Comedian Paula Poundstone, about whom we’ve all wondered (the ties! the singlehood! the sarcasm!), is mounting a comeback. After pleading no contest to child-endangerment charges (she admits she was drunk while driving her kids) and entering rehab in 2001, she is now post-AA, post-tabloid headlines, a cool million in debt, and happy to talk about it all — on her standup tour; in her new book, There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say; and on an hour-long special airing tonight on Bravo, called “Look What the Cat Dragged In.” Her show kicks off Bravo’s “Funny Girls” miniseries, which also features Joan Rivers and Caroline Rhea.
I’m glad she’s back onstage. I wore out my tape of her “Cats, Cops and Stuff” HBO special and made all my friends watch it. I still haven’t seen much that surpasses her bit about her cats being horrified watching her shower, or anything bolder than the way she rolled her underwear over the waistband of her pants in her live show several years ago. And she reportedly does lots of her patented improvisational “Where are you from? What do you do?” audience interaction in the Bravo special. Should be a good break between election results, anyway — I’ll need something to keep my blood pressure down, no matter what happens.
