Comedy Saved Me : Paula Poundstone on Laughter's Healing and Personal Struggles in Life's Absurdities-Comedy Interview Encore"

Comedy saved me. Welcome to Comedy Saved Me, the podcast where comedians share the moments when laughter became their lifeline. I'm your host, Lynn Hoffman, and today we are joined by the incomparable Paula Poundstone, a comedy legend who's been making audiences laugh for over four decades with her razor-sharp observational humor and stream of consciousness storytelling. Paula is, let me just tell you, a master of finding the absurd in every day, whether she's dissecting the mysteries of laundry, the politics of family road trips, or the existential crisis of shopping at warehouse stores. Believe me, she is a regular panelist on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, has released multiple comedy albums and continues to tour relentlessly, bringing her unique brand of intelligent, improvised comedy to stages across the country. But before she was cracking jokes about the absurdities of modern life, Paula was navigating her own challenges, and today she's here to share how comedy didn't just become her career. It's quite literally saved her life. So settle in as we explore the healing power of laughter with the brilliant and always funny Paula Poundstone. Paula, welcome to Comedy Saved Me. It is such a pleasure to have you here. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. I want to start at the beginning and ask you, what was your relationship with humor like as a kid? I mean, were you the class clown or did you find comedy later in life? The first sentence of the summary letter written by my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bump, and I believe it might have been May of 1964, perhaps it was 65, I don't recall, said, I have enjoyed many of Paula's humorous comments about our activities. So I don't remember doing like a tight five on play-doh, but I'm sure I did. And I remember even before I started in kindergarten, I was the youngest in my family and my mother, not the happiest person in the world, she used to get all the other kids off to school, the older kids off to school, and then she would go back to bed. I was just sort of left to wander. And the truth is, much of the time, most of the time, I suppose, I eventually gravitated towards the television, which in those days was not like in the living room, was down in the basement. And I would watch. I didn't much care for a lot of the children's programming because this was even, this was a pre-Sesame Street. So I watched, I love Lucy reruns that were on in the morning, and the Three Stooges. And I still say to people that I was raised by them. I find that fascinating. I had Tom Bergeron on the show a couple of weeks ago. And when I told him that I was a huge fan of the Three Stooges, he said that he's never met a woman that admitted that, that they were a fan of the... No one's ever told him that before. Okay, but how often has it come up? Right. Yeah, I mean, it's just... I wish I could remember... Rachel Maddow was interviewing somebody one night and they were like, oh, damn it, I wish I could remember the role that they had. But it was like the second in command at the Department of Interior or something like that, something a little archaic like that. And she said, I don't know anybody who doesn't admire the second in command at the Department of Interior. And I'm like, okay, but how often does it come up? I mean, do people introduce themselves that way? Do they go, hi, Rachel, so nice to meet you. My gosh, I love the second in command at the Department of Interior. And in the same way, I would say to Mr. Bergeron that probably the subject just doesn't come up. There's tons of women that like the Three Stooges, probably not as many as there are men. Wow. And we probably see something different, funny in it. I mean, even as a kid, I didn't particularly like it. I didn't want them to get hurt. Yeah. By the way, one of the scenes... Don't tell me the one on the train where Curly came back from a stroke? No, one of them, one of the scenes, they were climbing up and they had put like a table on top of a table. And then they were climbing up on top of that, trying to reach something up high and it was all three of them. It was Mo. And of course, they fall, right? Yes, it was Mo. And they all come crashing down and Mo broke like three rims or something in real life doing this and they just kept going. Yeah. Have you ever done that? Have you ever broken a bone and then had to perform on stage while you were still in pain? Well, I have actually. You have? I didn't. Yeah. I mean, I had break the bone on stage. I broke a rib coughing years ago and I functioned with it for a while. I mean, the truth is, and I find this kind of interesting, I went to an urgent care eventually when the pain didn't go away and I thought, you know what? I think I have a broken rib. So I go to urgent care and the doctor, this urgent care says to me, so what are you here for? Like because they had that kind of bedside manner. And I saw, I think I broke a rib. She goes, how do you think you're broke a rib? And I said, well, not profession, where you've gone into, ma'am. I said coughing and she goes, you can't break a rib coughing, which isn't true at all. What? And even I knew that. But so they do an X-ray and she comes back in, she goes, you know, it looks in the X-ray, you don't have a broken rib. And I was like, oh, okay. All right. Thanks. And I apologize because I always hit wasting people's time. And I go away. I even worked out that day as I recall. And the following morning, the same doctor calls and says, yeah, we showed you X-ray to a radiologist. You do, you have a broken rib. She said, and she said, it's broken off the rib cage. And she said, the good news is it's not headed towards the lung. Oh, thankfully. Yeah. And I'm like, well, that is good news. Thank you for calling. And but they recommend that they go to orthoped. I went to the orthoped and he was like, he was like, you know