Stand-up gal
Paula Poundstone can deliver:
“Hours and hours of stand-up material honed over nearly three decades as a comedian.
“Chapter after chapter of humor in her book, “There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say.”
“A large store of wit and erudition, with which she regales National Public Radio listeners on “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me.”
Yet on her best nights, she says, her stand-up act consists mostly of walking around the audience and saying, “Where are you from and what do you do for a living?
“I feel more like an orchestra leader than anything else,” said Poundstone, by phone from her home in Santa Monica, Calif.
She said she “talks to this person over there, and that guy over there” and occasionally has to mute the brass section – i.e., the occasional heckler.
That’s because a “really good stand-up show is 90 percent relationship with the audience and 10 percent writing,” says Poundstone, who comes to the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox on Friday night.
She compares it to being at a party when “everybody gets laughing really hard at something.” The next day, when they try to tell someone about it, it just doesn’t translate.
“It was the energy in the room at that moment; the magic of a bunch of people being together,” said Poundstone. “It doesn’t replicate.”
So Poundstone will spend plenty of time creating rapport with the Fox audience – but that doesn’t mean she won’t be tackling some of her typical topics.
“We’ll talk about politics here and there,” she said. “I talk about raising my children. And our animals. Which are really disgusting, by the way.
“I live kind of like an unprofitable farmer. We have 11 cats, a big, stupid, multibreed dog, a bearded dragon lizard and a bunny.”
Poundstone’s show-biz credentials are extensive.
She made her name as a comedian in the late 1980s and was a popular guest on talk shows. She had her own HBO specials and worked as the “official political correspondent” for the “Tonight Show” in 1992. She had her own (brief) ABC-TV show, “The Paula Poundstone Show,” in 1993.
Recently, she is best known for her appearances on public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” a news-quiz show.
Does that mean she has to stay sharp on current events?
“Only if you want to win,” said Poundstone, laughing. “You can really just be a lunkhead and be on the show. I’m really kind of the village idiot on the show. I try to bone up, but it never does me any good.”
She does “Wait Wait” in Chicago once every two or three weeks, but other than that, her main job is doing about eight stand-up dates a month, like this one at the Fox.
“My first priority is raising my kids,” she said, referring to her three adopted children, ages 9, 13 and 17. “Then, my bread and butter is working the road. I don’t even know what comes in third.”
She said this schedule allows her to “make the occasional gymnastics meet and go to drum lessons sometimes, so I can know what my son is supposed to be practicing.”
Poundstone is more devoted than ever to her family after her well-publicized troubles in 2001.
Her adopted children were put into state custody after she was arrested following a drunk-driving incident with her children in the car. Poundstone later pleaded no contest to felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor count of inflicting injury on a child.
She successfully went through alcohol rehab and regained custody of the children in 2002. She has remained clean ever since.
Poundstone was recently named the national spokesperson for Friends of Libraries USA, and after her show she will sign copies of her book in the Fox lobby. Friends of the Library Spokane will receive the proceeds.