Comedian Paula Poundstone joined KNAU to talk about her upcoming show on Saturday at the Yavapai College Performing Arts Center in Prescott. Poundstone is a regular panelist on NPR’s news quiz show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”
Aaron Granillo: Can you give us a sneak peak of the show? What are some of the topics you’ll be discussing?
Paula Poundstone: Oh, I talk about raising a house full of animals and kids. And my favorite part of the night is I just talk to the audience. The time honored, ‘Where are you from, what do you do for a living?’ Seems to work pretty good.
You’ve been doing it for a long time, so it must be working.
35 years. It is a really long time. I mean I’m not Tony Bennett, but damn near.
How would you say your comedy style has evolved over those 35 years?
I don’t think the style itself has changed very much. To some degree what I talk about, because it’s largely autobiographical, subject matter changes a little bit as the years go by. I remember years and years ago I used to do a joke about how I hated babies on airplanes, and that if people were going to have babies then they needed to plan not to travel. If they offered like a babies and no-babies flight, I would stay wherever I was for an extra day to get on the no-babies flight. And I couldn’t have changed -- I’m 180 from that perspective now. I love it when there’s babies on airplanes.
Is that because you’re a mom?
I don’t know. I really like talking to babies. Maybe because they make me feel like they’re listening.
Speaking of listening, we hear you all the time on the weekends, of course, on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” You’re a regular on the show. I wonder is there a story behind how you ended up on the show, like the first time they ever called you?
You know, I’m sure they hate it when I say this, but I had never heard of it. And they sent me – I don’t know, they must have called my manager or something and she said, ‘Well send Paula a cassette tape.’ So they sent me this audio cassette tape. This was a long time, maybe 13, 14 years ago. And I put it, as I did so many things, on the island in my kitchen. You know that big, sort of strange thing that people had in the middle of their kitchens there for a while. It gathered junk and stuff piled up there. Hence, the “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” audio cassette that I was supposed to listen to and didn’t laid on that island for quite a while. And my nanny at the time saw it, and he was like, “Oh my gosh, I love ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.’ You have to do that show. So, it really was because of my nanny slash manager that I ended up doing “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”
Now Paula, I know you’ve said you don’t necessarily like to label yourself as a female comedian. You’re just funny, you’re a stand-up. But I have to imagine, when you were first breaking into the industry, there was still that stigma that women can’t be funny. Did you face any of that kind of scrutiny when you were first starting out?
I happened to have started in a very drunken, blue-collar atmosphere. And there was a tremendous amount of misogyny, among the comics actually. And so it was little bit of a battle quite honestly. But, it probably made me a little tougher in the end. But, then I got on a Greyhound bus and went around the country to see what clubs were like in different cities and I ended up in San Francisco for quite a while. And it was kind of magical there.
Well let’s stick in that sort of time frame. A young Paula Poundstone. She’s in her early 20s, travelling across the country, living the life of a stand-up. Where did you see yourself as a young 20-something-year-old? Did you see yourself making it big like this?
Well, I’m not sure I’ve exactly made it big. I mean I don’t know that I ever imagined it that far down the road. I mean when I was very young I wanted to be a comic actress. And I still do. I’ve done little things here and there, but nothing major, and I would still like to sort of explore that area more. But, I love being a stand-up. I consider myself pretty lucky. It’s not an easy job necessarily, and logging in 35 years is a pretty good trick. I mean it’s probably one of the most – maybe the most important relationship that I have is me and the audience. That’s probably like a really screwed up thing to say psychologically. But it is true. They’re my best friend.