what? It'll heal. Don't worry about it. It's fine. And he said, we really don't do anything for that anymore, which I find really interesting. That's crazy. In the old days, they used to tape people. Do you remember that? Yeah. The rib cage, when they broke a rib cage, when they broke a rib, but they don't anymore. And I'm sharing this because I think it's important information for people to have. They don't anymore because when people's rib cage is taped, they can't take deep breaths. And deep breaths are an important part of healing. I always thought stuff like that was kind of, you know, when people, you know, you said, people go, breathe deeply. It's not like you come from the nutty wellness community. Breathe deeply. There's something to that. It turns out it is important to, it wasn't important to breathe to begin with because without it. This would be an interesting conversation. I am this close to being the head of HHS. Honestly, my body of medical knowledge already is beyond that of Robert Kennedy, Jr. Running for the health. All right. Well, you've talked about growing up as a kid in school, kind of being silly and funny, but you had a huge family. You had like seven kids. No, I didn't have seven kids. No, I lived with a family with seven kids. But no, my family was family of four. Okay. And they were, it didn't feel like a full rich, not, I don't mean rich monetarily, but it didn't feel, you know, it didn't have a, there weren't a lot of storylines. You know, like in the Waltons, which is one of my favorite shows, Ghana, there were a lot of storylines because they had a bunch of kids and every week it could now it could be Elizabeth's problem or, or, you know, I don't know, Mary Kate's problem, but our house had very limited storylines. There was no good night, John Boy or survival humor. Oh, actually we did do that sometimes, but I'm kidding. No, there was none in there. No, there was a lot of, don't make me have to come in there. Don't make me get your father. Oh, that's funny. So did you try to like joke your way out of things with your parents ever? Um, not in that way. I mean, you know, we, you know, me and my sisters did kind of make fun of my mother. Not, not, we weren't so much joking our way out of anything. Um, but because at a certain point, you know, you just like, okay. Last or cry, which one? Yeah, exactly. Let's just call up the absurdity. Um, but yeah, no, it wasn't one of those things where, no, I'll tell you, there were certainly times I remember when I was in high school, I was in this typing class and, you know, you know, by high school, you were in, you could be a freshman, uh, in a class with a senior, you know, just depending what class it was. And, um, so I was in this typing class and there were these two girls that were, you know, older than me and they were scary. And they, they, they were purposely scary and they knew I was scared of them. And so they would do stuff like drop their paper on the floor and tell me to pick it up and I would pick it up. And, and then one day I think I made a joke about it or something like that. And, uh, or it wasn't a joke about the, it was a joke about something in this dynamic. And, uh, they thought it was funny and all of a sudden all the bullying just went away. It was great. It was like a, you know, could have been like in a, in a television show. That's so cool. I, I can't, I have to tell you I'm harking an experience, same similar. They were like the tough kids. They wore the leather jackets, smoked the cigarettes and you're like, you were afraid of them. We had teachers like that. Yeah. How do I win these people over? And one day I was in some play. I can't remember. I think it was like Reno Sweeney and anything goes and I had to like make this grand entrance to the stage. And I was so scared because all these kids were sitting in there going to judge me and they all came up to me. They were the loudest people clapping for me in the audience. And I was like, I won them over. Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. My son, when he, when he was in the fifth grade, I think it was, you know, he, he never, he didn't fit in very well socially growing up and I, and I, it was a, you know, it was hard for him, but he, they had a talent show one time in the fifth grade and he, he came out and did a routine on the mushroom, which is the training device for the pommel horse. And he had, we had a mushroom, like a training one, not a, not a fish, you know, like a training one. And, uh, all these girls lined the front of the stage and were cheering him on a bunch. You know, like, okay. It was a lot easier to make jokes as my point. Oh yeah. Because learning that mushroom, learning the pommel horse is like a god awful experience. Yeah. You don't want to do that. Yeah. But it works for him for, at least for that afternoon. Yeah. Um, well that explains why guys like to be rock stars. Cause you know, the girls love the rock stars. So, you know, Mo said in his book, Mo Howard and the Three Stooges, he said that Curly became an alcoholic and most said that the reason was that he couldn't get women. And I got to tell you from being on the road when I was younger, uh, I was on the road with the skevious guys, right? You had to stay in the apartment with them for, for clubs would, um, they were going to have a middle act and MC and a headliner in for the week. What they did was they rented an apartment and it was only going to be empty like one night a week. And that way there, they didn't have to pay for hotels. And, uh, so you, you're stuck not just working with some of these guys, but you know, staying in the same apartment with them. And I mean, they were gross. Um, and many of them weren't particularly good comics to begin with, but also just just gross. And they always, they always had women after the show. Always. So, uh, you know what, Mo? That's not why Curly became an alcoholic. And by the way, I don't think you become an alcoholic because of like a problem to begin with, but also no, no, I'd currently