"I'm a 12-year-old gay boy at heart" comedian Kathy Griffin confessed during her performance at the Dodge Theatre Saturday. The statement summed up the sassy petite redhead in a nutshell. And that's what makes her so appealing. Like most kids, Griffin says what's on her mind without any editing.
During her nearly 90-minute stand-up act, Griffin ping-ponged her way through a variety of pop culture topics, from Andre Agassi's meth confession to balloon boy to MTV's wildly popular Jersey Shore to Oprah to her "close friend" Levi Johnston. Dressed head to toe in black, the firecracker didn't hold back about anything.
"We have so much to talk about, Phoenix," she told the crowd before firing into jokes about Twitter (check out twitter.com/kathygriffin for a laugh). She amusingly referred to tweeting as "twatting." She also poked fun at CNN's banning her from any future New Year's Eve co-hosting gigs with Anderson Cooper after dropping the f-bomb on the special last month. Clearly, she knew what she was doing because Griffin's actions are usually premeditated.
Typical to most of her stand-up performances, Griffin made a few cracks about the city she was performing in. She called Sherrif Joe Arpaio a "weirdo" and reminisced about performing at a Goodyear prison while filming an episode of her Bravo reality show My Life on the D-List.
She talked about the Cards' getting blown earlier that afternoon and joked about a sex tape she made with Cardinal studs Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart. "I don't even know those guys," she laughed. "Didn't one of them bang Jessica Simpson?" She said that the joke was for "my seven straights" and warned the few straight guys in the crowded audience that she didn't have a lot of material for them. She wasn't kidding. Like most of her performances, Griffin's crowd comprised gays, groups of women, and a few couples and her act was designed for the US Weekly-reading crowd.
Griffin was at her best when she poked fun at herself ("I'm fucking hungry all the time," she confessed of her dieting secret) and talked about her mother, who has become a celebrity in her own right due to the success of Griffin's Bravo TV show. Griffin, whose eyes shined with pride whenever she mentioned her box-of-wine-lovin' mother Maggie, shared that her 89-year-old mom has been approached to write a book and is basically the star of her reality show. "Bravo wants her to be in every episode," she said.
Stories about a dinner party with a wacked-out Sharon Stone ("she's bat-shit crazy!") in attendance and running into a makeup-free, casual-clad Renee Zellweger (she allegedly partakes in the nose candy, according to Griffin) at a Vegas Liza Minnelli performance were some of Griffin's highlights from the night. The best part of the latter story was when Griffin said that she sent group after group of her gays to sit on Zellweger's lap and pose for photos after noticing that the actress was going unnoticed at Minnelli's performance. Zellweger was a good sport, but shot Griffin the evil eye, she said.
Although Griffin's show was all over the place and she never got into the Tiger Woods scandal fully, after mentioning that she wanted to dish about Woods, it was still highly entertaining. Griffin makes you feel like she's talking to you one-on-one when sharing her celebrity encounters while giving you the impression that you're in on a secret. And throughout the celebrity chatter, she naturally made time for some shameless self-promotion and pimped her comedy special She'll Cut a Bitch as well as her book, Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin. I'm looking forward to seeing what Griffin has up her sleeve on the next season of her Bravo show this year. F-bombs and all, Griffin takes the comedy cake.
