Lisa Lampanelli Kills It At Westbury
Westbury Theatre out on Long Island holds about 2800 people. I know that because I co-produced a show there starring Kevin Hart back in 2010, and we filled the place. So did Lisa Lampanelli! I didn’t see an empty seat in the house.
I had seen her the night before on Jeff Ross’s show on Comedy Central “The Burn”, and she was on with the very funny Anthony Jeselnik, whose new CD “Caligula”” just came out. It’s on my desk to be listened to the moment I have a free hour!(Does that even make sense, … the moment I have a free hour??? I might as well say ” The hour I have a free moment!!!”)
I TIVO’ed “The Burn” and at the end of the show, when it asks if you want to keep it or delete it, I noticed a typo on the credits! They called it “The Bum” instead of “The Burn”. I took pictures of it because I couldn’t believe it! See for yourself!
I think she said it was her fifth time performing there, but it was her first time performing there as a thin woman! I’ll get into that later!
I drove out early so I could see her, and her husband Jimmy BB, before the show. Only really secure performers see people BEFORE the show! Most prefer to wait until after the show, but I think Lisa was leaving for another gig somewhere out of town the next day, and was leaving the theatre as soon as she was done, so she saw people before the show.
I went out there with my Chinese girlfriend Shu Lan, who Lisa would definitely call Ching Ping if she saw her in the audience, but in real life she would never say anything like that!
For anyone who’s wondering, what Lisa does on stage does not match her offstage personna. She’s a sweet, loving person, but onstage she’s a human piranha who goes for blood! She lives up to her title, “The Loveable Queen of Mean!”
Lisa’s opening act is Mike Morse who’s very funny, and very easy going onstage. I guess people get used to performing for large crowds. The largest crowd I ever performed for was about 400 people, but I guess once you have enough experience, it doesn’t matter how many people are out there. Actually the more people, the more laughs you get, the louder it sounds, and the more it pumps you up!
With 2800 people even if only 10% of them laughed at any particular joke, that’s still 280 people laughing which is a lot more people than you get in most comedy clubs!
Mike Morse made a lot of people laugh a lot of the time, with clever lines like, ” My wife and I decided we don’t want children. Unfortunately we already had two!”
Talking about how the people are in New Jersey he said he went to the hospital and told the nurse he wanted to give blood. She gave him a bucket and stabbed him in the neck!
On Chris Christie – A lot of people say he’s too fat to be President. I say he’s perfect for an oval office!
Talking about playing a club in Alabama where no one had teeth. He said one guy chewed on a potato chip for half an hour without breaking it!
And then he did an impression of his own penis when he has an orgasm. He said it looks like it has acid reflux, and then he acted it out! That was hysterical!
He ended on a really clever bit about a Martin Luther King Day commercial for used cars declaring things like ” Malcolm X-tra Savings”, and “We will overcome high prices”! He left the stage to huge applause.
Then Lisa came out and her audience was ready for her. You don’t go to a Lisa Lampanelli concert without knowing what you’re gonna get, unless you were brought there by friends who really should have prepared you!
She saw an Asian woman in front and said ” Ching Ping, (which could have been my gf!), what kind of Gook are you???
She talked about her experiences on Celebrity Apprentice, especially with her best girlfriend Clay Aiken, who at one point took offense to some of her jokes about him, like the only thing “Aiken about him was his ass!”
She said that Lady Gaga was making a perfume that smelled like a combination of sperm and blood, and followed that up by saying, if she wanted to smell sperm and blood she’d punch Clay Aiken in the mouth! The audience howled with laughter at almost everything she said!
Luckily for her there was one Black guy in the front row, there with a white girl, and luckily for him, he had a great sense of humor! Lisa said there was a blackout in Connecticut, then added, ” Thank G-d they caught him!”
Lisa mentioned lots of people. Like Zsa Zsa Gabor, when she lost her leg, Lisa Tweeted, ” Zsa Zsa is selling her home. It’s 28,000 feet, which is 27,999 feet more than she has!” She claims that Zsa Zsa loved the joke!
She said she started sweating more than Jerry Sandusky at a cub scout meeting! In talking about “The Situation” from Jersey Shore, and about how badly he bombed at the Charlie Sheen Roast even though he thought he did well, she said he was as useless as a tampon at Betty White’s house!
Chaz Bono- She said most women get plastic surgery to look like eye candy. Chaz got plastic surgery to look like John Candy!
And she didn’t spare herself! When answering someone who asked about her dramatic weight loss of over 100 pounds she said,” I was lucky enough to get AIDS and cancer at the same time!” That’s so sick it’s funny, and the audience thought so too!
Actually she and her husband Jimmy both had weight-loss surgery. He told her to go first and if she survived he’d do it too. They look fantastic as you can see in this photo!
Lisa also did great impressions of Donald Trump, Lou Ferrigno and her Twitter enemy Dog The Bounty Hunter’s wife Beth.
Besides Shu Lan I also brought my new book ” Make ‘Em Laugh” which Lisa is in bigtime! I had brought her a copy when I went to watch her rehearsal for the Broadway show she’s creating, but for some reason I didn’t get a photo with her that day. This night we took a couple!
She’s an amazing talent and if you have not seen her yet, make sure you do! Just don’t bring your elderly parents! (LOL) (Unless they have a will, you’re the beneficiary, and you stand to get lots of money!!! LOLOL)