The last time award-winning comedian Paula Poundstone was in Durango was in 2018. A lot has changed in those few years – political and social turmoil; weird weather; and, oh yeah – we’ve somehow managed to get through a pandemic.
What hasn’t changed, though, is how funny Poundstone is, even in the face of pretty difficult times.
Poundstone returns to Durango on Thursday when she’ll perform at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College. She said she’s been back on the road for almost a year, and even when she was stuck at home like the rest of us, she was still punching in for the daily grind.
“I worked my a** off. I wasn’t on the road. I made comedy videos, I made a really goofy little homemade game show, I continued working on my podcast and I continued to do ‘Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me,’ although I’m not on that every week,” she said. “I had no days off; I just worked during the week – every day was prepping for the next thing – it was grueling. But even so, I was well aware that I was luckier than most. And I exercised and walked the dogs a lot.”
If you haven’t visited Poundstone’s website – paulapoundstone.com – you should, especially for her videos under the “RX Laughter Videos” tab. There, you will find her “Paula’s Workout” series featuring many of her pets; remote learning videos with “Miss Nancy” (and featuring her cat, Tonks, who tries to steal her raisin toast and Pop-Tarts); and for you budding chefs out there, cooking with “The Rhonda Series.”
And as for her current feline situation (Poundstone is an avid cat lover), she said she’s got 10 now, down from 16 before the pandemic.
If yo go
What: Paula Poundstone.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday (April 21).
Where: Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive.
Tickets: $31.50-$40. Available online at https://bit.ly/3vzNOuT.
More information: Visit https://bit.ly/3vzNOuT. For more information about Poundstone, visit her website at paulapoundstone.com.
“In the midst of the pandemic, my cats kept dying. And it wasn’t because of the pandemic; they were just old. I just must have gotten a lot around the same time, I don’t remember anymore,” she said. “Actually, last spring, I got two new kittens, I didn’t think I was ever going to again, and I thought, ‘You know, I’ll just let the herd thin.’ But it was a friend of a friend contacted me and said she had a neighbor who had kittens. I went over and looked at them, and of course, as soon as you look at them you’re like, ‘OK, I’m taking those.’ It turned out to be a really great decision because, although now they’re full-grown and they’re just vandals, it was really fun during this period of time where everybody, including myself, was incredibly depressed, so just sitting down and watching kittens for a little while was very healing.”
It’s that idea of healing, along with her comedy, Poundstone wants to bring to the stage and to her audience: “I want them to get more than their fair share of dopamine hits and all the healing that that brings. I think that’s the No. 1 thing.”
Cue the Three Stooges.
Poundstone said she has been a major Three Stooges fan since she was a little girl watching them on morning TV. (“I’m well aware that they’re stupid and silly, and that’s sort of what I like.”) One of the things she did a couple of times with her children was catch the Three Stooges Film Festival that’s held at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California.
“I’d never seen them on the big screen before – big, beautiful silver screen – and the best part of all: We’re in a packed theater of people who love the Three Stooges. I’ve seen each of those shorts, no exaggeration, I’ve seen each one 50 times at least. I don’t generally laugh when I’m by myself; I acknowledge in my head that I think it’s funny,” she said. “But here I was with this crowd of people, what we had in common was we all loved the Three Stooges. My kids, too, I looked down the aisle at them as we were watching, we were caught in waves of laughter.”
And it’s that collective laughter that really counts, she said, and what she wants for her audience – that feeling of connection with other people, even if the only thing you have in common is the current experience.
“You don’t laugh like that when you’re by yourself. You just acknowledge in your head that you think it’s funny, but you don’t laugh laugh,” she said. “There’s something about the human condition – I think raccoons might have it, too – where this shared emotion does something that makes us more human. It’s nice. And you just can’t get it by yourself.
“When somebody types into their phone ‘LOL,’ they’re lying. They might have made a mirthful sound, but it wasn’t really laughing. So that’s the thing, that feeling of connection. That feeling of ‘Oh my god, I do that too,’ which is such a great – I mean I’m so lucky because I have things that go wrong, which doesn’t set me apart from anybody else in any way, but when something goes wrong for me, I go on stage and tell the story and enjoy that feeling of I’m not the only one and how funny it is when you say it out loud.”
katie@durangoherald.com