for whatever reason, maybe didn't hook up with women, but it's not Mo was saying it's because, you know, he shaved his head to be Curly and that he, um, you know, that it was because of this role he played. Oh, no, no, you, he could, first of all, Curly was great. And second of all, Curly could have not even been gonna be in Curly and he still would have had women that would have thrown themselves at him. Drone at his, I gotta tell you, even as a little kid, my parents were a little concerned with me because I had to crush. These are the guys that I had a crush on growing up on television, like when you were watching TV, Harvey Corman, Tim Conway, Gene Wilder, um, and, um, and Curly, the three stooges like, I'm little, little, you know, my parents are like, this close to going to the Jordan Marsh Charm School. Yeah. My mother, my mother said to me, I forget how old I was, and I think I was like a teenager. And she said the biggest mistake of her life. And this is somebody who was, you know, married a few times and, you know, we all have lives full of errors. And, and, you know, some of us were bigger than others, but she had a fair spade of ones that you could point to, if you chose. But she said the biggest mistake of her entire life was not sending me to Charm School. Just say, I think she had overinflated an unrealistic idea of what could be done through a Charm School. Yeah. They don't even have stuff like that anymore, do they? I don't think so. I don't even think, no, there's no civics. There's no Charm School. It's all gone. I believe the store, Jordan Marsh, I'm fairly certain that the store, Jordan Marsh, had a Charm School associated with it. And it was a clothing store. Jordan Marsh, was that exclusive for Boston? Because I remember that growing up. It was in the, the Jordan Marsh was in the Framingham Shoppers World. Oh, the one with the little train you drive around the Shoppers World native. The Shoppers World in the center, it was an outdoor mall. It wasn't enclosed. I mean, there were roofs on the stores, but it had a, in the center of it. It was like a courtyard, right? Yes. And there was at one time, like an amusement park rides. That was so smart when you think about it. And then obviously it grew up to the Mall of America, which is like, you know, a roller coaster inside the mall while you're shopping. You can actually, on the Mall of America, you can ride on a roller coaster and grab a product off a shelf as you go and then pay for it when you get off the roller coaster. Now it is. You don't even have to. You just got your phone on you. It charges, you know, just as soon as you touch it, it's yours. Yeah. It's a good point. It's all over. Probably where all my money's going is I probably just keep touching the wrong things on my phone and it just keeps taking money off. Well, when we come back, we're going to find out exactly how comedy saved Paula Poundstone. Stay with us. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Comedy saved me. All right, Paula, the premise of our show is that comedy has saved our guests in some way. Can you pinpoint an exact or specific moment or a period in time during your life when you realized comedy wasn't just something that you did, but it was something you needed to do? You know what? I fell for your, even I have a podcast and we say we're going to take a break and then we don't take a break because the break is put in afterwards. But when you said we're going to take a break, you said it so professionally. Yes. That I really didn't think you were taking a break. Thank you. At one point when I was introducing you, I looked up on the screen and you weren't even there. Because I have a phone on the wall, like how it's supposed to be. And it has an answering machine attached to it. And I thought that I could put up with the phone ringing, but then I thought there was going to be a message left. So I thought, well, I'll go stop it. But it stopped by itself. And therefore, I sat back down again. Well, thank you for that. And also, thank you for having a wall phone because that just warms my heart. It does, Ben. Yeah, it does. Does it have the cord on it? The, the, the wrapping cord? I have one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom. I love that. You know, there's obviously great conveniences to having cell phones and I have cell phones. But in a way, I miss the phone on the wall. I missed people not being able to, you know, now if somebody calls you or, you know, text to or whatever, I mean, I don't text, but if now if somebody calls you and you don't answer the phone, they're just perplexed. You know, it's not a law. You don't have to. I, I, I miss answering the phone when it's convenient to me to talk because I'm in my room and the phone rang and I got the phone. I, I kind of, I hate, I hate being tethered to the cell phone the way that one is. But if somebody doesn't get you, they'll call you back five times. What the fuck is that? It's so true. Yeah, listen, I don't want to run up against the theme of your whole show. I, I, I, you know, I wish I could tell you that there was a, you know, a moment and that there was a little, like a little sound effect that went with it. And maybe I saw a bright light. Um, I, I'm not sure. I'll tell you, wait, I'll tell you one thing. All right. Okay. Prior to the stay at home order, prior, which was, you know, obviously, you know, trying to stop the spread of COVID. Prior to the stay, stay at home order, I may have, and I'm saying I may have, sometimes, and certainly not frequently, if at all, I may have complained about traveling for my job. Uh, and then along came the stay at home order. And there was, I don't know how everybody else, for me, I, I had no way of knowing that we would ever be able to gather in the kinds of groups that you do in the theater. Like so, audience says that a performer can, and the thing is at that time, um, this is when, you know, Zoom attacked us, um, you know, as a gallery view or portrait view. There were all these organizations that, um, that