Kathy Griffin Wants a Tony

It's no surprise that Kathy Griffin won me over in her Broadway show which, let's be honest, was just her doing a stand-up show in a Broadway theater. Mic center stage, curtains hanging on either end, and Kathy uncensored for two hours. I've probably watched all 700 of her Bravo stand-up specials, and I was a dedicated viewed of her realiy show until it became her hanging out with celebrities and doing special theme episodes. It got a little forced. I don't blame her, but I did lose interest.

Regardless, she killed at the Belasco in a set that was surprisingly (and oddly, excitingly) low on celebrity gossip. She thrashed Elisabeth Hasslebeck (thank God), shot back at Sarah Palin, and couldn't avoid some Charlie Sheen jokes, but she played fast and furious with politics, stories of the week she had spent in New York, and a distressing sex talk with Gloria Steinem.

In case one didn't believe her promise to make each show different every night, she more than once broke out a pen to take notes on what she had just said. "Thanks guys. That's totally going in tomorrow." Besides that, I read reports on the first show when she had half an hour of Real Housewives comedy. She brought those ladies up not a once on Tuesday, giving us less Nene Leakes and more Michelle Bachman who she apparently confronted at a White House correspondents event when Bachman's assistant started videotaping them. "Were you born a bigot, or is that something you learned to become?" she apparently asked the horrifying politician before suggesting we Google the incident if we didn't believe her. "Everything I'm saying is true!" Unlike most comedians, I believed everything she said. Except, perhaps, that she's not bright. One thing that irks me about Griffin is her insistence on playing dumb. "I don't read!" she said more than once. But it's quite obvious that no stupid person can be as acerbic and sharp as she is. You don't have top be just like us, Kathy. It's the fact that you're not that makes us go see you.

While her targets might be easy--really, Richard Hatch, Gwyneth Paltrow, Barbara Walters, they practically write jokes about themselves, her execution never is. It's not really possible, I'm finding, to write about comedy in a way that is itself funny. And that's fine. It just leaves me less to write. So in summary, Kathy Griffin: funny as fuck. Even when she's not talking about Sharon Stone.