its time and maybe behind it's time now because there aren't any other shows like that anymore. But anyway, let's talk about instead of fabulous woman let's talk about bad guys. Are the villains of history, all men?

Cat Alvarado  8:54  
Oh, gosh, most we've got a few female cult leaders thrown in there. Definitely. I think one of my first episodes was about a Ugandan cult leader lady who she you know, she convinced everybody she was doing real magic and had actual special powers it and set fire to her church with like, 2000 people in it. Right? I'd say that's the villain of history.

Maureen Holloway  9:17  
Yeah, that said that qualified. Yeah. She belongs.

Cat Alvarado  9:20  
There's gotta be more women. There. I think maybe there's one or two.

Maureen Holloway  9:26  
But no, but it makes sense. I mean, if man if I have, you know dominated culture, both positively they you know, they're the ones in power so that they're more likely to be the bad guys. They're just mattered more throughout history. They got to be in positions where they could be evil. Who's your favorite or your least favorite? Oh, well, you know what I mean? Who's the worst or the best?

Cat Alvarado  9:46  
I think the most impactful one that I've ever done. And the most you impactful episode for me was actually the one on Fidel Castro. So I had a guest Jose SAR doing he's another comedian. And he's actually Cuban and hearing his family's story was really touching it because I think a lot of times especially like in in places like Los Angeles, we're very left leaning. And there are people who sometimes they'll get a little bit lost in that left leaning ness and forget some of the very real historical facts and experiences of our fellow Cuban Americans, or fellow Americans who are Cuban, I should say. And his family. He came here during the Mariela boat lifts, which was long after the revolution. Because sometimes you hear people go, oh, all the Cuban Americans came during the revolution. They're all just a bunch of rich, rich people. False. Many also came later when things went horribly south and Cuba. So his family's experience is that his father was put into the Cuban military didn't want to be. And he was separated from his family and sent to somewhere overseas in Europe. And he was separated from his wife and his young children, and he wanted to be with his family. So he wrote a letter when he came back to Cuba on a on a break from the military and posted it in the town square, saying, you know, I want to be with my family. And it's not okay that you separate me from my family who was thrown in prison for two years, simply for voicing a complaint. Nowadays, we voiced complaints every day, we're on Twitter complaining, we're on threads. I'm everywhere. I mean, if we each had to be held accountable for every complaint we made about the government, we'd all be in prison for life. Well, here

Wendy Mesley  11:30  
on this podcast, we interviewed somebody, you probably wouldn't know her. But you're supposed to have two sides to every story, apparently, except on a podcast, which is really interesting that you can actually just talk to somebody about about their story. So I'm wondering like, Are there jokes about Fidel Castro? Can you tell jokes? Oh, sure. million. Yeah. You got you got some Go ahead. Maureen.

Maureen Holloway  11:53  
Off the top of my head. I can't let somebody do the cigars. And I don't know. But I

Cat Alvarado  11:58  
mean, the main the one that I do on my album is one about how, you know Cuba is so bad under Fidel Castro. The Cubans left their island paradise on a two by Ford to float to Florida, which is the worst state I mean, it's that's

Wendy Mesley  12:10  
true. But they have great cars. Yeah, out of the frying pan and everyone great cars from Cuba. 33. Because

Cat Alvarado  12:18  
they have no new cars. Just had to fix the ones from the revolution.

Maureen Holloway  12:25  
No, but I hear you about Florida. It's funny that you mentioned that you say you're in California, so left leaning and when Canadians who basically are considered socialists compared to Americans, and it's funny, when do you make didn't Margaret Trudeau, the wife of our Prime Minister's father, or the mother of our prime minister? Didn't she have a fling with Fidel Castro?

