march 7.2 0 0 3
p mmMdr
r i i m P I mmmm
r
m
............ V ............
argaret C ho wants us to empower
M
At the conclusion of her previous
show, The Notorious C .H .O ., the
comedian said, ‘T o have self-esteem is an act of
revolution, and our revolution is long over
due." Now the tough, sarcastic, no-nonsense
34-year-old is returning to Portland on
March 13 to lead the insurgency with her new
show, The Revolution Tour, which thematically
picks up where the last one left off.
Revolution is “a hunch of jokes about how
we need to become a united front against all
the bullshit in the world,” Cho explains. “It is
me mnning my mouth about all the political
crap that’s going on— how the country is ignor
ing issues of gays, women, health care. Every
thing we need to deal with that is being
ignored or is being put in second place in favor
of a war that the government thinks we need.”
Them’s fightin’ words. But, to put it mildly,
her humor has always been political. She cites
her earliest influence as Richard Pryor, whose
work addressed racism with fire-breathing
intensity— a theme that Cho, as a Korean
American, often turns to.
She’s also taken on Pryor’s style, which she
calls “self-incriminating disclosure.. .tragedy
turned into humor. Storytelling that is not sup
posed to he funny hut is terribly funny because
of the way it is told.”
By now, Cho’s story has been well told. While
still a teen-ager, she won a comedy contest in
which the prize was to tour as Jerry Seinfeld’s
opening act. (“The two tools that helped me the
rruxst," she says, “were having no fear of rejection
and having a totally undeserved confidence.” ) By
her early 20s she was a top draw at comedy clubs
and college campuses, where her ethnic heritage
and her relationship with very traditional parents
were the cornerstone of the act.
In 1994 Cho was signed by ABC to star in
All-American Girl, a situation comedy in which
she would play a version of herself: a young, single
Asian American. But the show was a personal dis
aster from start to early demise, and she descend
ed into a pit of alcoholism and dnig abuse.
Her second coming began in 1999 when
she turned the humiliating experience into a
confessional off-Broadway smash called I’m the
One That I Want, which went on to become a
sold-out tour, a best-selling book and a comedy
film that was a hit at festivals.
R
ecently, the relentlessly single Cho
announced she is getting married to a
sculptor, painter and performance artist
who is active in the Cacophony Society, a
lcx>sely structured network of artists who hand
together to create guerrilla theater and pranks.
(A l<Kal “lodge” is active in Portland.)
There's no business
like Cho business
Revolutionary
Korean-American,
fag-hag,
shit-starter,
girl-comic,
trash-talker
Margaret Cho
storms into town
March 13
Just Out chats with
everybody’s favorite fag hag
about her new show
and upcoming nuptials
by
r
F loyd S klaver
Never having thought she’d marry, Cho
describes herself as “functionally celibate but
emotionally promiscuous” and explains reaching
30 was a turning point. “That’s like the last fron
tier. You go through all the explorations, but then
you turn 30, and you get to the scariest thing,
which is intimacy. It’s not about sex anymore but
about being dangerously close to someone."
Such private revelations are typical for Cho,
whose work, like the best comics, is intensely
honest. “It’s just me being mean about people,”
she claims— something that came from “a life
time of talking shit about other people.”
She describes her material as “hindsight that
reveals weakness and human faults without judg
ment." Perhaps it’s this lack of judgment that
attracts gay and lesbian audiences. As a minority
herself, she validates our lives simply by talking
about them in perfect, deadpan delivery.
Cho, who reveals some scant bisexual expe
riences in previous shows, grew up in San Fran
cisco, where she was surrounded by queers.
“Even before we understood what gay was," she
says, “I always had little boy friends who were
not my boyfriends. I used to hang around with
tomboy girls— the lacrosse girls, who didn’t fig
ure out they were lezzies until much later.”
Her parents owned a bookstore on Polk
Street in the heart of the Castro district. “There
were all these gay men working there, and they
saw this thing in me that they wanted to nur
ture,” she says. Gay men taught her “style, life
and how to he confident." She says she learned
“how to be a woman from these men.”
In her acts, she talks about empowered and
strong gays (who can forget “Crouching Drag
Queen, Hidden Faggot" from Notorious!), and
she is very sympathetic to the queer move
ment. “I consider myself part of the core com
munity... we need to have our voices out there
because we don’t,” she asserts. “There still isn’t
equality in many areas that I want to see it.
Like domestic partnership is a lie that corpo
rate America has put over on us. But we are so
hungry for any kind of change, we are willing
to accept things like that.”
Cho recog
nizes similarities
in different
minority
groups. “To be
a minority in
America,” she
continues, “feels like
dying a death of a
thousand paper cuts....
Each of them individually
doesn’t bother us, hut the
cumulative effect is very
damaging.”
Her solution is “to
lcx)k deeper and look
into what these things
mean to us. But you
can’t just make a
speech. It has to be
funny,” she says, “or else
it’s boring. I’m looking
for people to listen and
admit that it’s funny.”
Revolutions aren’t
generally in it for
laughs, but Cho’s
Revolution, like
all of her work,
promises to be. j H
M argaret C ho
bring s The
Revolution Tour
to Arlene Schnitzer
Concert HaU at
7:30 p.m.
March 13.
Tickets are
$29.50439.50
from
Ticketmaster.
/
F loyd S klaver
is a Portland
free-lance un ter.
«
Good, Clean, Nasty Fun
nClub Portland
1