Photos by Sue Pfannmuller/Special to The Star
She calls herself a D-list celebrity, but Kathy Griffin has shown up in lots of A-list places. And before she took the stage at Starlight Theatre on Friday, she gave her crowd of about 5,500 a slide-show montage of her appearances and accomplishments: from bit roles in "Seinfeld," "Pulp Fiction" and "Days of Our Lives" to her own Emmy-winning reality show, "My Life on the D-List."
Once that was done, she got down to her usual business: making fun of the celebrity world she lives in. First, though, she acknowledged a few things:
"Where are my gays at?" she asked her most loyal constituency before delivering her most topical punchline. "Look at you all, waiting for that Obama text. On the VP watch."
She'd spend the next 90 minutes horse-whipping A-list celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Oprah and "Idol" winner David Cook: "He's a rocker. That's their idea of a rocker. Some dude from Missouri with bangs."
She warned the crowd that her material would get offensive -- "I'm prepared for walkouts --" but her warning, it turned out, was her most objectionable joke (She made a wisecrack about amputees walking out of her show at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.)
Her style is a mix of manic, high-speed train-of-thought improv and well-rehearsed one-liners. Her funniest material came in the first half of her set, especially when she riffed on her mother, an Irish Catholic from Chicago who swears like an iron worker and drinks a box of wine a day. Both of her parents drank a lot, she said, and her mom is 88 and her dad lived to be 90. "So I say, 'Bottoms up!"
After that, though, her monologue focused almost exclusively on celebrities, which meant you had to be a fan of "TMZ," the "E!" channel or other media to get a lot of her jokes. Not all of it worked. Her show-closing bit on Barbara Walters went on a little too long, but some of it was hilarious (like her bits on Paula Abdul and CNN's Nancy Grace).
Some of her better lines: She called Whitney Houston "a crackpipe with a voice," called the Jonas Brothers "the gay Hanson" and ridiculed Timberlake for being a "wigger." "Nothing makes me laugh more," she said, "than a white guy trying to act black." She called Miley Cyrus "a whore" and called Billy Ray out for that Vanity Fair photo. "If I took a photo like that with my dad, both of us would be vomiting in the photo."
She said teen-mother Jamie Lynn was supposed to be the normal one in the Spears family "like Marilyn in 'The Munsters.' " She blamed Rob Lowe's wife for letting him hire hot, young nannies: "Mine would look like those mothers in the LDS cult in Texas -- the extreme Mormons. Are they not allowed to buy tweezers? ... You know they watch TV. Where else would they see 'Little House' reruns?"
Most of it was at least amusing, but towards the end, I started to feel a little celebrity-insider fatigue. She ended with bits about Tom Cruise and his daughter Suri (and her "office" under the stairs), Oprah and then Barbara Walters and "The View." It looked like nearly the entire crowd stuck around for the entire monologue, which can be interpreted two ways: Her fans didn't want to miss a word; and nothing she said was as offensive as she warned it might be.
|Timothy Finn, The Star
I enjoyed the show but you're right, you had to have your Entertainment Weekly dictionary with you to understand some of the background. She's such a great storyteller that even if you're clueless it's enjoyable.
Interesting enough, my wife and I laughed harder on the way home to Jay Mohr's fill in guest host spot on the Jim Rome podcast. The best 3 hours on radio I've heard in a long, long, time.
Posted by: wadkc | August 23, 2008 at 12:42 PM
She sux
Posted by: sjsj | August 23, 2008 at 04:01 PM
Her crowd is mostly gay guys. 'nough said!
Posted by: sjsj | August 23, 2008 at 04:02 PM
Wrong twice.
Posted by: Tim Finn | August 23, 2008 at 05:02 PM
If I remember correctly, her crowd had 1500 more then Chris Rock did.
Posted by: Steve | August 24, 2008 at 05:24 PM
Well, I'm a guy, but I'm not gay, and I still think she's hilarious...so there you go.
Posted by: Darin | August 25, 2008 at 01:01 AM
I'm not at all familiar with this gal other than I see her mug on tv every now and again. That being said re: David Cook...
"That's their idea of a rocker. Some dude from Missouri with bangs."
Amen.
Posted by: bob | August 25, 2008 at 08:57 AM
Kathy did a fantastic show at Starlight Theater on August 22 2008. There were more people at Kathy Griffin then at Earth Wind and Fire on Sept 20 2008. Loved the show and would LOVE for her to come back to Starlight Theater in 2009
Posted by: A Colton | January 12, 2009 at 10:16 AM