Diane O'Debra at Sister Katrin's Confessional / Photo by Gerry Visco
Being a Catholic meant I could sin with abandon and then be completely absolved by confessing. Nice. Katrin Hier’s onto something with her “Sister Katrin´s Confessional,” a monthly comedy variety show featuring confessions by various out-of-work comics. “I’m their sexy, awkward, strange nun who offers stupid but funny advice,” she said to me. Comics tend to be sinners, so they should have lots to ‘fess up to. She promised to pick on me in the audience and shame me by getting me to admit to my numerous sins. When I ventured my way into the small downstairs room of Comix called Ochi’s Lounge, Hier was standing by the bar, as all good nuns do, guzzling a cocktail. A good-looking wench, she was wearing some sort of dark, loose wimple and an absurdly huge cross around her neck. Unlike most holy sisters, however, she had on sheer black stockings with high-heeled black patent leather spiked shoes. Although the small room was packed, it wasn’t really a confessional and the listeners weren’t priests, just a regular audience, most of them laughing.
This was fine, but in reality the show is more straight-up comedy. I wanted more nuns, some rosary beads and a few more Hail Marys.
“Hey, make yourself at home, act like you’re in your living room,” Sean Donnelly, a burly blonde comic barked at me from the stage as I took a seat in the front, interrupting the show. His Hitler joke broke the ice. Diane O’Debra came up next, fresh from a vacation in Ireland. A confession: “I was worried I’d get in a plane crash and they’d see my period pants,” she quipped, referring to the stained lingerie women get that time of the month.
The word “bukake” always gets a laugh. Al Alvarez defined it as originally meaning “to splash water,” in Japanese. Now it’s all about splashing cum on a woman’s face. “I was annoyed when my grandmother wrote ‘Good morning, sweetie,’ every day on my Facebook page. Until she stopped and I found out she died,” he said. Victor Varnado was billed as the headliner.
A black albino,Varnado started slowly but his sizzle turned to a burn. He moved from racism to Stephen Hawking’s smashing success with women despite his paralysis and sex with a grizzly bear. This was all more intimate than the usual comedy lounge and the comedians were funny.
But there weren’t many confessions. “Sorry we didn’t pick on you, but you were a bit late,” Hier told me. What’s up with the adlib? When our hostess took the mic at the end, she urged everyone to take a communion wafer from a pile of sad-looking cookies on the table. They didn’t look like that in my church.
