Who: Lisa Lampanelli
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Omaha Civic Auditorium Music Hall, 17th and Davenport Streets
Tickets: $37.75 at www.ticketmaster.com, Ticketmaster retail locations or 800-745-3000
Information: www.omahacivic.com or 444-3353
Note: This show is for mature audiences.
Go ahead. Sit in the front row.
If you do, know that Lisa Lampanelli is bound to pick on you.
The self-proclaimed insult comic, also known as the Queen of Mean, might call you out in front of the whole crowd.
“If you're sitting in the front of my show, you got those tickets on purpose. I just kinda go for it. ... There's usually four or five people in the front that can take a joke,” Lampanelli said.
“You just pick what you got. If you're in Omaha and there's only three black people in the crowd, I'm going to make fun of them.”
Lampanelli turns things that have been annoying her into her act, railing on every seemingly inappropriate subject under the sun. Warning: Frequent topics include sex and race, and the show definitely is for mature audiences.
“A lot of stuff has been annoying me lately. I have really weird feelings about everything. I take everything personally,” she said. Her raging, she said, “is better for the audience.”
Lampanelli wasn't always in stand-up. The 48-year-old was a journalist until she took a comedy class when she was 30. Her first time on stage, she killed.
She got her big break at the Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase, which was broadcast on Comedy Central, but she said “the point at which I started selling tickets was the Pam Anderson roast.”
In a new book, Lampanelli reviews her material, the roasts, things that bother her and her more recent struggles with food addiction. The title of the book, “Chocolate, Please,” is a reference to her love of food and “love for the African-American gentlemen,” she said.
A few things have changed for Lampanelli recently: Now that she's engaged, she's not chasing after men, and she recently went to rehab (“You haven't lived until you've got to rehab for food.”).
Contact the writer:
444-1557, kevin.coffey@owh.com
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