Margaret
Cho
"I'm the One
That I Want"
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St., 778-5625.
8 pm Friday-Saturday, May 5-6
$30
WW:
What's the worst pun on your name that you've come across?
Cho: Oh gosh,
"The Cho Must Go On," "Cho Business," "It's Cho Time," "Cho
and Tell," "On with the Cho"--they're all equally pretty
bad, and everyone thinks that they've thought of it for
the first time.
Margaret Cho has the sweetest voice. The acclaimed Korean-American
comedian is invariably described as "bawdy," "brash" and
"sassy," but when we spoke to her on the telephone last
week, she sounded like a very all-American girl.
Not at all like the self-proclaimed fag hag who has notched
well-publicized sexcapades and drug run-ins. Not like a
woman scathed by Hollywood's eye-clawing brutality. And,
still, certainly not like a pushover.
Like all performers who base their work on their own lives,
Cho's bio has been dragged over the media coals. Is she
sick of discussing the lessons she's drawn from her past,
which are the basis for her solo show "I'm the One That
I Want"? Not at all.
"I've let go of trying to diet my way to happiness or trying
to find the right relationship in order to be happy," Cho
says, with the Phoenix-rising candor she brings to her show.
"As soon as I didn't think there was something out there
that would fix me and looked inward, it was just so amazing."
If Cho were a rocker, her story would be a cinch for Behind
the Music. Promising young comedian defies first-generation
immigrant parents' awkward rigidity with in-your-face jokes.
Comedian starts performing in Bay Area at age 15. Comedian
sharpens talons on the club circuit and teaches Janeane
Garofalo how to smoke cigarettes. Comedian lands her own
ABC sitcom, All American Girl. But there are too
many bitchy cooks in the kitchen, the pressure cooker too
intense. Comedian bottoms out.
Viperlike executives deem her face unpleasingly round and
her hips too heavy. Confused starlet drops 30 pounds in
two weeks. Kidneys fail. The program is canceled. Fallen
star turns to rock-and-roll ruination: booze, drugs, sex.
The difference between Margaret Cho and the bloated David
Crosbys of the world is that Cho came full circle before
hitting 30. She cleaned up her act, got a dog and pulled
an Oprah. Now 31, Cho has transformed her grotesque industry
experience and subsequent downfall into an uproarious performance
that delivers "messages of self-love, self-reliance and
self-worth, and things that we don't hear in our culture
as much as we need to," she says.
Thank God she's funny.
Pedantry doesn't sell, and if we are to believe the critics'
hype and the proof of sold-out shows, "I'm the One That
I Want" is free of Horatio Alger rhetoric. "The show is
basically a story told in jokes," explains Cho.
After putting some distance between herself and the pain
endured at the hands of ABC, Cho was able to turn trauma
into comedy. People relate.
"Everyone understands not fitting in and wanting to, and
that the standards set by society are just impossible to
meet," she says.
Want testimonials? Sure:
"I recently saw you at USC, and I have to tell you that
you are the GREATEST fucking thing to hit the face of this
earth. Being Asian-American and gay, I recognized that,
yes, it's OK to be me."--John Wirfs
"I LOVED your show in Philly. I actually have a friend
who wanted to fast so she would be thin for the audition
for my high school's production of Anything Goes.
Before I saw your show I was like, 'You really shouldn't
do that!' But after your moving show, I sat her down and
did a li'l one-man intervention. She didn't fast. P.S. You
also made me love women with fat arms :-)."--Bill Magee
"Your show last night was the nuts! My wife and I had a
fantastic time. We loved your brutal honesty. You are a
role model in the truest sense, be yourself and believe
in your self."--Kenneth
Clearly, Cho strikes a powerful chord with her audience.
And though she slips into namby-pamby psych-speak in conversation--"grounding,"
"centering," etc.--Cho speaks a very different, un-PC language
in front of a crowd.
"People are less accepting of women talking about sexuality,"
she says. "I think the way the women talk to each other
is equally, if not more, down and dirty and nastier than
what men say. If men really heard what women said to each
other, I'm sure that they'd be really upset because their
illusions would be shattered."
For her part, Cho shatters expectations on all fronts.
The careers her parents presented as acceptable were librarian
or teacher--"something staid and respectable and female
and sweet and quiet," she says. Hollywood demanded that
she be a size 6. But Cho figured out her own unique
formula for success: humor and self-acceptance--fat arms
and all.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