Wendy Mesley  12:45  
Well, it's rumored so there's lots of pictures of our current prime minister saying Doesn't he look an awful lot like Fidel so he must be the real dad. Anyway, that you can find whatever you want on the internet, obviously. But But Pierre Trudeau who was the father of the guy whose prime minister now was really big on Cuba. Very pro Castro. Yeah. Yeah. and Canada is really different about about Cuba. Like we can go and travel there. It's like going to Florida whereas Americans it's it's like a big deal. So yeah, I don't know whether we have a socialist history, but we and I don't actually know whether Justin's real father is Fidel.

Maureen Holloway  13:24  
You know what, these are things to float out there. You know, What harm could we possibly well

Wendy Mesley  13:27  
look at the pictures Maureen.

Maureen Holloway  13:30  
I also I'm also convinced Ronan Farrow is Frank Sinatra son because they look exactly alike. But anyway, you eyes. Yes. Oh, yeah. But he doesn't look like Woody Allen. Anyway, we're digressing all over the place here, which is actually fun in itself. So cat, so let's talk about getting married at 19. So I as I mentioned in the intro, you are no longer married child. So that didn't last very long. Was it a cultural thing? Or were you just Why did you get married? Because, you know,

Cat Alvarado  13:56  
I was very religious. I got really religious as a teenager, my family was going through a bit of a crisis. And in my mom turned to religion now in Nicaragua, most people are Catholic. That's in a lot of Latin America. That's kind of the default religion and Catholicism wasn't serving her in enough. So she kind of got pulled into a very fundamentalist religion. Well, it was a it's an offshoot of Pentecostal Christianity. It's called the Foursquare church, but it's part of the umbrella of Pentecostalism, which is basically fundamentalism plus magic. They speak in tongues, some wings of it believe that if you hold snakes and they bite you, you're full of the Holy Spirit or some crazy nonsense. So that's what my family got pulled into. My dad did not like it. He was very Catholic, but he would not budge. He's one of those like, dyed in the wool Democrat Catholics. So one time I remember he actually pulled me by the ear out of youth group and was like, I don't want my daughter becoming a conservative. I'll always remember that corner. Marie right there. Yeah, but they want you they really scared the crap out of me when it came to hell and sexuality in a purity culture was very big back then it's still big throughout the US right now and even throughout the world, and it's a very damaging culture because it fills people with fear and shame about regular biological realities that we have as teenagers and throughout our lives, making you feel like any thought you have about anything sexual is, is something to be ashamed of, and fearful of, because it means satan is in your brain. And he's talking to you No, no, you can't have Satan talking to you in your brain, and you better do something about it. And, you know, I was just really a normal teenage girl who want to have sex and I had a boyfriend, and he also wanted to have sex. And we say, well, that must mean we're in love. So, let's get married. That way we can have sex and not go to hell. That's clearly the solution. We ran off and got married. And without regard to anything else, We eloped not thinking about any of the logistics, not thinking about the finances, not thinking about really anything except for not going to hell.

Wendy Mesley  16:13  
But forever. I mean, forever is important. If I'd had to sleep with the first person I slept with, well, let's just say I didn't.

Maureen Holloway  16:20  
That doesn't make sense. You didn't sleep with the first person you slept with?

Wendy Mesley  16:25  
I didn't have to marry the first person that I slept with. I mean, thank goodness, thank goodness, that never happened. God Yeah.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  16:36  
The women of ill repute.

Wendy Mesley  16:38  
But But your mom is she's still conservative to like when you decided to go into stand up what? What happened? Was it? Wait,

Maureen Holloway  16:45  
we wait, what are we wait before I just want to find out, I want to find out how you when you realize that this was a huge mistake. Oh,

Cat Alvarado  16:52  
early on, early on, because he at least had like a little bit of a job when we first got married. So at the grocery store, and once we got married, moved in together, he quit. And he said, Oh, I'm going to work on my music for my band. You've you figure it out. And so I took on three jobs was going to school full time is taking on student loans, just to keep everything together. And I don't know how I stayed in it for two years, because he quit pretty much right away. As soon as we got together,

