Last Thursday a friend had invited me along to see Joan Rivers at Centre for the Living Arts.
This was the first time I had seen her live. To be expected were the numerous of blue-hair rinses with expectations they were coming to an evening of “coffee chat” with Joan Rivers, and we were out in Mississauga.
Instead, I’d venture to say they probably never have heard references to female anatomy in all its forms in their entire lives than they did that evening.
Having never seen Joan River’s live, I’ve heard that she puts it all out there and crosses every line there is to be crossed. What I discovered was a very funny 76-year-old woman who could care less about what you thought.
One of the reasons I think she can get away with it is that she has a history of community involvement, and raising a lot of money for charities.
For example, was she got on to the subject of AIDS, I laughed quite a bit, mostly because she dared go there and pulled it off.
“There was a time when AIDS was killing everyone, now it’s a long-term chronic illness. I don’t want to be delivering meals to the same guy three Thanksgivings in a row, and then watch him go off to the gym. Either AIDS is going to kill you, or I am!” she says motioning as if she holding a knife up.
At Spirits for their weekly Open Mic night, a friend and I had a recent conversation about how you don’t come to comedy and then complain about being offended. “Comedy is how we work all this shit out in our lives.” says my friend, a comic herself.
Having said that, one guy that night told a joke about rather than go to Canada’s Wonderland to wait in long line ups, and pay 60 dollars to feel like you were going to die for five minutes, why not just go get an HIV test done.
He lost the audience on that one, and had to work to get us back. But that’s comedy, people take a lot of risk: Sometimes it works, sometimes doesn’t. I wasn’t offended, but slightly uncomfortable for a second. The rest of his set was quite funny and he did win us back.
Joan continued on with her brand of inappropriate humour.
On Jennifer Aniston:
“She’s so needy that a rapist wouldn’t even go near her” Pretending to be Jennifer Aniston talking to the rapist, “Will I see you again?”
On getting older:
“Nobody told me when I was going to get old my vagina was going to drop. One day I looked down and I was wearing bunny slippers. Now I can have sex in one room, and watch TV in the other.”
On 9/11:
“Did you know that the families of people who died in 9/11 all got five million dollars, five million dollars. Really I can think of a few relatives that should have been there. Oh grow up! Just wait until Thanksgiving and look around the table.
It was a great night out, and I hadn’t laughed that hard since I’d seen Kathy Griffin.
I now know the litmus test of a good comedy night is when people walk out, something both Joan and Kathy can easily make people do.
