For those of you not lucky enough to catch Paula Poundstone last year at Humphreys by the Bay, you’re getting a second chance Friday, Sept. 30.
Last years show was a crowd-pleasing bonanza and this year promises to be even better.
Poundstone, who was born in Alabama and then raised in Massachusetts, has a way with her audience and with a witty turn of phrase that sneaks up on you. Casual and unassuming for the most part then she hits you with a line that sends you into gales of laughter.
She’s a pro at taking something ordinary and making it incredibly funny. It makes one think, what makes her laugh, what sends her into the kind of laughter that hurts from laughing so hard?
“I think I probably never laughed harder than seeing someone come out of the bathroom with a piece of toilet paper stuck to their foot,” Poundstone shared. “Which goes to show I have a very lowbrow sense of humor.”
Particularly when a woman just goes in to check her make up and she comes out with a piece of toilet paper stuck, then I am particularly amused. I don’t know why that strikes me as so funny. I remember one time I was leaving the theater of the movie Reds … I don’t think it was toilet paper I think it was a napkin stuck on the bottom of their foot and I laughed myself silly over it.”
One time during the taping of the radio show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Poundstone recalls something else that made her laugh uncontrollably.
“On YouTube, there is a clip of me, on stage with Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” Poundstone said. “Peter Sagler was having some pronunciation problems that night and there’s something about it that struck me as funny and I could not stop laughing, they had to delay the show for a while; there’s nothing like a good laugh!”
There is definitely nothing like a good laugh, and it seems that that radio show and Poundstone are a perfect fit.
“Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is an absolute blast,” Poundstone said. “I’m the luckiest performer in the world; it fits really well with what I do, in that for the panel, of which I am one it is unscripted, so that works great for me. I mean we basically sit in a chair, think of different questions about the week’s news, say it and laugh. That’s a pretty good job!”
Getting to work on radio for many years Poundstone now has a huge appreciation for shows like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and other things like it that folks can listen to while driving or going on a trip.
“I like things that have a basis of information,” Poundstone said. “I’m surprised that people don’t do more, although there is some radio theater. Someone was telling me the other day about a station that reads from a book every day. I think it’s brilliant, it’s just brilliant. Audio books are a wonderful way to take in literature and are great for driving.”
As for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, it’s now performed live before an audience, unlike when they first started.
“When I started there 15 years ago,” Poundstone confided, “We weren’t even in the room together. Everyone was in a studio closest to their home. Maybe they always planned to find a home somewhere, but I know that some radio station, perhaps the one in Boulder, Colorado, invited them to come perform on stage. Once they had done that they had tasted the elixir of life and there was no going back so they found for themselves a home in the basement of a bank in Chicago and about once a month they travel someplace else.”
When Poundstone isn’t touring, or doing live radio, she is at home with her kids, her many cats and sometimes with a tripod, or hand held video camera taping cooking episodes for YouTube as Rhonda Puckett. Rhonda is a hilarious Southern woman who wears a puffy sleeved gingham dress and teaches folks how to cook, well sort of. But just who is Rhonda?
“It is uh … it’s my mother,” Poundstone revealed. “My relatives all talk like that. It’s a little bit my aunt Stormy, but it’s mostly my mother. It’s sort of my mother unleashed a bit; my mother would never wear that dress. My daughter Allie occasionally helps me film stuff, but generally speaking I do it by myself just either holding in my hand or using a tripod. I wish Rhonda had more exposure. I’m not a master at the Internet, I’ve never known how to get her more exposure, but I do believe she’d be popular if she were out there more. Maybe the Food Channel someday will.”
Poundstone has always had a love for junk food. It started when she was in San Francisco doing stand up and hosting open mics. Most of her fans know her favorite junk food by far is Pop Tarts.
“My favorite flavor is brown sugar cinnamon frosted,” Poundstone said. “Until about a year ago I ate them every day. It was fast, that was part of the reason, I can carry them. Well, eventually audience members gave me these plastic containers that are made to carry Pop Tarts, so they wouldn’t get crushed in my carry on bag as much, although even when they did used to get crushed I still ate them.”
The Pop Tart phenomenon started in San Francisco when she would emcee an open mic night. She would go on stage after each comic’s five minute set. Poundstone didn’t have enough material to cover the six-hour evening so she’d walk on stage with her tarts and read the box to the audience.
“The thing about Pop Tarts,” Poundstone explained, “You not only get the delicious ingredients but also the instructions on the toasting. It became a thing in San Francisco. I would explain they came in a box of three pouches and at that time they were not re-sealable pouches and I would explain that I would eat two tarts. I would have had only one tart but you couldn’t reseal [the pouch] so I had to have two and then I would eat two more for the same reason and now there was just two Pop Tarts hanging out in a box, it didn’t seem right, they’d sort of just flop around there so I’d eat the last two just to tidy up. I’d come to the show and they would bring them. Then I did an HBO special that got taped in San Francisco. It made perfect sense to San Francisco audiences that somebody would hand me a box of Pop Tarts, it wasn’t planned. So I’d do my Pop Tart thing. I used to buy them on a regular basis, but because that HBO special got aired a lot around the country, there was a point where I didn’t actually have to buy them; people just gave them to me. Now that I’m older and have a certain layer of stubborn fat, it just won’t go away, I’ve kind of backed off my junk food obsession; not because I want to, but it’s only going to get uglier from here.
“I’m really traditional with things like my tarts. I lived in a time where they didn’t even have frosting on them; and the good news about that is those little holes, the butter would pool up in there and now, although I do still butter them when I have the toasted frosted ones, it is a more difficult relationship between the tart and the melted butter.”
It’s more than clear that Poundstone has enough material to keep audiences laughing for years to come.
To see her live, for one night only, you can catch her at Humphrey’s by the Bay Friday, Sept. 30. For tickets call 800-745-3000 or visit humphreysconcerts.com
