A Kathy Griffin concert is a little like a party where there's that one person who breathlessly and profanely regales you with the latest gossip on all your friends and other people you've heard of.
For 90 minutes.
Only Griffin does her gossiping on a stage and all the people she talks about are her friends — or enemies, depending on if they can take a joke from the self-proclaimed D-lister.
An enthusiastic crowd of about 1,300 got most of the rapid-fire jokes and anecdotes, and laughed heartily at them, when the Queen of Dish returned Thursday for her first show here in four years.
Gwyneth Paltrow, a favorite target, apparently can't take a joke. Griffin, who wears her status as "the most avoided celebrity" as a badge of honor, recalled crossing paths with the actress for a taping of TV's "Glee," then imitated the put-upon star's "pissy face." You could just picture Paltrow doing that.
Apparently, Whitney Houston doesn't find Griffin's star-mocking schtick too slick either. Griffin again called on her own thespic skills (that's thespic, not lesbic) to illustrate the disheveled, finger-waving diva, a scary diarrhea-inducing encounter backstage at the Billboard Music Awards.
"Her wig is like a mood ring," Griffin cracked.
Paula Abdul may not even know she's the butt of the joke. Griffin recalled an encounter with the former "American Idol" and current "X Factor" judge, infamous for her lapses of coherency, on the red carpet last Sunday at the Primetime Emmy Awards.
"I will just say, and I'm not a pharmacist, she didn't seem to be aware of her whereabouts," Griffin noted.
The petite redhead got big laughs throughout the show, which flew by at an energetic, rapid-fire pace, so fast, in fact, that the verbally peripatetic forgot her place as she careened from the Emmys to "Jersey Shore" to Nancy Grace to "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" to Michelle Bachmann and the Kardashians, whose only apparent talents appear to be a gift for self-promotion and knack for humiliation.
"Wait a minute," she said. "What was I talking about?"
It was one of the funniest and most unexpected moments in a stream of trashy pop culture consciousness that veered a little too heavily into the world of reality TV (sorry, I just can't watch that much of a medium that relies on someone else's stupidity to make me feel better about myself) and not enough on politics.
Her knocks on Texas Gov. Rick Perry weren't that funny because they weren't insightful or informed enough. Griffin's at her best when she clearly knows a lot about her subject matter.
I could have easily listened to more of her cutting thoughts on the Palins and Bachmann's of today's political dog-and-pony show.
She did score early and often with local references, always a good way to break the ice and get the party started. Griffin had tweeted earlier (I can't tell you the word she uses to refer to tweets but it rhymes with watts) that three people asked what she was doing here within five minutes of her arrival in El Paso.
She couldn't resist making a few jokes about the name of the local car dealer Dick Poe, noting those kinds of cheap shot comedy gifts "don't often literally fall into your lap." Good thing she didn't see those "Hi, Dick!" TV commercials.
She got a better response for a bit about her Fox News-loving, "91-year-old alcoholic mother" who was concerned for her safety while here. "You're gonna be right near Joo-war-ez," she said, imitating her mom after half a box of wine.
Griffin, an outspoken advocate of lesbian, gay and transgender rights, saved her sharpest jabs for the local pastor leading the effort to recall Mayor John Cook and two City Council members for rescinding his ballot initiative to block the city from extending health insurance to the partners of gay employees.
"I know I'm going to hell because Pastor Tom (Brown) told me," she said, raising her middle fingers in salute. She added a few unprintable words, then celebrated the sizable homosexual contingent in her audience (some waved rainbow flags).
"You are on the edge, El Paso," she said, pointing out that with gays at the center of a legal battle here and their ability to serve openly at Fort Bliss and all other military installations, she quipped that we have "a coat of many colors."
Griffin made fun of as many friends as she did foes, from Anderson Cooper (she sent him a text saying he looked like he'd put on weight while covering the hunger crisis in Somalia) to Ryan Seacrest, whom she kept referring to as "she."
Griffin also pokes fun at her own celebrity. One of the t-shirts she sold in the lobby was a takeoff of Andy Warhol's multi-colored portraits of cultural icons, the joke being that she's not an icon. Yet.
A stand-up comic by trade, Griffin expertly closed with a funny story about her friendship with Cher, which she still finds hard to fathom, and their inability to order a simple pizza without the help of an assistant.
Griffin's smart, funny and can talk a mile a minute. But it's not a mean-spirited act, nor was it the kind of funny that constantly brings tears to your eyes.
Unlike that chatty Kathy at the party, it's less about spilling the beans on celebs and celebutantes than chiding them for their excesses, insecurities, facades and frail egos.
"These celebrities never (blanking) learn," she said, looking right at the audience, "what you already know."
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