Paula Poundstone
Positively Hilarious

By Margaret Michniewicz

“How come,” mused professional funny woman Paula Poundstone on her Facebook page recently, “if I can lose weight from lifting weights, I can't lose weight from hauling around my own fat thighs?”

Poundstone – “Stand-up Comic – Mother – Writer”, as her Web site proclaims her – will bring smiles and belly laughs to Vermont in October when she takes the stage at the Flynn Theater in Burlington. Performing comedy for 30 years now, Poundstone is legendary for her ability to improvise – to the point that some people leave her shows convinced that the exchanges between Poundstone and her audience could only be the result of “plants” in the crowd. But for devotees of the weekly radio quiz show “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” on National Public Radio, it’s clear that Poundstone, who is a regular panelist, has a sharp and intelligent wit. Cracking jokes on the spot in response to this current events quiz, with no advance notice or sneak peeks at the questions, Poundstone is quick on the droll draw.

Insightfully observant of the humor to be found everywhere from the kitchen table to the White House, Poundstone, 49, reveals the hilarity inherent in the human condition. And while no one is safe from her mischievous observations, her style does not rely on aggression or profanity. She is far likelier to bellow with laughter at herself than snicker viciously at someone else. Her candid and self-deprecating sense of humor was perhaps no more evident than in one particular line she incorporated into her act following a widely-publicized incident in 2001 in which she was court-ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and pursue substance abuse treatment. “Kinda blew the hell out of the second ‘A’!”, she quipped.

Her professional accomplishments include winning the American Comedy Award for "Best Female Stand-Up Comic” in 1989 and, in 1992, becoming the first woman to perform at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. A Comedy Central survey ranked Poundstone among the top 100 greatest standup comedians of all time in a Comedy Central survey even as the men’s mag Maxim deemed her seventh worst – Vermont Woman readers will likely decide whose opinion they trust more.

In 2006, Poundstone released her first book, There Is Nothing in this Book That I Meant to Say. Described as an autobiography that is "part memoir, part monologue," the book intertwines historical biographies (ranging from Helen Keller to the Wright Brothers to Martin Luther King, Jr.) with anecdotes from her own life story. In a passage about Joan of Arc and higher powers, Poundstone adds that she heard God speak to her once, as well. “He said, 'You're wearing that?'"

She has collaborated with her own high school math teacher, Faye Nisonoff Ruopp, on three math books for children entitled the “Math with a Laugh Series”, such as Venn Can We Be Friends and You Can’t Keep Slope Down and Other Math-Building Activities.

Poundstone recently became the national spokesperson for Friends of Libraries U.S.A (FOLUSA) – a citizens support group with chapters around the country whose objective is to help raise money for “local libraries children’s summer reading programs, author events, special book collections, equipment, and whatever else they might need.”

On the homefront, Poundstone began foster parenting in the early 1990’s, and has since become an adoptive mom to three children of her own: Toshia, 17; Allison, 14; and Thomas E., 10. She and her family live in Santa Monica, California, where she spoke by phone recently with Vermont Woman. In conversation, her voice was full of animated inflection, though she slipped dryly into a quip without warning. She frequently seemed to strike out on a long tangent in answering questions, leaving us to wonder where she was going with it – but without fail, and without missing a beat, she always tied it up neatly at the end. It is sure to be great fun witnessing how she’ll run with the improv material provided by Vermont audiences!

Vermont Woman: In the spirit of “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”, fill in the blank of this sentence – Vermont is the state that…

Paula Poundstone: We went backpacking in!

VW: When was that?

PP: When I lived in Massachusetts. My high school owned some land in Vermont.

VW: Your high school did?

PP: Yeh, and so we used to stay at a cabin up there and we would hike – I think it was near Grafton… This was back in the old days when they thought it was somehow helpful for the mental health of youth to have a piece of plastic and some rice and be left alone for a few days.

