ON a recent trip
to the Canyon Ranch spa in
The next day her
publicist phoned to tell her she had been nominated for a Grammy Award for best
comedy album for "Dirty Girl" (Warner Brothers Records), a CD taken
from her Comedy Central special of the same name. "I woke up the next
morning thinking maybe Id dreamed it," Ms. Lampanelli
recalled in a recent interview at a
For someone who didnt see live stand-up
comedy until she was 30, Ms. Lampanelli has rapidly
established herself. Last year she played clubs or concert halls almost every
weekend. "Its the only time Im truly happy," said Ms. Lampanelli, now 47, who is also known for her appearances
on Comedy Central celebrity roasts and "The Howard
Stern Show," and who has several television projects in the works,
including an animated pilot under consideration by Comedy Central.
She is often
compared to Don Rickles for
the way she heckles the audience, lobbing insults that play on ethnic and
social stereotypes. In Dirty Girl" she thanks an Asian-looking
audience member for not staying home to practice his violin. She asks all the
mothers to identify themselves by clapping, then adds, "Hispanic women,
you dont have to clap, thats a given." And after she implores a
48-year-old white man to reveal his age, she says: "You look 73. Kill
yourself."
They arent even jokes," Ms. Lampanelli
said. She uses the most blatant, politically incorrect quips so that people
will laugh at the absurdity of them, she added, although she routinely
encounters audience members who commend her afterward for sticking it to some
group. "I feel sorry for those people," she said.
Although her
routines often leave jaws hanging, Ms. Lampanelli
said she never heedlessly hurts anyone: "As soon as I see a glimmer of
that, Im out." At times, though, especially when she was just
beginning, her humor has backfired with audiences that didnt
know what to expect. The worst day of her performing
career came seven years ago after a run of jokes at the expense of Italians,
Jews and blacks. A latecomer called her a racist, yelling, "All you do is
black jokes." Ms. Lampanelli, who often talks
about her black boyfriends onstage, was livid. Then, to her surprise, she broke
down crying, and the show disintegrated."They
kind of walked out," she said. "You never forget that."
Last year, before
a performance at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which is also home to
the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, she came under attack from
protesters who felt she went too far on the radio when she cracked that
"God hates deaf people." Still, some deaf students attended,
including Mich Gerson, 23,
who sat up front near an American Sign Language interpreter. Ms. Gerson said in an e-mail message that while Ms. Lampanelli "gave all the deaf students hell," she
and others in the audience found it very funny. "I dont think she
knew it," Ms. Gerson added, "but she was
mocking a lot of the deaf communitys idiosyncrasies, which made her routine
10 times funnier."
While Ms. Lampanelli talks like a truck driver, she dresses pure
girly-girl. In performance she resembles a 50s housewife in her pearls,
shirtwaist dresses and button-down sweaters. "The more conservative you
dress, the more you can get away with," she said, twirling a long blond
curl.
She suspects that
her appeal also stems from the low self-esteem she projects. Often the butt of
her own jokes, she ridicules herself for her weight and for being an easy
catch. She likes to say that all her boyfriends have one thing in common:
"my crummy taste."
Even she can be
surprised by what pops out during her rapid-fire monologues, like the first
time she told an audience that "AIDS is obviously the best diet ever."I thought, Where
did that come from?"
The short answer is, her upbringing. She grew up in a middle-class Italian
family in suburban
During her
undergraduate years at
The idea of doing
comedy came to her in 1990 while she was working as a party D.J., when she
discovered that she enjoyed talking into a microphone. After a trip to a comedy
club, she took a course in improvisation that culminated in her first
successful stand-up performance "fashioned mostly around Weight Watchers
jokes" and an invitation to go on the road with the headliner. A scorching
roast of
Since then she
has appeared several times on "The Tonight Show With
Jay Leno" and in small film roles,
including one in the coming Owen Wilson
comedy "Drillbit Taylor." She will make her
debut at Carnegie Hall in May.
She said fans
sometimes thanked her "for letting us see were all the same,"
but her reason for being a cutup is less altruistic: "I love
misbehaving."