How to Get A Little Piece on Earth
By Ron Donoho / Photo by Kristina Yamamoto
Women think too much. Men are simple, and swayed by sex. These are the essential tenets of the comedy of San Diego-based Monique Marvez.
“Men live in the moment; they’re Zen,” says Marvez, former morning radio co-host of “Monique and the Man” on San Diego’s Jack 100.7 FM, from 2005-09. “Men are too lazy and too horny to live in the past or fear the future.”
The raven-haired Latina stand-up maven is sitting at a table in Downtown’s Zanzibar Café, eating a late breakfast and talking excitedly about upcoming projects.
In February, the United States premier of a stage show based on John Gray’s bestselling self- help book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, will test in venues around the country.
Gray gave Marvez the thumbs up to write the U.S. version of this one-man show, which has played to a million people in European audiences. World Media Partners (responsible for the Blue Man Group’s “Megastar Tour”) is co-producing the show with Emery Entertainment.
“Men/Women” will also tour, bringing to mind mega-hit “Defending The Caveman,” another one-man play about men and women trying to relate to each other.
Miami-born Marvez has long used the male/ female equation as the basis for her stand-up comedy. She’s performed in “Snoop Dogg’s Bad Girls of Comedy” on Showtime, and her own one-hour comedy special is slated to air on that cable network in the first quarter of 2013.
Marvez is a likeable comedian, even when her onstage routine is direct and unsparing.
“Men are penis-impaired,” she says. “Men want their women in a good mood; they want them quiet; and they want you to be willing to lick them.”
She speaks bluntly to the ladies: “Women, if you are in a relationship, and it’s not going
well, it’s your fault. Men are simple, and women are crazy. Women think constantly. And if you’re thinking all the time, eventually it’s going to go to a bad place.”
Marvez says a woman’s thoughts-to-speech ratio is 15:1. That means, every time a woman talks, she had 15 thoughts to choose from expressing. Slow down, she advises.
Men, she says, have a .5:1 ratio. The math in that equation means, when men finally do speak, only about half the words make it out.
Marvez has had plenty of experience studying the man/woman dynamic - though she’s happily in a relationship now, she’s been divorced three times.
“Better to be divorced than to be plotting someone’s death in your sleep,” she says.
A Peek Inside Monique
Revealing a lesson behind the madness
Monique Marvez bases much of her comedy on men and women trying to communicate. She aims to entertain, but is there a moral behind her jokes?
“I throw myself under the bus, so people can see they’re not the only one who’s made a dumbass mistake,” she says. “This stuff happens to everybody.”
Her universal tips for a happy, healthy relationship:
“Love hard. Your heart is a muscle. Use it. Even if you’re loving the wrong person, consider it cardio for your spirit.”
“Forgive harder. This trips everybody up, but just get over it. It’s your ego that can’t get over little slights. If you get hurt because he didn’t remember your birthday, just turn on the news and listen to the horror that takes place in the world. Keep your life in perspective.
“Get as happy as you can as fast as you can. Realize it’s not somebody else’s job to make you happy. It’s your job to make yourself happy.”