VW: Get out in the woods and away from the computers…

PP: Well this is pre-computer – [more like] get away from the slate! A long time ago.

VW: As you’ve traveled around the country, have you observed different senses of humor; different regions having their own particular funny bone?

PP: I don’t really find that [to be the case]. My manager is always saying, “Well you’re going to blah-blah blah-blah and that’s a red state…” She doesn’t travel with me. So she kind of has these ideas that are a little backward. ‘That’s a red state’ – like that’s going to be particularly challenging for me. Well the truth is, there is a group of people who like to come see me for whatever their reasons are – I can’t quite be sure; but I have wonderful fans. Back when I used to do clubs and there would be an emcee, a middle act and a headliner, guys would kill to work with me – not because being around me is such a stroll in the park but because they wanted to talk to my audiences, who are so much fun! And they exist in every state. In some places in larger groups, and some places in smaller groups but the truth is when you’re in a quote unquote red state you’re so happy to be with one another for that particular evening…

I think that we’re all exposed to the same media and we’re not quite as… unique from state to state as we may like to think that we are. I chuckled when I heard somebody telling about Ted Kennedy, when he went to Iowa to campaign – they said he was concerned that the corn farmers wouldn’t relate to him in the way that the cranberry farmers did. I think he gave all of us far too much credit.

New England – you know, I’m from there and something about the way they wear their muckrucks is different than some other places… I work a lot in Maine and I’m delighted by the audiences there, and New England [in general]… I’ll tell you one thing, I play to more gray hair in New England than I do out here [in California] because people there are more comfortable with themselves, I think, sometimes – or maybe just plain busier and so they just don’t bother with stuff like that. I think more women in New England have better things to do than dye their hair.

VW: We have a local comedian here in Burlington, Martha Tormey, who’s currently doing a show entitled “Don’t Encourage Her.” In that spirit, what would you encourage women who want to do stand-up not to do?

PP: I would encourage women who want to do standup not to make that big a deal about the fact that they are women, because – it’s really a genderless job. Maybe ‘genderless’ isn’t the right way to describe it, but it’s not like it’s the determinant of who is very good at it and who isn’t. And we’re not disabled … Sometimes there’s this approach to it like it’s the Special Olympics or something! Sometimes people will say ‘Oooh, isn’t it hard being a woman comedian?’ Not to the best of my knowledge! And if there are challenges I face – I would really have to do a bizarre human experiment to isolate the variables and determine that those challenges have to do with being a woman. I think the only time that could possibly make a difference would be if we had to tell jokes while bending at a right angle leaning our head on the wall and lifting up a chair – in which case, women would simply be better!

VW: Why bother to do this, though, when such an authority as Christopher Hitchens proclaims [as he did in Vanity Fair, 2006] that ‘women aren’t funny’?

PP: [pause] He’s wrong [answering shortly and airily]. He’s wrong. I think he’s been completely wrong over and over again! Sure, he’s right about all sorts of things, but it just goes to show you, even a brilliant person can be wrong!

VW: And speaking of things that women aren’t good at (ahem), how did it come about that you did the project of math books for kids?

PP: I wrote this series of math books called “Math with a Laugh” – I wrote them with my high school math teacher who is a good friend of mine. When my kids would struggle with a math problem, I would do a couple of things. One thing is we often called Faye to ask her how to do it… I’m actually not particularly adept at math; it has nothing to do with being a woman, it has to do with I didn’t pay close attention when it was being discussed – because my goal in high school was to be a big, giant loser and so I just didn’t make that my business. So when the kids were having a problem – if I sit down for a few minutes and I study on it for a while it’s likely that I’ll be able to come up with the solution. The problem now is that my children haven’t done it – and so what I would do is I would end up doing their homework and then I would write problems of a similar nature for them, for them to do – and I would often make them biographical just because it was fun. So I would write a story, for example, about my daughter Toshia and put a few problems in that applied to her and give it to her to solve. And the kids actually enjoyed it so much they would – not anymore, but when they were little – they enjoyed it so much that they would come to me sometimes and say ‘will you write us math problems?’ which – I long for that day [to return]. Faye was actually the one who proposed that we write a book; and in the beginning the idea was that I would occasionally write in a funny story and then there would be math problems and somehow, in the doing of it, and believe me, I regretted this about half way through, but somehow in the doing of it – it turned into that every single page was another story from me – either illustrating a math problem that Faye had sent me to illustrate, or it was an actual word problem. It kind of challenged me as a writer – I had never really written characters or hadn’t really invented whole stories before, because most of my writing is based upon what has happened to me or what I read or what I saw, or I make stuff up. Although I did used to do a joke where I said that my mother, I think I said my mother was three years old when she had us; that wasn’t true. (said drily)

