Vanessa 5000, the creation of seasoned LA clown Courtney Pauroso, is giving us a demo of her many features at a tech expo. She spins slowly and mechanically before parading around the stage with jerky, inhuman movements. When she finally speaks in her stilted robot voice, there’s a shadow of what’s to come: “I am here to destroy humanity. Just kidding. I am a sex robot. Ha. Ha.”
Vanessa is trying to emulate a human woman, and does so at first by emulating standup tropes. She gets to know the audience, makes digs at the imagined wives of men looking to buy a Vanessa for themselves, and implores us to make more noise – first by whooping, then with porn-inflected moaning and groaning.