Maureen Holloway  17:20  
check it out for two years. Yeah, because the Bible said

Cat Alvarado  17:23  
don't get divorced. So it's like, well, I can't do that. I just need to wait for it to get better and never got better. And at one point, I just broke I, my biology saved me because I met somebody who made me tingle from head to toe. And I was like, Oh God, this is what it's really like to feel chemistry with someone and Oh, shit. I did. I did this wrong. I never felt this way for my husband. And I can't possibly live the rest of my life, married to someone who I don't feel this way about. So yeah, at that point, I felt like either. Either I was going to sin and commit adultery or get a divorce. But staying in my situation was not an option. So I left

Maureen Holloway  18:08  
have you resolved your spirituality with your sexuality? I have what's your sex drive? Like? Have you have your comfortable in? You didn't You didn't break yourself while you were breaking up your marriage? No.

Cat Alvarado  18:21  
So I I did what I felt was the right thing for my own integrity, which was get the divorce rather than cheat, which it's such a complex thing. So I don't even judge people who have cheated. And then I went through, like kind of a faith crisis period where I was like, dang it. I prayed all the time. How can you still let me have these emotions that led me to feel this way. And then I happen to just meet the right pastor or the right minister, she was Episcopalian, and they're very progressive. And I'll never forget it. I had a meeting with her. And I said, What does it mean to be a woman? Like how do I be a good woman? According to the Bible, and you know, in the evangelical church, they have like lists like, here's your 10 pointed list, you know, have long hair cook, you know, submit to your husband, and she gave me a stack of books. And she said, Well, here are a lot of academic writing is discussing this topic. There are many ways to look at it and really you can pick however you wish to look at it because it really depends on the context and interpretation. I didn't even read the books I was like, All right, so you're saying I'm safe. I later did go back and read them. But that was wonderful. And then I read the the works of Nadia bolts Weber. She has a fantastic book called Sexual reformation, or it's called shameless. It's about the sexual reformation and also not judging yourself because there are so many different configurations of sexuality and marriage in the Bible that don't fit the here's to a man and a woman and now they're married. They save them like there's a million there's King Solomon had 700 wives. Okay, so you can't judge anyone.

Wendy Mesley  20:00  
Well, it's funny, it's making me think of the the marriage thing again and the digestive issues that Maureen was talking about at the beginning. And you said that if you fall in love at 19, just remember, it's a sugar high. So that's why I have a sugar high a couple of times. And then I got married. I never joined the church. So I'm curious about what happened with the church and your mom and the stand up. Like, can I ask this now, Marie? Yeah,

Maureen Holloway  20:25  
I'm done.

Wendy Mesley  20:28  
Yeah, so what happened?

Cat Alvarado  20:29  
You know, it's funny how conflict in life and families and relationships, it's so often has nothing to do with the thing on the surface. My parents became sort of politically opposite, right. She was evangelical. And she became very conservative and he was still a dyed in the wool Democrat, Catholic. So they eventually divorced right around the time where I divorced, oddly enough. Related probably, when they remarried, get this. My father remarried a conservative Republican and move to Texas. Oh, get out. And my mother remarried. A dyed in the wool Catholic Democrat,

Maureen Holloway  21:10  
but your mother would has a type obviously, because your father was a dyed in the wool. Democrat, but your father was married someone that I would imagine he was vitally opposed to? Yeah,

Cat Alvarado  21:26  
because it was never the politics. And it was never the religion that was really causing the conflict. Because he rarely fight. They both get along so well with their new partners.

Wendy Mesley  21:37  
So do they both come to your shows? Like what what happens now? Like because you've you sort of found yourself in stand up, you can say whatever the hell you want. And stand up. You've been you've been accepted? Do they accept you? Do they? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Cat Alvarado  21:49  
My dad comes to my shows. He thinks I'm the funniest comedian of all time, he goes, I don't know why you don't have 10 Netflix specials by now I'm like, That's very generous, but calm down. In my mom goes to them sometimes, but I don't invite her to the hour long ones, because there's still some jokes that I don't want her to hear.