VW: It’s kind of incongruous that you’re the spokesperson for the library group because I envision you being the bane of your librarian’s existence with everyone around you giggling and guffawing as you cracked jokes – is that an accurate picture of you back then?

PP: Oh I’m sure in the old days it’s true – although our high school librarian was always a great supporter of mine. But, it’s funny though – libraries nowadays don’t have the bun-toting shushers that they used to have – I mean not that anyone wants you to shout or make a lot of noise, but I will say they’re a bit more full of life in some ways than they used to be. Maybe it’s a function of what works. I’m not a huge computer fan and I personally kind of regret that when we go to the library my kids often go ‘great, let’s play computer games!’ – I personally sort of frown on that, but at the same time they are research tools. And there’s DVDs, and books on tape, and there are magazines and clubs and there are speakers – our library even had a ukulele club for a little while. There’s a lot, lot, lot to be found at the library; my favorite thing remains the books.

VW: Regarding your upcoming show here in Burlington – I know much of your show is improv – but are there certain topics you do plan to open with at first?

PP: I would say a lot of [my show] is improv, maybe about a third on a good night – and lots of nights are good. I have an act – [but] it doesn’t always have the same anything actually, come to think about it… I’ve been doing this job for 30 years as of this year and I’ve had lots and lots of jokes and stories within that time – all of which I personally enjoy (laughs)! But there’s always only so much space in my head on any given night and I don’t think anyone really wants to hear 30 years’ worth anyways, and so it tends to kind of rotate – a little like one’s pile of t-shirts. You know, I have a stack of t-shirts in my bedroom – occasionally I’ll think that one I used to have I don’t have any more and then I’ll clean my room and there it is at the bottom of the stack. The truth is there’s only about five or six that rotate up top at any given time – that’s sort of like my act. You know, I have hours and hours and hours but I have some that are in my head on that particular night and it kind of rotates – it comes up like a rolodex in my head according to what seems germane in the moment.

VW: You were the first woman to do the White House Correspondents Dinner; if you were asked back and it were held tomorrow, what would be your opening joke?

PP: If I was asked back and it was held tomorrow… I would say, I’m not positive, but I think that I would say: “I listened to Obama’s Congressional address” [about health care, that was preceded by his talk to school children] “– and I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t ask Congress to wash their hands.”

I put on the speech [about healthcare] and I did watch it in its entirety and I really appreciated it, and therefore, I heard firsthand when [Congressman Joe Wilson] shouted. And I assured my children that he was not yelling at Obama but rather, he had just dropped his hotdog.

VW: Are there examples of your kids being a tougher audience on you than those you faced back in your early Boston days, or some other particularly challenging crowd you’ve faced?