I have many times done fundraisers for MC'd their fundraisers, and they tend to happen in the spring. I don't exactly know why, but they tend to happen in the spring, these events. And for a multitude of organizations, all of which are terrific and, and all of which, you know, I do what I can for. But as the year goes by, and they would call me and say, or email me and say, you know, can you MC our fundraiser on the blah, blah, blah night? And I would look at my calendar and go, oh, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to this year because I'm on the road that night. Well, when the stay at home order hit, they all knew I was home. Every bloody day, I got emails and phone calls saying, will you do our fundraiser? We're doing it online. We're doing it via Zoom. It's going to be a virtual gala, they all said. And they were very excited about this idea. And, and, you know, good for them for, you know, making lemonade out of lemons. But, uh, what was in everyone's head was that I was going to do stand-up from my living room via Zoom. And at first, I guess I thought maybe I could. Um, but let me tell you, once you've tried that one time, it's, you know, never, never again. And the problem is what people understand. If I was a musician or a poet, I could, I can practice what I'm doing at home by myself until I am red hot at it. And then I can, and then I can present it anywhere I want. And I don't need, would I prefer to have an audience feedback? Sure. But I don't need it. Stand-up is different. It's different than any other form of art. You simply must have an audience. At least, at least certainly the way I work. I, I, I can't do it without it. And, and that, during the state of home order, when it dawned on me like, okay, I have no way of taking stand-up and making it into something that I can do, you know, in this sort of new world of Zoom. And not knowing if we would ever be able to gather in theaters again was terrifying. Uh, partly for economic reasons, obviously. But, but also, because I could do like characters and make videos that way, which I did. But I couldn't interact with an audience. And the loneliness of that, you know, I guess it's kind of screwed up to say this, but the audience is kind of my best friend all these years. And the, I just found myself for all those months just wanting to snoopy cry. Remember how Snoopy cried? Oh, yeah. Yes, the tears will come out. And they were just flying everywhere. That was, that was like a cross between Peewee Herman and Snoopy. Snoopy crying is just one of the saddest things you can see. There's, there's Snoopy crying. And there's Kim Wechler crying on the bus. In Better Call Saul. That was, that was unbelievable, right? Oh my God. Yeah. Well, Snoopy doesn't ugly cry. That's called an ugly cry. It's just, it, it, yeah. And it's very sad. Years ago, me and uh, Tom Poston, I forget why we were at some sort of fundraisery thing in Orlando. And uh, we were at Disney World. And they're like, oh, you know, take a picture with Mickey Mouse. And of course, Tom and I were like, fantastic, great, we'll do that, you know. And so we both go stand and Mickey Mouse in the center and we, you know, have this picture taken. It's the worst photograph because, you know, Tom was a little patchy. And, and I, you know, I'm, you know, I'm not patchy, but I'm, here's the thing. Mickey Mouse, the character that walks around the park is the way they've painted him is perfect for photographing. Right. Anybody standing beside him is. Yeah. He doesn't need to be touched up. And I don't care how gorgeous you are. I, I, you could even probably have on tons of makeup and you're still not going to be perfect for the camera the way Mickey Mouse is because he's designed that way. So Tom and I just looked horrible and Mickey Mouse looked fantastic. I think Mickey Mouse used that picture for his head shot. Yeah. To get work. I would have to agree with that. Well, nowadays you've got the AI so that, you know, you can be perfect. The idea of AI just nauseates me. We're, we're marching down this path, you know, like, oh, it's a good thing. And everything so far indicates that it's not a good thing, that it's caused all sorts of problems already. And the last thing we need is one more way to fool the public. It's just stupid. What, and the reason we're doing it is because China is, so if we, you know, we don't want to let another country get ahead of us in AI, why don't we wait until China destroys their selves? I like that idea. I like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Why do we have to be, why do we have to be at the head of the pack? It's like we're going to make, you know, I just, it's a horrible idea. So anyways, in answer, in answer to your question. Okay. Well, that, that certainly is a point at which is, although when I got back out on the road again, after the stay at home order, the, the rules in the theater, again, trying to prevent the spread of COVID, the rules in the theater were so sort of ridiculously stacked against a performer, like, okay, normally if I'm doing a show and say we don't sell a lot of tickets, say there's a, you know, a lot of spaces in between audience members, you know, it might be that somebody who runs a theater or something would go out on stage and say, you know what, we got plenty of room down front with some of the people in the back, come down front, right? Because you want to collect that energy into one place. It just makes for a better show. Yes. But this ended up being the opposite. When we got back into the theaters after the, and the clubs after they were pulling back to stay at home order, they would still insist that people sat like feet away from each other, suddenly be like, and they would let, they would let, you know, ticket buyers that came together stay together. But so there would be two people over here, and then this huge, honest space before you got to three people over here, and, you know, it was just, and they weren't allowed to have the place to capacity. So it wasn't even