Maureen Holloway  22:06  
See, that's, that's probably true of any kind. Whether your stand up or whether you're a writer, anything that you're producing, that comes from your experience, your you we OS, where you're going to worry about how that's going to come across to the people that were part of your formative years. And most of the people that we've talked about who have us on the show, and elsewhere to say you got to brazen it out. You just got to be prepared to offend your mother or crush your friends. You know, memories are it's, it's hard, but you've got it in the CEU especially say that if it isn't true, it doesn't work.

Cat Alvarado  22:45  
Exactly. I'm funny story. I went on a first date a few months ago. And I have a joke about body count, you know, like the number of men you've slept with. And it's my favorite joke. It's probably my best joke right now. And he said, Oh, can I come to your show tonight? Okay. And he said, Well, shit, I can't do that show tonight, then I'll have to do other jokes. Because I don't want him to have this BS first impression of my standup. So the other girl on stage, like the other girl on the lineup, absolutely destroyed. And I was like, Well, I can't. I'm competitive. I can't let her be the funniest one on stage. I have to do my funniest joke. So I did it anyway. I did it. Because I was like, You know what? This is who I am. If he's gonna love me, he's gonna love me, even if he hears this joke, because you'll hear it someday. And you know what? It's been three months. And he's practically moved in. It's gone fast. But

Wendy Mesley  23:43  
oh, that's so nice. Is this a taboo though? Like, my husband doesn't want to know. And he doesn't want me to ask him. And I you know, I Yeah, so it's, there are some things that you're never supposed to mention, supposedly, but you did in front of how many people and he's fine. So yeah, maybe I should be braver. But I don't know if it all comes down

Maureen Holloway  24:05  
to that episode of Friends with Monica and which what's his name? The he was? No, no, no, no, no, no. It's uh oh, the

Cat Alvarado  24:15  
mustache guy.

Maureen Holloway  24:16  
Yeah, that guy Tom Selleck. And, yeah, cat knows what I'm talking about. And they did have that conversation. And he was widower, right? I think we're divorced. He only been with his wife. And even though he's like 30 years older than her and then he asked her how many meds she'd been with. You said, Is it over or under 50? yourself? She said over and he freaked out completely. And there's just that, even with I have kids who are in their 20s who are like, you know, I was lived with a guy before that. They don't want to know about it. As far as they're concerned. Dad was the only man which I'm now confirming he wasn't alright with that your brother

Wendy Mesley  24:52  
was under 50 Right? You were you were in your 20s So let's, let's

Maureen Holloway  24:57  
you know what I used to put myself to sleep at night. Not counting the men that I had slept with before I met my husband there was like, shoot, they were all jumping over a fence, though, but I'm kidding. And that's he doesn't seem to cat. I mean, you can always say it's part of an act. It's not 100% True, right?

Cat Alvarado  25:11  
Yeah, well, I don't say the number, but I danced around it. So there's definitely an implication. But the moral of the of the joke in the first place is how hard it is to be a woman existing with all this dick being thrown at us every single day of our life from puberty onward. And then we're supposed to always say no, and never quit. Never cave, if they had as much opportunity as we did, their numbers would be in the hundreds. And, and so even if our number is high ish, they'll like, they'll never know how many we said no to, we could still have a 1% acceptance rate, which is, you know, like Harvard, you could be Harvard level selected, and still have a number that men would be excited about affirmative

Wendy Mesley  25:53  
action for the kind of people that I like, yes.

Maureen Holloway  25:58  
I love that be like Harvard. Only take 1% of the applicants. But

Cat Alvarado  26:04  
even then you should be like Harvard and people will still say you are slotty. There is no right answer. Yet I say in the joke is a gentleman you want to meet your wife after her whole face, because she'll have it one day and you want it before she meets.