PP: In terms of getting laughs I’m not sure there could be a tougher audience than the ones I originally faced. It’s not that they didn’t have some virtues because they did, but those early crowds/clubs…! I started out in Boston in May or June of ’79 and those audiences were largely the fans and friends of a guy who was extreeeemely popular – like one or two guys [in particular] who were extremely popular in Boston – and they had a style that was very – aggressive – often very loud – pretty crude, and I don’t mean in terms of saying fuck or not saying fuck because I could give a flying fuck if anyone says fuck; I don’t care at all and I don’t even think it’s an interesting topic – but some of their notions – certainly of women and their place in the world were, ah, a bit – poorly conceived, I think sometimes? So these people who came to see them thought that everything they said was really great. But – I swear to you I’m not making this up – I actually followed a guy on a Wednesday night – (in the old days, my old days of doing stand-up comedy, what’s really interesting is Saturday was not the big night – Saturday was when there’d be shows, but those were the nights when there were a couple of comics who went on the bill – on Wednesday nights or Monday nights or Tuesday nights were the open mic nights – those were the raucous great nights really – where everyone who wanted to could go up and do five minutes – you put your name on a list and you wait around all night) – but anyway, on one of those nights I actually followed a guy who, the last thing he said was, ‘So I was eating out the cunt of a bear.’

VW: Of a bear?

PP: Yeh. He said that actually, in fact. The joke was that he was being as gross as he could think of, but here’s the thing: the crowd thought it was brilliant. They didn’t just enjoy it, they thought it was brilliant. And you know, I’m standing over on the side, about to go on, preparing mentally my little jokes about bussing tables.

So when you hear the stuff that they’re responding to and then you realize oh you know what? I’m not sure I’m gonna fit in here!

VW: What words of wisdom do you have for people in general, and single women in particular, who would consider becoming either foster or adoptive parents?

PP: [long pause] I don’t know – I have different feelings about the foster care system than I once did. But in terms of… To me, being an adoptive parent is no different than being a birth parent except for this:

When I got my son, which was one of the greatest days of my entire life, you know, I was sweatin’ it out at my house taking care of my [other] kids, getting snacks and getting lunch – they eat a lot, kids – every few minutes it’s snack time with them – even when you’re doing it the healthy way – that always used to kill me – when they were little and it would be bedtime and they’d be like ‘we want snacks’ [makes voice] – and they were legitimately hungry and weren’t making it up but just being annoying – I always hoped I could slip it by ‘em on that one night – I’d got ‘em all scrubbed and tubbed and ready to go and the dishes are all done and I hear ‘we want snacks’ [assuming a Jack Nicholson-like tone] and I’m like Dammit! You know, it’d be one thing if it was just Cheetos, but when they say ‘can we have some sort of healthy food’ [laughing] then I was really pissed!

So there I was with my kids and I got a phone call from the agency I used to foster through telling me that there was a baby that needed taking care of, and told me the address of the hospital that he was at, and I got the directions and I had to go someplace and pick up some paperwork, and then I drive to the hospital… They brought me in a baby and put it in my bucket thing – my little car-carrier bucket-thing that I have – I stuck that baby in there – I drove out of the parking lot – I got back on the freeway to go home, I swung by McDonalds for a burger and then brought the baby home, walked the girls up, showed him to them… it was great! I didn’t have to push! There was no water breaking… it was wonderful.

So often a Big Mac is not part of having a child.

VW: You’ve certainly been absolutely candid in your shows about your past drinking and the experience of rehab, etc., and you’ve incorporated it as material. In addition to content, since you’ve stopped drinking do you think your style of humor has changed?

PP: No, I really don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that [long pause] I think that as a human being  – I probably don’t fall into the folly of judgment as often as I once might have. Which isn’t to say that I never do – but that I’m probably more aware, you know, of that kind of thing than I once was. But no; has not drinking chemically changed my perceptions of things? Not to the best of my knowledge. And – you know, we give parties about five times a year maybe – throwing great parties I might add – and they always were really fun and great – but in recent years, you know, I’m not sick in the morning and that’s nice (laughs). I greatly appreciate that. I’m not sure how much my act has changed, and the way I go about doing it; a little bit, not a lot – I mean the words that I say of course have changed; I think it’s changed more because of life experience and getting older. And I think certain chemical changes – of course I’m not a biologist or a doctor – but I think certain chemical changes take place in the human body as you get older that just sort of change your perceptions to some degree as you age – and I’m not sure it has anything to do with drinking or not drinking. I just feel a lot [pause] more at peace I think, now, than I once did.