like, oh, I couldn't sell tickets. It was, you weren't allowed to sell to capacity. And oh my gosh, was it hard to do not to mention that I hadn't performed in, you know, what was it a year and a half by then? And it does make a difference. Yeah. So obviously, what you're describing to me, at least it sounds like, and I'm not a doctor, but it sounds like comedy is also a therapeutic for you. It's therapeutic for everybody. In a big way. I also felt, you know, my friend, Nils Lofgren, one night, posted just a pitch, just to assume you a video of a, he plays with Bruce Springsteen a lot, and he just posted a video from a long time ago, not, not a current because it was during the stay at home order, but a video of, you know, Bruce Springsteen performance and Nils's performance. And the camera kept showing the audience. And, you know, what a great time they were having. There is something about experiencing a performance, be it a movie, or, you know, it could be a play, or a ballet, or an opera, or a comedy show, or whatever. Some sort of performance when you're in an audience collectively. And you're having this shared emotional reaction, whether it's, it's something that's scary or suspenseful or sad or funny, you're having this shared emotional reaction. And it reinforces that you're a human being. When you're having the same, you know, the same emotion as everybody else, there's something about that that cannot be replicated, you know, almost any time somebody types LOL into their phone, they're lying. You don't generally laugh out loud when you're alone. When I, when I watch the three stooges by myself, I never laugh out loud. I acknowledge in my head that I think it's funny. But when I used to watch, I used to show them to my kids, and a couple times we went to three stooges film festivals. Oh my God, is that fun. Because you're in a whole audience of people who love the three stooges. And so it's already this powerful reaction from the audience. Is everyone walking around like this? I just, I just, I just, Mo used to talk about, maybe it was Del Lord who said, no, it was a bunch of guys that were, that were of that, you know, help make the three stooges. That's what it was. And one of them said, I, you know, I met him what they were, he says, I gave him this and he did the two finger thing. And the other guy goes, yes, but I gave him this. I love that. I didn't even know you were going there. I just, all I could think of was there, a big group of fans of three stooges. And there's probably a lot of black and blue people leaving that party, but unintentionally, of course. Well, the thing is, when we watched with the audience that was there for this, there were waves of laughter. You know what, you were choking, you were, you were like, gasping for air laughing over stuff. And that's not how I had ever experienced it before. Because before I watched by myself, and there's a big difference. So, I would argue that comedy is therapeutic for everyone, not just the performer, although certainly that's true, but for the audience too. Yeah, especially for the breathing part of that. And of course, when you don't have a broken rib. Let's talk about bombing though, because you, I can't imagine this has happened to you often at all, because you're just so funny naturally anyway. But every comedian has those moments where they just couldn't get the audience to see what they were doing was funny. How do you bounce back and has that ever happened? I should ask you first, has that ever happened to you? That's in a great way. Everything just went sideways. Every comic has those moments where they couldn't get the audience to see that what they were doing is funny. It's an objective thing, isn't it? That's the word subjective thing, whether something is funny or not, who knows. Sometimes I have had arguments with either people that are producing a show or say, somebody, there are situations where I might have written something for a show and somebody will look it over and want to rewrite it. Or add in something or do tell me what to do. And it's not, I don't feel like, oh, I know everything. And so you can't tell me. That's not how I feel at all. What I feel is, since it's me on stage, I'm going to be held responsible for what gets said. I'm not going to be able to say something again, then go, well, that wasn't mine. So, so and so maybe you say that. All right. I thought it was better this way. You know, in the end, the park stops here. And so I do, and I always say to people, I go, I could, I'm not going to argue that I know what's funny. I'm just going to argue that since I'm the person that's going to take the heat for it, one way or the other, then I get to choose. Simple as that. That's fair. I like that. As to what's funny, I couldn't possibly tell you. I really don't know. Silly. I like silly. But I like smart. I like both. I'm a breath man and a candy man. And I've bombed, yeah, I've bombed many times. Oh my God. Okay. So I was invited years ago to perform at Farm Aid. They were doing a, you know, supposedly they were doing a partnership with Comic Relief, which is how they got to me because I used to do Comic Relief. Supposedly, that's what they were doing. But in fact, it was, it was Farm Aid. And there were, I think, two comedians. It was me and another guy. And it was at the Superdome in New Orleans. And they were using like half of it. And I, you know, I agreed to do it because I, well, A was Willie Nelson's event. And I loved Willie Nelson. How can you say no to Willie? Yeah, I mean, we'd never met. He didn't ask me personally, but I thought it was a Willie Nelson thing at that. You know, like, Cruella's got to be really cool if, you know, it was a Willie Nelson thing, right? And, and also the Neville brothers were crying. And I'm, you know, I honestly, I would walk across Hot Stones to, to hear the Neville brothers or to see them. So my manager comes with me because, you know, she wants to see it. And we fly down, we get to, we get, the show's already, because it's a few hours