Living in New York in the pre-Giuliani mid-90s was a mixed bag. On the one hand, the city still had its unique, gritty charm: walking to my office on 42nd Street, I passed crackheads and abandoned theaters, whose marquees had been colonized by Jenny Holzer, and my home turf was kept safe by convivial Dominicans with a strong sense of family, plus a couple of well-intentioned smack dealers. On the other hand, I went to NYU, and my department was a total drag. And I lived in the East Village, which is never pretty: it’s slightly out of the way and chock-full of tenements that lack the charm you find in apartments elsewhere in Manhattan. Also, I lived next to a fire station. And my window faced the street. And there were a lot of fires.
The one consistent bright spot in my week was The Mrs. Mouth Show, which ran on New York’s public access station. The show was ingenious and irreverent on a budget of $5.99–basically it consisted of a nut-job from Broomall, Pennsylvania, with Donna Mills-esque eyes painted below his lips and a thrift store wig perched on his chin, doing wacky little things that were recorded on a third-hand video camera. Periodically, Mrs. Mouth, aka Eva Moskowitz, would encourage viewers to run to their windows, throw open the sashes, and scream, “I love Mrs. Mouth” into the night air. Occasionally, people did.
Mrs. Mouth’s best gags were (a) her lengthy phone calls to complete strangers, and (b) the end-of-show snack, the nature of which was often kept secret from her until it had been placed in her mouth by the show’s “producer”. She also put together a soap opera/sitcom kinda thing called The Aunt Gail Show, which was done with a variety of dolls–kinda like Todd Haynes’ Superstar, but Aunt Gail said the word “vagina” a lot more.
For years, I’ve cherished the one and only Mrs. Mouth episode I own. By some strange twist of fate, it’s a Christmas episode, so I’ve had a tendency to drag it out every holiday season. It’s not the best of Mrs. Mouth’s shows, but my friends have all expressed polite amusement.
A couple of days ago, however, the boyfriend informed me that someone recently uploaded a buttload of Mrs. Mouth shows to YouTube. So now I get to inflict them on you, too. My faves so far:
Mrs. Mouth Calls an Italian Person
Yeah, I’m pretty much in heaven.
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