Ready to riff: Paula Poundstone brings her quick wit to the Garde

August 06, 2018 12:00 am • Last Updated: August 07, 2018 12:45 pm

By Kristina Dorsey
Features Editor

Paula Poundstone (Photo by Michael Schwartz)

Paula Poundstone brings her quick wit to the Garde

It seems as though, when it comes to comedy, Paula Poundstone can do it all.

She’s been a standup comic for decades, road-warrioring her way back and forth across the country, melding clever prepared material with ingenious improvisation.

She’s often a panelist on NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” riffing on the week’s news on what is technically a quiz show but is really an ode to the art of ad-libbing.

She has written two books, the most recent being 2017’s “The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.” For that release, she tried different things to see if they could inspire happiness — including renting a Lamborghini for a day; trying to get fit; and helping others by visiting a nursing home. The book also touches on Poundstone’s personal life with her three adopted children, Toshia, Alley and Thomas E.

She has just started a new podcast called “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone” with her buddy Adam Felber. The episodes cover a deliriously and comically wide range of topics, from an intimacy expert’s advice on how to maintain friendships, to Poundstone and Felber watching the last “Mission Impossible” movie to see if they’d recommend folks go to the new one.

Poundstone has done HBO specials and guested on pretty much every talk show. Maybe you caught her July 16 appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where she said, “Electing Trump is to Americans what beaching themselves is to whales. … Scientists don’t understand it. The only difference is we don’t have another species to shove us back in the water.”

On Friday, Poundstone, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., is back at the Garde Arts Center (she was last there in 2013) to do her standup. She spoke by phone recently about, well, everything because she’s Paula Poundstone and she can find something interesting to say about virtually any subject.

On the parts of her standup show where she talks to the audience and, based on what they say, she ad-libs:

“That is my favorite part of any stage show that I do, just talking to the audience. I do the time-honored ‘Where are you from? What do you do for a living?,’ and stuff comes up. My manager tells people I know who to pick, but that’s a load of (crap), that’s not true at all. I have no idea who to pick. ANYBODY, when you get them talking, is great. I don’t care who they are. Anybody has an experience, and it’s either funny because I do know a little something about it, or it’s funny because I don’t know anything about it …

“People literally think I research the place I go to, and it always makes me laugh when they say that because that would require the E word — effort — and I don’t do that. … In that room full of people who have come out to laugh for the night, there’s every tool you need, there’s every ingredient you need. The other thing is, I’ve done it for 39 years. It’s a muscle, I think; it’s a way of listening. I go through the night like a Roomba — I’m picking up little things here and there, and I’m collecting them, and I’m not doing it overtly, necessarily. These things sort of collect in my head, and usually there’s great stuff to come of that.”

On her new podcast:

“One of the few things we all have in common now, other than we breathe oxygen and don’t eat our young, is we have a podcast. What we realized was Adam and I could pretty much make our sandbox and play in it with our own rules. … He’s very quick, so it’s just plain fun to have a topic to go at with Adam. And really ‘Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone,’ we’re billing it as a comedy advice show, but in truth, we’re just looking for subject matter that comes through the door that he and I can have fun with.”

On “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”:

“I’ve been doing ‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’ for 17 years. I’m one of the luckiest performers in the world because that really is so much fun, and they’ve treated me so nicely. It’s just a very high-quality show. I’m proud to be on it.”

On what research she does for “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”:

“I hold the record for losses, so my research technique should not be copied. I watch the news during the week because I think I’m supposed to as a citizen. Although what (expletive) difference it makes, I can’t quite tell. I try to watch the (PBS) ‘NewsHour’ as often as I can because it’s really a well done news broadcast. …

“And then to prepare for ‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” specifically — this is a really sad approach, by the way, and I’m not proud of it in any way — I get, well, really my assistant gets the New York Post for me for a week. The truth is, three-quarters of it is just wasted paper for me, but they do have news of the weird and they do have broad-stroke national stories. … It’s an awful paper, it’s really heinous, and I wash my hands after I look at it, but here’s the thing: not only do they have news of the weird, which is helpful because that’s what really trips you up on ‘Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’ … but the other thing is it folds out, so when I take it on an airplane — because usually I might get to look at a couple before I leave for Chicago (where ‘Wait Wait’ is recorded), but usually that’s just wishful thinking on my part, and instead what I do is, I carry seven New York Posts with me onto the airplane. Because they open out like a book in that godawful tabloid style, I can control it in my seat. Whereas something like the New York Times, one story starts here and ends over there, and the paper’s too big, I can’t even keep it in my seat. I open it out, and I’m blocking the guy in the middle seat’s screen.”

Poundstone has written numerous columns, two books and is working on a novel. That doesn’t mean she loves the process:

“You know, writing SUCKS. It’s a little bit, I think, like backpacking in that the truth is — maybe because I’m not a very good backpacker — but the majority of backpacking is (expletive) swatting bugs and adjusting the goddamn straps because everything is too heavy and sweating and being lost and being frustrated. As a result of going to that trouble, there are moments of views, for example, that unless you were standing right at that place, you (wouldn’t get) — sort of blissful moments of finally laying down or sitting that wouldn’t feel that way in any other setting. So there are these great joys. But they are only as a result of just heinous slogging.”

The novel she is working on is about a kid with electronics addictions — which her son, Thomas E, has battled, as she touched on in her book "The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness." On why that’s the focus:

“I just think it’s such an important story, and it needs to be told in as many forms — needs to be recorded and painted and filmed. It needs to be in rap music, it needs to be sung about. It needs to be told in every way that it can be told. On Sept. 17, I’m producing and hosting an event (“Kids’ Brains and Screens: Smart Parenting in the Digital Age”) here in Santa Monica with experts talking on the subject because I want parents everywhere — but I’m starting here — to understand this problem. Those who already know it’s a problem, I want them to have a place for activism and a sense of you’re not alone. Because it is a lonely battle, I’ll tell you that. It’s better now.… Now the World Health Organization came out and said yeah, video gaming disorder is in fact a mental health problem. All these recognitions have begun to happen too late for my son. I was screaming it from the rooftops and literally — literally — no one listened. It’s just so frustrating. At the same time, I’m grateful for any movement. It’s not going to help my son, but I’d love to save a generation.”

More about the rise in electronics:

“The whole thing stems from greed — adult greed. It’s not a choice kids make. Parents gave them those machines. And we gave them to them because we were told that they were somehow going to be educational. It was just such a crock.”

Even after Thomas E spent a year and a half in a school where electronics were not allowed and he moved back in with Poundstone, he, unbeknownst to her, bought his own iPhone and fell into the same pattern:

“He said, ‘I thought for sure that I could just do it a little bit.’ He said, ‘Within two weeks, I’m right back to where I’d always been.’ He also said to me — and this is the part everybody needs to hear — which is he said, ‘You know, the cravings have never gone away.’ Maybe Thomas is an outlier. Maybe that wouldn’t be the case for everybody everywhere, but I think we have stumbled onto an addiction that — although for sure it’s an addiction, there’s no doubt in my mind — but that may have some different characteristics. You know, I was a drinker. I don’t crave alcohol. I mean, for me, it’s been almost 17 years, but I never did. I think I craved attention and (screwing) up but I never craved alcohol …

“I just think every parent needs to hear that: a year and a half, and he says ‘Yeah, that craving never went away.’ He’s talking about gaming, but it’s all of it."