VW: You just mentioned not being perhaps as judgmental – and what came to my mind is recently seeing a YouTube clip of you discussing Sarah Palin. You were making jokes about her candidacy, but not in a mean-spirited, malicious way. And I think it just shows that you don’t necessarily have to be so attacking of the individual [to be funny], you know what I mean…?

PP: Yeh, I do know. It’s true, though, that she, ah, makes it hard not to…! [laughter] I’ve been doing that piece, and it’s not so much about her – well, okay, it is! – It’s about putting myself in her shoes: I think I would have done a lot of what she did.

Years ago, my manager called me and said “Hey, the people from Comic Relief called and they’re partnering with FarmAid this year – they’ve asked only a couple of comics to go to FarmAid and they’ve asked you.” Now I had never been to FarmAid before – I don’t know why I knew what it was really, because I don’t think I had ever watched it on television, I never went to one – but I had some idea in my head what it was like and in fact my idea was correct. But my first instinct was “Gee, I don’t think I can do that…” And then my manager talked to me a little bit more and – you know, we were both really flattered by the invitation – and she said, “Well you know, the Neville Brothers are going to be there…” I love the Neville Brothers! – and of course Willie Nelson was going to be there and I love Willie Nelson and so then what I started doing in my head was, I started saying to myself, I’ve never been there before; the people who are organizing it must know their crowd. And they must have selected me because I would be appealing to their crowd. And I put aside what I really knew about how I work and what I do and, I was so excited, by the way, about maybe getting the chance to meet the Neville Brothers or maybe getting the chance to meet Willie Nelson that I kind of… I put aside so much of what I knew, and I decided: They must know what they are doing and I was very, very flattered by the invitation.

I had one of the most notorious bombing experiences anyone has ever had. I made Sarah Palin look like a gifted statesman. It was… people were shouting…! I described it to my children one day (they weren’t even born yet when I did this) – I said, “you guys, there were thirty thousand people…” On a good night, if I pack the place, I might play to 1500 [people], who came to see me and liked me. The truth is, there may have been 1500 people at this thing who liked me – they may have loved me! But they weren’t sitting together! It was hell!

And so therefore I could really see myself doing what I think Sarah Palin did, which is – there’s no way in the world she could have thought herself qualified for this role – but, somewhere along the way – it’s such an exciting offer you kinda can’t help but go “Well!”… I know I would! The Neville Brothers can tell you I would! By the way, the only good part of that whole experience is that they left before I went on. Otherwise – any time I heard the song “Tell it Like it Is” my face would just redden.

VW: Do you have any future goals or something you’d like to close with?

PP: I’d like to finish my book – my first one took me nine years. I’m 49 – it’s possible that I’ll die before I finish my book (laughs). You know those cases where somebody dies and someone else finished it for them, and it’s not one of their better ones? This could go that way.

My goals are so sort of not fan-friendly really. My biggest goal? It’s that my three children end up with the most choices they could have for a happy life – or , happy-ish let’s just say – I think this happy life idea is probably screwing a lot of people up – but happy-ish.

And, sometimes people ask me about doing “bigger” things – am I going to do movies, or am I going to do television, and the truth is – I’ve done a [bit] of each but I did both of those things before I had children. And now, my son’s 11, but when he’s 18 – I hope there’s a lot of middle-aged women waiting, because then I’ll go to that stuff. But for now, we have a whole year of my 11-year-old who’s got some challenges anyway doing an “a.m.” class – which means it’s a class that starts before first period so he has to be at school by 7:30. Let me tell you. If I survive this year I deserve some special award.

VW: To close here, Martin Luther King had a dream – as do you, you say in your book (There Is Nothing in this Book That I Meant to Say)… What is that dream, Paula?