show, like a six hour show or something. So it's already up and running when we get there. And, and she had argued that I had to go on like towards the end or something like because it was somehow prestigious. Or maybe it wasn't even that. Maybe they already knew where they wanted me because here's the thing. I went on in between Chris Christoffers and Neil Young. And so I, they introduced, and the other thing is, so we're walking around this crowd before, you know, before I go on, walking around, you know, listening to music, but walking around the crowd. Well, I, what I hadn't thought about before was there's beer cakes everywhere. And, you know, a lot of people have on like John Deere windbreakers. And it is, by the time, if it go on later in the show, well, they're more drunk. And that, that does not serve me. So it's fun. And as we're walking around and I'm beginning to see what I'm up against, I was already like, okay, this is not going to be good. So I, you know, Chris Christoffers and finishes. And, you know, and by the way, same dynamic here, which is as a musician, you can play while people, you can play while people are talking. Right. I'm sure do they want to probably not, they'd probably rather everybody stop talking, just listen to them probably. But you can do it. As a comic, you really can't. So Chris Christoffers and finishes, but, you know, big, big applause. And now I come on. Somebody introduces me. Now, most of the crowd has no interest in seeing me, no idea who I am. And, and so, you know, the noise level rises right away with people just engaged in conversation, just, just checking out, just not paying any attention to me. And I, I started to do my thing and I've, you know, tried really hard. And behind me, I can hear very loudly Neil Young's bands tuning up. So they were her singing. So I'm barely able to talk loud enough to, you know, overcome the noise level in the room to begin with. And now behind me, there's a ring, ring. I just couldn't believe it. And then I realized, okay, that's what I'm here for. I'm here to kill time while Neil Young warms up. It had nothing to do with them wanting me to entertain. So now it's just, it's really, really bad. And my manager is over on the side. She doesn't usually come with me to shows. There's no, but it's the superdomen's farm aid. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. But, you know, for the most part, there's no reason for her to come with me to a show. But in this case, she's standing watching from, from the side of the stage. And I'm, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I'm done. Right. If people don't want to listen to me, why am I there? That's okay. I don't, I don't need to force myself on them. It's fine. But I don't know. I look over to the side and there she is. And she's making the stretch sign. Oh, go longer. I couldn't believe it. I did you go like this? And I said, what the fuck are you talking about? And she, and she kind of came out a little bit and she goes, they want you to stretch. And I said, you come out here and tell me that. Did she, did you watch on special? Oh, my gosh. Stretch. And I don't know how many people in the audience got how fucking funny that was. I don't know if I convinced them that that was funny. But as I'm standing there, people, some people in the crowd start to go, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil. I know that a lot of those people, you know, really were done with me already and just wanted Neil Young to come out. But this crowd was so drunk that I also believe many of the people yelling, Neil, thought I was Neil Young. No way. They were messed up. So there, that's a great bombing. Wow. Wow. Well, I guess the positive is that you got to open for Neil Young, regardless, which is kind of really historic in and of itself. Oh, by the way, he has a new song. And it's a good new song. It's, I think it's called Big Crime, maybe. It is a, it's a song about what's going on in Washington. And it's got that, you know, old sort of rock and roll, classic Neil Young sound. Yeah. It's got the, you know, the protest Neil Young. It's a good song. I put it on my flat thing. We'll be right back with more of the Comedy Saved Me podcast. Welcome back to the Comedy Saved Me podcast. Awesome. Well, you've been very open about your struggles with alcohol since we're talking about people who are thinking that you were Neil Young when you read the Superdome, because they had their beer goggles on. But can, can you tell us a little bit about how addiction affected maybe your comedy and conversely, how comedy maybe played a role in your recovery? Well, I don't think it's anything particularly unique to my experience, but here's the thing about alcohol in general. It gets, it has, there's such myth surrounding it. There's such myths about what a good time people have, you know, when they're, oh, they're having a good time. I, if I had my life to do over again, I would never have picked up at all. Because I cannot, as I look back, remember so much as one experience, not one, where it made things better in any way. And I think that's part of the reason I kept going as a drinker is because I was like, I just, I haven't done it right yet. You know? Oh, you were practicing to get to the good part. I haven't achieved. I haven't achieved, like, it's, it's not that, oh, you know what, as it turns out, it really, that's all advertising. And, it's, it's advertising. And it's people who don't want to, it's people who don't want to admit it's the emperor's new clothes. It's people who don't want to admit that, that, that the emperor's naked, that alcohol really didn't make anything better for them, even though they wasted tons of time and money on it. And so, so there's that. Yeah, it's, I don't have a lot to say about it. I mean, it, it obviously, because it never made anything better even once ever, it, it didn't. And, you can't think of one. Did it, were you ever afraid, Paula, that when you quit all of that, that you weren't going to be any more of that? It was somehow connected? Oh, no. No, I was funny in kindergarten and I didn't drink in kindergarten. And you knew that. In my craft box, in my, in my Velveeta box that had my crayons, I didn't, I didn't have a, there was no like little shop in there. No, I didn't think that at all, ever, not once. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't play ping pong as well. And that might, Oh, are you good ping pong player? Well, I thought I was. I was a good backyard ping pong player, I was a good basement ping pong player, I was not ever Olympic quality. But, But no, I didn't, I didn't think it had any, even when I was, you know, stupid enough to be a drinker, I didn't think that it enhanced my performance. I knew that it did not. Well, I'm glad that you knew that you were funny without it, because I would imagine that if you were afraid, it may have stopped you from getting back into it. And then we would all be not, not as happy. I mean, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. But, but, you know, my, my, my life, you know, my life improved, I would say a thousand percent, but that would be Trump mask. So I'll just, I'll just stick with 100% as a result of giving up the devil drink. Well, all right. So now that we have got all of this under our belts and accomplished, I, I want to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a comedian and her name is Wendy Leap. Oh, I love Wendy. And she loves you apparently, because she was talking about you in our interview. Paula. And I said, I was going to have you on. How she started taking pictures of a chair at every venue. She had one thing she wanted me to tell you and get a question. Can I play that for you? Sure. All right. Here we go. All right. So inquiring minds want to know, including Wendy Liebman, why do you talk to a chair? Okay. I don't talk to a chair. I have no idea where Wendy got the idea that I talked to the chair. Come on, for real? I don't talk to the chair. I take a picture of a chair. And I think it started because, you know, a lot of times people are like, you know, I'll get like a message, you know, that somebody wants to come backstage, you know, somebody wants to know if they can meet me backstage. And I don't mean like another performer. I mean, like, you know, an audience member wants to know if they can, you know, it's somebody's birthday, they want to come backstage. You know what? Why does everybody want to come backstage? It is so unglamorous. It is so normal. What people think. It's this cement room. And a lot of the older theaters, you know, there's just very little comforts in that room. Or else the hotel, excuse me, or else the theater will want me to come from the hotel like an hour early because it makes them more comfortable to know that I'm there. And they put you in this little room that's all cement room. Exactly. And I mean, I'm not complaining. I'm not suggesting for a moment that I need something more than that little cement room. I do not. I am perfectly comfortable in that little cement room. I don't need to be there for an extra hour. I'd prefer to be in the hotel room. But but so I originally I started taking pictures of the chairs, sort of to say like, okay, look, this is what it is. It's not fancy. There's me and the lobby, if you want to talk to me, come to the lobby. Don't come backstage. It's gross. So that I believe that that was what motivated me in the beginning to take a picture of a chair before I went on. And I don't know at what point I started, I would take a picture of the chair and then I say, and I post, I say, I'm about to tell them in, I tell the name of the city that I'm in. And I don't know when I started doing it, but it was a long, long time ago. And now if I don't post a picture of the chair, people complain. Really? It's become a thing. It's a thing. It's an odd thing. I think people, I mean, clearly, Wendy created this whole story around it in her own mind. So I think everybody has a different idea of why I post the picture of the chair. But to the best of my memory, that's how I started posting the picture of the chair. What's really funny is there are venues that have gone out and found a fancy chair. Just for you. Stug that chair. When I post it, it can be, it can, it can be them in glory. Wow. That is so cool. I like the story behind that. And yes, I agree with you 100%. I never, once I went backstage working in this industry and saw what was going on, I was like, why do people want to come back here? There is nothing going on back here. It's not pretty. Yeah. And usually it's dark. I mean, Joan River's room and I remember it was in the basement of a comedy club in a little cement room, like two by four. And there was nothing in there. I'm like, Joan, how is this possible? She's like, yeah, we don't care. Even the Tonight Show, the first time I ever did the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, right? Growing up watching that show, it all looked so glamorous. And you get there and it's just like, this is what it looks like. So small. It's small. It's just not glamorous. It really is the magic of television. There's a way that they light things and what they do with the camera that makes, puts out a particular image. And good for them. I mean, that's brilliant. But the dressing room was like, it's a teeny little. Maybe it's not cement at the Tonight Show. I can't remember anymore. But I remember it was very small. It's not decorated. It's just there. It's just a room, your dress. And the big, I think they used to have a big liquor thing in there, but that never interested me one way or the other, even when I started. So one time I was in Lake Tahoe, and I think I was working somewhere, but also I was with some friends who stayed a couple of extra nights or something. And I think my favorite was Harris or something. And Liza Minnelli was working there. So before the show, I take a napkin and I write a note to Liza Minnelli who doesn't know me from Adam. But I write this note and I go, you know, I'm here with my friends and I'm