Caution: Lisa Lampanelli likes to drop the "f" bomb. Both of them. And other dirtiness that wouldn't sit well with anyone against slang terms for "vagina." Basically, beware.
Lisa Lampanelli
Oct. 5, State Theatre, Kalamazoo
Oct. 6, Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor
http://www.insultcomic.com
Who knows what Lisa Lampanelli's god would tell her if he's heard the filth that flies out of her trap. And it's that uncertainty that's got the Queen of Mean biting her nails. Just a bit.
Because, after all, Lampanelli's got the heart of Mother Teresa. Or so she says. She unleashes some wailing cries before laughing. "I give tons of money to charity just out of guilt," she says, noting she's putting two rich kids through Catholic school.
Also on her noble to-do list: Send a woman to the Canyon Ranch, a posh health-club resort in Arizona, for a week at the spa. All on Lampanelli.
"I'm like Oprah," she insists, sounding like a giddy girl and not her usually gruff self. "I just wanna do a lot of charity and donate a lot of money so that I could assuage my guilt, and when I'm on my deathbed go, 'I gave 2,000 for those disabled veterans who sent me the mailing labels.'"
With as many expletives, racial slurs and crude body-slang terms as Lampanelli uses, she may need to double that donation. Right away, the comedian, who calls us from Los Angeles, greets us with her usual sincere sweetness: "Hey, faggot! Are you the cornholer I talked to in the past?"
Yep, that cornholer.
Trust Lampanelli: Talking to a gay paper isn't even remotely the same as chatting with, say, the Christian Science Monitor. Try Google-searching articles with the equal-opportunity offender in more traditional rags, where every other word in her quotes are "bleep." Or where she can't act like the whore she is.
"That's why I love you faggot papers. Shit, you cornhole each other," she says. "You're like, 'Lisa's nothing compared to a pain in the ass.'" Or compared to sex-worker ads in the back of Between The Lines. And those sex-workers are the ones who can't understand, Lampanelli jokes, why she acts like the insult comic she is with press. There's one simple reason: To sell tickets. In this case, to her Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo shows this weekend, where she'll bring along her gay pal and opening act Wendel – who we mistake as the woman who launched her show last time she visited Michigan.
"Well, Wendel's pretty close, trust me," she says. "Wendel's a frickin' faggot. He's so gay, he jerks off to 'Antiques Roadshow.'"
From stereotype jabs to racy sex-romp talk, there's no line that Lampanelli won't cross.
And if there were, she'd cross it anyhow. "Dude, if there was a line, who would draw it arbitrarily? The FCC? The FaggotMag.com? Is that the name of your publication?" she says with a howling laugh.
Imagine going to see a comedian like Lampanelli who walks two miles through the dessert, who sobs while watching "Dawson's Creek" on DVD, who regularly meditates, does yoga and who sometimes – only sometimes – gets a little tear in her eye when she sees a newborn.
"I don't do any of that shit," she sneers, telling us no one would go to her shows if she acted like June Cleaver.
"If I (was like), 'Here's the inner Lisa Lampanelli,' it's not gonna inspire you to fucking buy a ticket to see a big-mouthed brassy bitch," she pauses and laughs. "And, also, the fact is, I hate gays – and if I can't fucking call it to your face, I might as well shut my mouth."
Lampanelli, shut her mouth? That sounds about as likely as getting Rosie O'Donnell to do the same during her run on "The View." While Lampanelli's filth-trap will stay open as long as she can stay employed, one thing is closed for business. And it too has lips. "My cunt is tired," she insists.
"I'm 46 fucking years old; I'm too old for this shit," she continues, noting she canceled a recent scheduled booty call with her favorite kind of meat: the dark. No stranger to the blacks, Lampanelli is trying to set up a hook-up for her Kalamazoo visit. If her hooha has enough time to nap. "How far is Chicago from over there? 'Cause I got some booty-call guy in Chicago. I may have him drive in."
Out in L.A., there are no blacks, Lampanelli reports. She's been stuck meeting with white people, "because Jews are running everything in Hollywood." Though white isn't the new black for her, this territory is all too familiar.
"I went back to white, ya know. Only I can find a white man lazier and more shifty than a black. Oh, it was horrible. 'Cause here I am, this fabulous billionaire, best female comic who ever lived, with a Chinchilla coat and a collection of funny dresses. And this is a pothead with no checking account."
And, she hopes soon enough, movie star will be added to that self-important list. She'll play alongside Owen Wilson, who attempted suicide in late August, in "Drillbit Taylor," due in March. The duo shot a couple of scenes together, which Lampanelli says in a sweet voice, were oh-so-meaningful. The two, she jokes, had love in their eyes for each other.
"Hopefully it'll come out if Owen Wilson doesn't kill himself again!" she says. "Stop killing yourself, Owen! Lisa needs a career."
Lampanelli isn't modest about how famous she is. Or her looks. She admits she's damn fine. During a recent visit to Howard Stern's show, the radio personality gushed over Lampanelli, who was wearing leggings and a cute top, telling her she appears to have lost 80 pounds. But she says it's closer to 40. He wasn't taking into account the corset, and the girdle, and the spanks.
"(I kept thinking) if that (girdle) pops, it'll look like those Pillsbury Doughboy cans that you pop and it gushes out," she says. "I'm just gonna get fat again. I don't need this shit."
Nor does she need penis, apparently. Though the sex-obsessed comic is giving her beaver a break, we're still not convinced that the earthworm will come back to visit. She's got a plan, though.
"All my friends have to be fat, ugly and disgusting – or three-feet tall," she says.
She's like a dog when she's around her security guards – and her drivers, and, really, any guy that holds a manual labor position.
"I'm like a gay man, aren't I?"
No one can detect that better than a queer – or Kathy Griffin, who's been down with her homos for years and who Lampanelli admires for her savvy business brains, like yielding loads of press after telling Jesus to "suck it" when she recently won an Emmy. The insult comic also is tight with Sarah Silverman. For reasons other than Jesus.
"Let me tell you something: Nobody knows mistakes and abortions and pregnancies like Lisa Lampanelli and Sarah Silverman. We've had 17 each," she jokes.
Her esteem for fellow people doesn't last long, though. She rips into Margaret Cho, who we're just a couple of hours away from interviewing, saying: "Tell her I enjoy when she fell off her rickshaw into this country."
And she doesn't stop there. Next up: O'Donnell's replacement on "The View," Whoopi Goldberg. "Can we have any show that doesn't have the gratuitous black? You know what, I'm getting a little sick of this politically-correct bullshit. Stop with the blacks. That's a big quote. Make that the headline: 'Stop with the blacks.' I'm sure Ann Arbor would really appreciate that," she hoots, breaking into laughter. "And, 'Queers ain't so great either.'"
