Friday, March 5, 2004 | 8:24 a.m.
Interesting thing about laundry: Some folks have no qualms airing the dirty stuff, while others want nothing more than to wash away the soils and stains.
Count Paula Poundstone among the latter -- literally as well as figuratively.
It turns out the comedian secretly yearns to be the proud proprietor of a Laundromat. It's probably no coincidence that her great-aunt Irene once owned such an establishment in Huntsville, Ala.
"I hadn't really thought about that fact, but in recent years I'd been thinking, 'Oh, man, I'd really like to own a Laundromat,' because it seems that it would employ some of my best skills," Poundstone says.
A few years ago the comic -- who headlines Sunset Station's Club Madrid on Saturday -- was diagnosed as having obsessive compulsive disorder, which might explain her penchant for cleaning.
In her younger years, for example, she bused tables at a restaurant where she also lived for three months, "because I wasn't finished cleaning it. I would just stay on a couch in the office the few hours that I slept a night, and get back up and be right back at it the next day, and I was delighted to do it."
Couple the cleanliness compulsion with her chatty tendencies and, well ...
"I figure if I wore the change belt, so people didn't get the change from the machine so it was more of a personalized business, then my Fluff 'n' Fold would be world renowned," she says. "And then I thought about it and realized I actually have Laundromats in my blood. That's probably what drove Aunt Irene to it."
It's tough to gauge whether Poundstone is joking, especially since it seems she's given great thought to the details ("Well, you know, I'm alone a lot, keep in mind. I travel a lot"). In any case, her planned fabric-softener dreams will likely remain on the spin cycle for some time, seeing as how she's in the middle of her ongoing "Unauthorized Autobiography" comedy tour.
"It's not the kind of tour that would be on the back of a sweatshirt. It's a relentless tour," the two-time Cable ACE Award winner explained during a recent call from a stop in Birmingham, Ala. "But it seems to be going well. I tell my little jokes and people laugh, and that's exactly the dynamic I'm looking for."
The tour's title works on a couple of levels: One of the ways Poundstone's OCD manifests itself, she says, "is that I can't shut up, and so therefore every conversation I have is sadly an unauthorized autobiography. I always do that thing where I come away feeling, 'Why did I say that?' " On the plus side, "I have rather crafted it into a paycheck."
The name also implies that Poundstone, the mother of three adopted children, may take the opportunity to set the record straight in terms of the 2001 scandal that rocked her family and career.
That year she became front-page tabloid news after being arrested and charged with felony child endangerment for driving drunk while her children were in the car, as well as a misdemeanor child abuse charge and four charges of lewd acts with a minor, which were later dropped after it was determined they were untrue.
As a result of the events, however, she briefly lost custody of her children.
Poundstone entered a rehab facility, was given five year's probation and has since regained custody of her kids -- ages 5, 9 and 12 -- who live with her in Los Angeles. Though she has repeatedly apologized publicly for her actions, she insists the media continually resurrects the issue of her legal troubles.
"I really do feel the need to move on, but it's only because I'm asked" that 44-year-old Poundstone continues to express her remorse, she says. "I wouldn't turn a conversation in that direction. I wouldn't say, 'And now, let me apologize again,' or 'Now let's discuss my personal problems.' My personal problems are my personal problems, and they're really a little bit boring to everybody else, I would think."
In her defense, she says, "I don't think I ever set myself up as any kind of behavioral icon. I don't think on my best days anyone should exactly pattern themselves after me. I'm not clergy; I'm not a 'role model' in that way -- never have been, never will be."
She discusses the incidents "a little bit in my act ... Sometimes I address it; some nights I go into it more than others ... You know, the parts of life that are challenging in a way that I haven't yet found humorous, well, those don't come up onstage, and there's not many of those anyway."
These days the working mom does seemingly everything in her power to keep her children's routines up and running, even when comedy takes her on the road.
"I talk to the kids on the phone every day, and I read to them over the phone," as well as help with their homework assignments, she says. "I wish there was a 'Bewitched'-kind of way of wiggling my nose and traveling back and forth, because the part where I do the job doesn't take very long at all -- most of it's just sort of being stuck in a hotel somewhere."
Of course, being away from home provides Poundstone one luxury she's not often afforded while tending to her children: the peace and quiet required to continue work on the book of "somewhat autobiographical" comedic essays she's been penning "bloody forever. I think part of my problem may be my overuse of the comma, but we'll see about that."
For five years Poundstone wrote a bimonthly column for Mother Jones magazine, and has also contributed pieces to Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar. In 1997 she produced "Completely Yours," a children's audio book.
Interestingly enough, "I don't do computers," she says, "which apparently, I'm told, leaves me horribly in the lurch, although it's my understanding that Dickens managed without. He may have screwed up the curve for everybody. I think he was using the quill, as well ... He didn't even have a ball-point pen and, you know, you never see splotches on his books."
Good thing: Otherwise, Poundstone might be compelled to try to remove them.
Out for laughs
Local comic Kathleen Dunbar's show, "Divas of Comedy," has a new home at Sahara's Casbar Theatre Lounge. The stand-up show, which also features local radio personality/comic Carla Rae, was formerly housed at Greek Isles hotel-casino. The new show time is 9 p.m. Monday and admission is free; call 737-2111.
When Evan Davis isn't performing comedy -- as he will Monday through March 14 at The Comedy Stop at the Trop -- he's penning it.
Davis founded Headwriters, a "comedy writing consortium" consisting of several pro comedians (Vegas frequenters Wayne Kotter and Rick Corso among them) who hire out their talents to write scripts for commercials, acceptance speeches, comedy monologues and such.
archive