like, you know, my performer, my name's Bob Ponce. And I said, we wanted to know if we can come backstage. And I don't know. At that point, I'd never been backstage there. And I really was expecting, you know, it's Liza. It's got to be Claire's, right? And I couldn't believe when whoever, I gave the note to like a security guy or something. And he comes back and he says, yes, come this way, you and your friends come this way. Liza will meet with you backstage. I couldn't believe it. So we go into, I can't remember, maybe it wasn't even the dressing room, might have been the bigger room, the green room, but the green room also very like just on, just not interesting in any way. And so we come back and she couldn't have been more gracious. She meets my friends, she meets me, we sit around and chit chat. And later I thought about it. I was like, okay, why would she have done that? And I think it's because it was depressing for her back there too. So she was just like, it's a green room with some boring. Yeah, total strangers want to come back. And I'm sure they made her be at that place, you know, like an hour and a half early. And she was bored out of her mind. So she was like, yeah, sure, come on back. I do want to tell her something. Yeah, I follow her. Yeah, green room is just that. It's a room that's green and sometimes it has a blue. And hopefully the fruit isn't green in there. I think it's Mary Poppins. Hey, I have one more thing that I want to share. Okay. Thank you for your time, by the way. Here's this. All right. So you ready for this one? This is this. First of all, is that true? Yes. Okay. She wanted me to let you know that her husband when he was seven years old, his parents used to write music for movies, soundtracks and stuff. And he went to school when he came home from school. He told his father that they gave him medicine in school. And his father said, they gave you a shot? And he said, Oh, no, no, they put the medicine on a spoon and put a little sugar cube on it. And they gave it to me that way. And the next day, her father-in-law and mother-in-law, I think, or both wrote spoonful of sugar for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Well, no, the next day for the movie. It was spoonful of sugar for Mary Poppins. I mean, Mary Poppins. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. Wow. Sorry, Wendy. I screwed that up. So her husband, because it was the Sherman brothers who wrote that song. So maybe her husband's father was one of the Sherman brothers. Good man. Wow. Good of. Well, we'll have to get down to that. Wow. Yeah. Either way, Wendy was a huge fan. And I just didn't want to waste a moment, if I could at least connect the two of you and two amazingly talented women in this industry that is so difficult. Before I let you go, you've maintained a career for over 40 years in a notoriously difficult industry. What keeps you going and what still excites Paula Poundstone today? Well, again, as a result of that period of time during the stay at home order, I really know that, you know, how awful it feels to not get to do this. So I am genuine. You know, travel does get to you after a little while. The Cement rooms get to you after a little while. But boy, the part of being in front of an audience and just talking over everything, you know, what's going on in the world, just talking to individuals in the crowd and finding about finding out about the, you know, the area that you're in or a job that somebody does. And having that, I always say that I'm a proud member of the endorphin production industry, because that's what we do for a couple of hours a night is produce endorphins for me and for the people in front of me. And it is, it's a joy. Paula, thank you so much for your honesty and your humor and for everything that you do. And I'm so glad that you are still is so much excited as you were even back in the day to still continue to go out there and entertain people and make them happy. And Lord knows we need a lot of it right now. I mean, a lot of laughter is. We do need a lot of it. And as we've seen, comedians are telling truths right now. And I mean, I can't swear that every single comedian is telling truth. But I recently got a kitten, and I named him Colbert. And I wrote to I tweeted out a picture of him and I tagged Colbert show. And I said, this is not because you've had me on. I said, because in fact, I don't think you've had me on enough. I named my kitten Colbert, because Stephen Colbert is a goddamn American hero. And because he's telling truths. I love it. And one other thing, wait, wait, don't tell me. We can hear you there often on NPR. That is correct. I have a podcast called Nobody listens to Paula Palliston. I was just going to say, where else can we find more of Paula? I'm also doing a series of videos that you can find on YouTube or Instagram or any of those kinds of places. But certainly YouTube isn't easy to find. They're mostly called Hey, Donald Trump. And they're just a couple of minutes each, or if that. And it's me talking to Donald Trump. Not. Oh boy. He's not in fact in front of me. But that's the premise. The premise is that I am talking directly to Donald Trump. And they've been fun to do. And I try to make sure I'm working with facts. Listen, there's nothing better when you can just turn things into comedy, regardless of facts, just making people laugh. If it's funny, it's funny, Paula, right? I mean, not meant to hurt anybody. It's just meant to make you laugh. Yeah. Well, good to have some facts in there. Yeah, occasionally. Paula Founstone. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. I had you talk so much. You're choking at the end. And I did not intend to do that. But best wishes to you and all of the future endeavors. And I hope that maybe our paths will cross again. And thanks for spending so much time chatting with me about comedy and your life and just being so available and wonderful. Thank you so much. I had a great time. I don't want to let you go. I said I had a great time. I appreciate it.