Kathy Griffin’s bawdy, beautiful set stuns Sunday … and there’s more to come tonight Svelte, bawdy and blue, Kathy Griffin blew into town last night and her "main gays" turned out in reckoning force to cheer her while she skewered the Hollywood tinsel townies. "I report for you," she bowed to a standing ovation: "Sold out, motherfuckers — on the Lord’s Day!" to a packed Meyerson on Sunday night. (But there’s room for more: She performs Monday as well.)
"Dick jokes for all," assured the super-model sleek Griffin, beaming to her standing-room-only fans. "It’s gorgeous here, Dallas," she exclaimed, glancing about the symphony center’s crowd. "Where are my gays at? … Where are my four straights? Where are my ladies? Hi, sexies! Hi, girls, who are not going to get laid after the show. Tonight is going to be like a gay guys’ and ladies’ version of Meet the Press. You know what, Dallas? You guys really think you know how to party — my mother will fuckin’ drink you under the table . . . tip it!"
Griffin knows her fan base.
From the opening salvos, where she conspiratorially revealed her forthcoming televised pap smear ("It got a full page in In Touch Weekly, or as I like to call it, Newsweek") to why Twitter scares her ("I don’t ‘twat’ on Twitter because usually I think somebody is trying to kill me — usually it’s Ryan Seacrest. She has had it with me, that fuckin’ sloppy pig bottom") she never wavered in her take-no-prisoners comic riffs.
Griffin has, seemingly overnight, finessed a standing-ovation career out of Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s old chestnut, "If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, come sit by me." Thanks to Bravo’s almost continual loop of Griffin’s smash reality show, now about to start its fifth season, the D-list celebrity former char girl has, with the flick of a fairy’s wand (many fairies in tow) metamorphosed into an A-list, double-Emmy-winning Cinderella.
Anyone who can sell out Madison Square Garden and one double-book road show engagements on back-to-back nights for Texan cowboys and gals whooping and hollering is tossing vinaigrette on her salad days — the era of entering through the kitchen is over.
Griffin promises her followers this upcoming season of My Life on the D List will be the most entertaining yet. "I’m doing more fucked up shit than Intervention this year. I’m not losing my third Emmy to them again." On Griffin’s new episodes, she travels to Alaska to meet her "boyfriend," Levi Johnston, fresh from the pages of Playgirl, and on another show, she and her octogenarian mother judge a children’s beauty pageant, a la Toddlers & Tiaras. "They start these kids at two weeks old," she said incredulously. "They look like a meatloaf in diapers with a sequined hair band. All the dads are gay, and all the moms are 500 lbs. Oh, honey, it’s like I died and went to heaven!"
Griffin left no heavenly rhinestone unturned Sunday night, for certain: Of Kate Gosselin on Dancing with the Stars: "It’s like a gift from baby Jesus." Of Pamela Anderson when she did the splits: "Honey, that floor had an infection." Of American Idol minus Paula Abdul: "Putting Paula on TV is always money in the bank. I miss her. Ellen does not clap like a seal or seem disoriented. I know the Hollywood diet — it’s called cocaine and Red Bull."
She gave props to Texas as well, luxuriating in the visit by Oprah Winfrey "and her husband Gayle" made last year to the Texas State Fair. "My favorite Oprah is back," she said: "Big, fat Oprah. I knew Oprah had surrendered when she and Gayle were actually judging the fried food kiosks dressed like dykes on Dinah Shore. No Dr. Oz in sight. Honey, Oprah had a camel toe you could put a saddle on: When those two men ate deep fried butter, I knew she was back!"
Our feisty, red-maned Griffin is flaming testament that perfect comedy, like good gay sex, requires zestful pacing and devilish improvisation. Griffin blazes through her 95 minutes gig, hell-for-leather, winging it seamlessly, not faltering so much as a single, raunch-fest step. All her wormwood tangents — about Snookie and the gang from Jersey Shore, Renee Zellweger’s "sweaty, puffy coke-whore" face or the "fuckin’ poop, menstrual blood, cat skeletons and urine" on Hoarders — somehow get wrapped up neatly in a big, bawdy gay bow by show’s end.
This gay whirl with the straight girl is worth the sellout ride.
For her pre-show interview with Dallas Voice, click here.
For ticket information, visit DallasSymphony.com.
