By Mona de Crinis

THE GIRL’S GOT MOXIE
COMEDIAN SHANN CARR COMESBACK TO EARTH WITH A NEW BOOK

“The Flamboyance of the Seas.”
If comedian Shann Carr were a ship, that’s what she’d be named. She tells me this over the phone as she’s shuttling between parties during Dinah Shore weekend festivities. “And I would be christened with—I mean I just keep thinking of a big crystal boob or something,” she says, crackling with static, the faint hint of screaming women in the background. “Kind of a big crystal boob. ‘What would you christen me with?’” she repeats the question. “Oh my god, I suck. So, maybe not christened, but there would definitely be a huge boob on the front of the ship.”
It’s an appropriate inquiry, given that Shann was, from 2000-2007, pretty much the sole lesbian entertainer on more than 20 Atlantis cruises. “That’s right, 2,000 gay men ... and me ... on a boat!” she’s been known to coo. OK, maybe ‘coo’ isn’t the right word.
Shann Carr is an entertainer and producer who, by her own admission on her website, offers “total disrespect to everyone ...  there is no sacred ground with Shann... .” But her heart is in the right place. She just wants to make people laugh. And laugh they do.
Her latest venture in eliciting laughter comes in the form of a coffee table book called, You’re Going to Be Gay: A Laughing Look at the Childhood Photos of My Friends, which features then-and-now photos and humorous childhood stories of more than 50 LGBTers.
 “This book is basically my friends, people I know,” she says, explaining the book’s genesis. “This lady came to a show ...  and she was gay, but she was too homophobic to admit it. So the first time she was ever around gay people, she wound up at my show. She sees that everybody’s laughing, having a really good time ... so anyway she goes home and came out and all that. Fifteen years later I ran into her, she came to my show again, and she brought a picture of herself from childhood. And she said, ‘Why it took me YOUR show to decide to come out, I don’t know. Look at me when I was five!’ And that’s the picture that inspired the book. She’s on a field trip with a bunch of five-year-old girls, and they’re all in crinoline and poofy skirts, bows in their hair, and all this shit. And she’s wearing a white t-shirt and high-top tennis shoes.”
The book shines a light on the early queer lives of such desert locals as Hostess with the Most-est Bella da Ball, PR magnate Tim O’Bayley, Imagine It Media’s Jeff Shotwell, and community advocate Jim Quinlan, who is Shann’s ‘cover boy.’
“There’s only one local woman, and that was Marnie [Hesson, publisher of The L Spot website],” says Shann of the book. “And it’s a picture of Marnie with a girl who’s two years older than she is, and they’re making muscles at each other, to see whose muscles are bigger. The girl’s two years older, and Marnie’s still kicking her ass. So that was really sweet. I like that one. And then the cover is Jim Quinlan. It’s a picture of him in a satin Flamenco outfit with maracas in his hands at a dance recital. I mean, it looks like he’s wearing lipstick—it’s black and white and you can still tell he has on lipstick!”
There’s only one centerfold in the book and that honor goes to Bella da Ball. “We gave him a two-page spread, because there were like six pictures of him, smiling while pulling something out of the oven, wearing a dress and pulling his skirt up so you could see his knees ... there were so many of him,” she explains. “It really speaks to, once a queen always a queen. And on some level, it speaks to genetics. I mean, obviously we don’t have a definitive answer on whether it’s genetic or not, but these pictures are UN-BE-LIEVABLE, and this is not even a broad sample; these are people I know, and they’re so gay!”
The response to the book so far has been very favorable, according to Shann. While she’s only had her own mitts on it for a few weeks, the people who have seen the book have already expressed an interest in being in the sequel. “It’s almost a calling card to do the next one, and the next one,” she says excitedly. “In fact, if I could have my way, I’d like to use this book as a calling card to talk to some famous celebs. And maybe give part of the proceeds to, like, Gay Associated Youth on the next book and do famous gay people in their youth.”
Shann herself, however, claims she doesn’t exactly fit the mold her book celebrates. As a kid, she says she was bratty and fat and funny-looking. “I was a total bore. I did like the Broadmoor Ice Follies, you know ... there was nothing cool about me. And my parents were military, so we moved a lot, and I had to make friends fast. And I figured out that a laugh was kind of the way to do it. If you hit a punch line on the nail, even with strangers, it’s really intimate, and you’re in—with only one line. So humor saved me, for sure.”