Maureen Holloway  26:20  
You've taken a break from from villains of history. Well, there's no shortage of villains. So we know you'll be back when you're ready to do that. You've just put out your album off white. And you're working with clubs, I would imagine. Yep.

Cat Alvarado  26:35  
All over the place. I'm in Houston this week was just in San Antonio. I'll be in Arizona, New Mexico coming up

Maureen Holloway  26:43  
all the hot states. All the hot states. And yeah, you want to stay cool. The world is on fire. Do you have any aspirations to act? Oh, definitely.

Cat Alvarado  26:53  
That's something I've been passionate about since I was a kid. I've been acting since I was eight. So

Maureen Holloway  26:58  
do you go to auditions and stuff? Are you looking to play the best friend or the wacky neighbor or?

Cat Alvarado  27:04  
Oh, absolutely. I'd love a great fun character. You know I love him is Katherine. Oh my gosh, she plays the bad witch in. In Wanda, one division.

Maureen Holloway  27:20  
Oh, Catherine is out as Han Kathryn Hahn.

Cat Alvarado  27:23  
Oh my god. I love Yeah.

Maureen Holloway  27:24  
She's brilliant.

Cat Alvarado  27:26  
Oh my gosh. She's kind of like my acting. My hero that I feel like that would be my zone. Just character stuff. Just like wild wacky characters. Be. That would be my zone. I think of for acting.

Wendy Mesley  27:39  
You've talked about there's a difference between dumb funny and smart. Funny. Like, what's the difference? Because you do like the dick jokes are obviously very popular among guys with or people with dicks. But a lot of people Yeah, well, and there does seem to I don't know, there was a certain period where it seemed that every comedian that I like was was doing like, bum fucking jokes. So you probably don't do those jokes, because you're not two guys. But But But what is the difference between dumb funny and smart? Funny?

Cat Alvarado  28:13  
I think dumb funny is low hanging fruit. It's stuff that everybody can write. And you can write a lot of it because it's just about you know, your bathing suit parts. Go in the bathroom, farting fucking all those things. Apologies. I'm not supposed to say the F word.

Maureen Holloway  28:26  
Oh, no, no, it's fine.

Wendy Mesley  28:29  
No, I think I just said it, I think to guys, so it's okay.

Cat Alvarado  28:32  
It's so easy. And I know so many early comedians, they're usually in their first five years who hasn't very funny stuff. But it's only there. Because it's so easy to write. Smart comedy takes time and expertise. You not only have to learn how joke structure works, but you have to really hone in on the truth of it. The truth is that much more important when it's a smart joke, because now people are thinking about it. Like people go into a different place in their brain when you're doing smarter jokes. And they're thinking, Wait, is this political? I'm falling and whoa, I'm not following it. They have to process it. So there's even an element of the timing that is different. I'm smarter jokes. I have to explain things. I have to dumb them down a little bit for people. But I think ultimately, even though there are a lot more work to write and polish, they take a lot more time. They are more worth while because when then I write an album. It's an album that says something instead of having it be an album, or a special where I'm just doing your word vomit of a bunch of random thoughts about my butt, or someone else's box.

Maureen Holloway  29:46  
Or someone else.

Wendy Mesley  29:49  
Still do butt jokes when required? Absolutely.

Cat Alvarado  29:52  
Sometimes we need to break up the smart or the darker comedy with something a little bit lighter, right? I Play with it. I balanced it out.

Wendy Mesley  30:01  
So now you're doing you've got this, this show off white. So is that what you're what you tour with?

Maureen Holloway  30:07  
No, it's the album The album is off white, isn't it?

