No boundaries, just bold, at Beauty Bar

COURTESY PHOTO

In their comedy sketch, Tara Jepsen, left, and Beth Lisick bring alive the comedy duo Carole and Mitzi, gay couple Don and Phil and a pair of divorcees, Cricket and Jinx.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Carole Murphy and Mitzi Fitzsimmons have atrociously outdated hair and a fashion sense that recalls ’70s beauty salon couture — or places them directly in the discount aisle at the Yarn Barn.

They wear large glasses, have bad ideas and work as janitors in a gay bath house. They spend most of their time at home watching TV game shows, leaving only to do stand-up comedy, even if it means taking a two-hour bus ride for open mic night.

If you happened to catch their video short, “Diving For Pearls,” you’ve likely seen them naked in a public bath in a successful attempt to impregnate Mitzi via well-timed and cleverly executed butterfly and breast strokes.

Peel off the costumes and laconic personas and Carole and Mitzi are San Francisco Bay area writers and performers Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen.

Lisick, author of the best-selling memoir “Everybody into the Pool,” and Jepsen, a mainstay in San Francisco’s queer performance scene, will bring Carole and Mitzi to the Beauty Bar on Friday in “Getting in on the Ground Floor and Staying There.”

The full-length sketch comedy and variety show, which debuted recently at San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture, is a tribute to Lisick and Jepsen’s 10-year collaboration — they met as members of the Sister Spit spoken word tour. The show features Carole and Mitzi, along with Lisick and Jepsen’s other duos: Don and Phil, a gay couple living in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, and Cricket and Jinx, suburban divorcees who have decided to take advantage of the city’s open sexual atmosphere.

It’s hard to say what will come out of the mouths of Carole and Mitzi, or what they’ll don for the show. Don and Phil, who make good money, live in a good home, love art, architecture and their Shih Tzus, love to impart their cultural knowledge and are known to politely argue which are best: Hummel or Llardo figurines.

If you’re a little confused, think John Waters meets Amy Sedaris.

“What we do really walks the line of performance art, not rolling-on-the-floor laughter,” Lisick says. “It has a gross, inappropriate, surreal quality.”

Lisick and Jepsen are known for the hilarity of their writing and storytelling.

The quirky characters, however, are a deviation from their usual gigs. Lisick is co-founder and organizer of the Porchlight Storytelling Series and chronicled her early years (she turns 40 Saturday) growing up in Northern California in “Everybody into the Pool” — from her “mind-blowing tan” that became her “calling card” in high school to her litany of odd jobs. Her latest book, “Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone,” was released this year.

Jepsen co-hosts the monthly queer open mic K’vetch and has appeared at Porchlight, RADAR reading series and at Litquake. Her “Swimming With the Dolphins” was published in the anthology “Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache,” and she is working on a novel.

“It just really came out of our love for wigs and being ridiculous,” Lisick says.

Don and Phil, though relatively new, are the poster couple for a project for Live Art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Earlier characters Carole and Mitzi are probably best known through various performances at concerts, festivals and benefits, and their roles in the award-winning short, “Diving For Pearls,” which is not so much funny as it is disturbing and not so much disturbing as it is jaw dropping in its sublime perversity.

Or as writer Dayvid Figler, who will host Friday’s event, says: “It’s sort of a Dada, Po-Mo (post modern), twisted, butternut art film — ‘Porky’s II’ meets ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ ‘Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’ without Bob and Ted ... or really Carol or Alice. I’ve watched it three times; the assault of nudity is astonishing, compelling and perplexing. I keep going back for more.”