Shann’s formula for making people laugh is simple, but not easy. “The trick is the truth,” she says, then after a beat adds, “truth plus pain divided by punch line equals good.” And good she is, if the legacy she leaves on the high seas is any indication. After years of being the Atlantis cruise line’s comedy pin-up girl, Shann is concentrating on keeping her feet on solid ground for a while. She has several projects in the works through her production company, Moxie Studios, including producing TV shows and plans for a media-based gay resort entertainment center, the delicious details to be revealed at a later date.
 But she still plans on doing a cruise every now and again, just to keep her feet wet. “It was a gift—a total gift—Atlantis was for me,” she asserts fondly. One of her favorite Atlantis stories reads like something fresh out of a joke book. “Without getting too much into the whole story, it’s about another cruise ship coming next to us at six o’clock in the morning—with all our lasers going—and they were thinking we were going down, that it was an emergency. Calling the bridge and saying to our captain, ‘There are thousands of people on the deck screaming with their hands in the air. Are you going down?’ And the poor captain was like, ‘Well, yes ... and no. I can’t quite explain what’s going on on this boat.’ That’s Atlantis in a nutshell.
“I’ve really worked 90 percent in the men’s community. It was hard when I first started,” Shann continues. “People were complaining, a little bit, that ‘This is a men’s cruise, how come this woman is here?’ And one by one, I won. It was the men who stuck up for me and saved a place for me there, and loved me and raised my career. It was unbelievable! And now I feel that I’m strong enough to re-enter the lesbian community, she adds with a laugh.
Shann admits that she still has a harder time with girl audiences than the guys. “I think gay men are harder on gay men, maybe on stage. And lesbians are harder on—everybody,” she says, punctuated with a laugh. “For whatever reason—and I can’t explain it—but it’s undeniable, gay men just let themselves go more easily. And laugh, and laugh at themselves, and let me poke fun at them. And lesbians—once you have them in the palm of your hand it’s the best ride you’ll ever have—but it’s hard to win them over. I haven’t had many chances with the lesbian community. I haven’t really had failure, but it’s funny how often I think, for whatever reason, that they might not enjoy me. But then, I’m a gay man! I was raised up and nurtured and created by gay men.”
Taking this analogy a little bit further, I ask Shann what her alter-ego gay boy would be like.
“Oh god, he’d be a total slut ... a total slut,” she says, pausing. “I’d be everything! I’d be a decorator, I’d be … everything. I mean, I try to be as lesbionic as I can, too. But every time I put on jeans and a t-shirt and high tops, people go, ‘You look soooo cute!’
“OK, so I’m sluttier than your average lesbian,” she confesses. “I think [it’s] because I was raised in the leather community, which was where my career started—I was International Miss Leather in ’88, that was a long time ago. Between being raised by the leather community and the gay male community, I already am a gay man. I don’t think I’d be all that different. I’d go to parties and cook and sleep with women I don’t intend to marry, and all of that.”
Perhaps Shann’s ‘gay boy-ness’ is best exemplified by the description of a recent pick-up line in action.
“There was someone I wanted to kiss a little while ago. I was sitting in my car, and I was getting ready to pull out, and she was leaning up against my car. I had the top down, and I said, ‘I’m gonna be here for about one more minute, so you could either stare at me for that minute, or you can make out with me for that minute. What are ya gonna do with your time?’ I didn’t pick up the chick, but we made out for a minute. I think I bullied her… .
“I usually don’t make out with local people—ever,” Shann avows in conclusion. “A friend of mine who I have to credit, says the three most romantic words are ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’”
Just don’t you leave, Shann. The desert would be as dull as the dirt it’s built on without you.

If You Go — Shann Carr book signings for You’re Going to Be Gay: A Laughing Look at the Childhood Photos of My Friends, Friday, April 11, from 6 - 8 pm. Mixie’s Boy Bar, 120 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. On Sunday, April 13, from 3 - 5 pm, Wang’s in the Desert, 424 S. Indian Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. Copies of the book will be available for purchase. For more information, visit shanncarr.com or call 760.202.0404.