Wendy Mesley  30:10  
Yeah. Do you do that one in Santa? Or what do you do in Santa,

Cat Alvarado  30:13  
I'm still doing parts of it. In standup, I'd say probably about half that half new material. I'm working towards wanting to do a half hour special sometime in the next year or so. I would like it to focus more on a more in depth on religion and marriage. And, you know, it's it's hard sometimes, though, with, with how societies change sake and womanhood, but really the experience of how we perform womanhood in the context of marriage and relationships and kind of going from the fundamentalist view of that role to something more progressive, and how the fundamentalist view seemed to promise me happiness. But I'm far happier now, in my current relationship, and even the most recent, more long term relationships I've had with more progressive men who support me in being a passionate, loud, bold woman, rather than trying to make me small,

Wendy Mesley  31:08  
until he finds out how many people you actually slept with. In

Cat Alvarado  31:11  
which case, they'll celebrate it because they'll be like, dang, no wonder you're a tiger in the sack.

Wendy Mesley  31:17  
Or she finds out whatever I don't want to draw any conclusions, but

Cat Alvarado  31:20  
by miles an hour.

Maureen Holloway  31:23  
Cat Alvarado Alright, so the album's called off white so that's how people can hear you. If if you're in the Texas area, you could go and see cat in the next few weeks and then let's keep our fingers crossed for that Netflix special because that would be that would be great for everybody involved you us your fans and enroll like Katherine Hans and some really cool show like one division would be would be the icing on the cake so we wish

Cat Alvarado  31:52  
all that putting it thank you so you're

Maureen Holloway  31:55  
really interesting woman thank you for taking some time talking to us. Thank

Cat Alvarado  31:59  
you for having me on you guys are so funny Thank you cat

Wendy Mesley  32:05  
so interesting most I just the whole thing about starting off one way and trying to reform and or trying to fit in basically with a raised in the church and feeling like she had to be married and and the parents being so strict and and now she's gone completely the other direction and is so happy. That's so nice. Despite

Maureen Holloway  32:22  
my you know, the 1000s of men I've slept.

Wendy Mesley  32:26  
I knew it was I knew I knew it.

Maureen Holloway  32:30  
Yeah, you know why sleep with 1000 people? Why not sleep with one and do it? Well, but anyway, the story I'm thinking of is so I was went to convent school, all throughout elementary and secondary school and then had a few wild ears when John and I moved in together and decided to get married. My mother really wanted us to be married by in the Catholic Church. So we went to see her priest, her parish priest, and we sat down and he interviewed us and then you know, why, why we want to get married. And then he asked John, his address that he asked me my address, and I said it was the same as John's address. And he said, You were fornicators. Get out of my office, you're going to burn in hell. Oh, boy. And oh, no. But I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. He actually said, I want you to live apart and then come back and see me and then we'll talk about whether I'll marry you or not. Right. Needless to say, We got married and the Anglican Church where they are, we're more than happy. But I what Kat was telling me was that I at one point said to John, am I going to burn in hell? Like there's something fundamental about being raised a certain way. It's very even though you intellectually say, these ideas don't make any sense. And they certainly don't apply to me. There's always for anyone who's been through that that niggling doubt that maybe I am, I am sinning and I'm going to end up in hell.

Wendy Mesley  33:50  
Well, I think that's most people, I was raised very differently than most people in the sense that I wasn't baptized. I wasn't raised in any religion. And yet, I know I went to I went to school, and we said the Lord's Prayer and everybody around me, they all believed in God and everybody believed in God. And I wasn't raised that way. But there was always until, I don't know 30 years ago, I was always afraid. Oh, is there a lightning bolt? What if there is a lightning bolt? And can I actually say that and now I just you know, I kind of say whatever I want, which is not always welcome. But but there's no lightning bolts.

Maureen Holloway  34:26  
There's no it's okay. There's no lightning light and if there is we do go to hell. We're going to be in sixth

Wendy Mesley  34:31  
grade. And the 1000s

Maureen Holloway  34:34  
I will be there so will you but probably not Kat Alvarado. She is she's a good person and she's smart and she's funny and all those things and so are you. So are you come on 1000 sheep

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  34:50  
The Women of ill repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley With the help from the team at the sound off media company and producer Jet Belgraver.