When stand-up comedian Paula Poundstone arrives in town later this week, she won’t exactly be here for a pleasure trip.
She’ll be on Oahu to put on a show Saturday at the Hawaii Theatre Center. Then she’ll hop out on another flight the next day for another show, another city.
“Truthfully, I do nothing,” said Poundstone, describing her time on the road. “I catch up on sleep. I unpack, go to sleep, shower, repeat.”
But wait, wait. She does have a small window of free time while on Oahu: She hopes to visit with a friend and former co-worker who lives here.
“It’s far more than I normally do,” said Poundstone in her self-effacing style, calling from her Santa Monica home.
Will she be hobnobbing with another comedian? Nope — she worked the salad bar at a restaurant job in Florida with this old friend.
“I worked up to bussing tables,” quipped Poundstone. “It’s back when salad bars were a new thing, if you can believe it.”
EXPECT TO hear plenty of jokes made at Poundstone’s own expense during her show Saturday night. But her stand-up act — known for being a clean one — also distinguishes itself from others by the amount of spontaneous moments she works in.
Poundstone often chats with audience members, and somehow those moments work themselves into her material. She estimates that about a third of her material is created on the fly.
“Someone comes up or someone will say something to someone, and then it’s like a pinball flying around in my head,” she said, her New England accent still strong despite many years spent living on the West Coast.
Subjects that come up often take Poundstone by surprise. “The meet-and-greets after shows — it’s like ‘Strangers on a Train.’ People say things that are quite revealing. It’s quite an honor. It’s a blessing in every way,” she said. “I have the best job.”
In addition to stand-up shows, Poundstone also continues on with regular appearances as a panelist on the long-running NPR show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!”
She can also be heard on her podcast, “Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone.”
“I always talk about how our country is divided,” she said. “But we have more things in common: Everyone has a podcast.”
There is one other performance that Poundstone makes routinely: a benefit for McKinley Elementary School in Santa Monica.
Poundstone has entertained McKinley parents and the student body mostly by herself. But last year Poundstone was asked if she’d mind if a few other people — about 10 parents — could get up on stage, too.
When asked about the McKinley parents’ talent pool, Poundstone paused a beat and said in her signature perplexed voice, “They weren’t very good — because they haven’t been at it for 40 years!”
POUNDSTONE HAS been in the business of comedy for a long time.
“I’m a proud member of the endorphin-producing industry. People come out for a night to laugh,” said Poundstone, who outwardly is a blend of positivity and frankness.
In San Francisco, where Poundstone lived in her early 20s, it was none other than the late Robin Williams who took Poundstone and other groundling comics under his wing in the 1980s.
Audience members would often show up to the Other Cafe comedy club (where Poundstone started hosting soon after doing a couple of successful routines there) hoping for a glimpse of Williams.
He’d often stop by about 1:30 a.m., she recalls, and it didn’t matter to Williams if there were only two or three people left in the room, a place Poundstone affectionately calls “a hole in the wall” that could hold about 60 people.
“He was good to a lot of people,” she said. “The truth is not a lot of people of my generation would be working without Robin Williams.
“He would just show up. He was already famous at that time from ‘Mork & Mindy.’ He was the Tasmanian Devil (with his energy level). I wasn’t his peer. But it was exciting times. It was like he was in the graduating class from a few years before us.”
Poundstone gained a following during her stint at the Other Cafe. Less than two years later, she was performing at Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park, a still-running comedy festival that has attracted as many as 60,000 people.
Poundstone performs about 70 stand-up shows and corporate events a year.
She saw the same number — possibly more — in the ’80s and ’90s. But she fell from grace in 2001 when she was charged with drunken driving while taking some of her children, as well as foster children, on an outing to an ice cream shop. Poundstone pleaded no contest to a count of felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor and received five years probation.
“I feel like I screwed up badly,” said Poundstone, who was fostering two children at the time in addition to raising three of her own. She also was ordered to continue with alcohol rehabilitation, which she had already started.
“I did every last thing I was instructed to do,” she said. “It was a terrible, terrible time. Mostly because of the kind of person I want to be: a contributor, a positive force. I was devastated.”
Poundstone performed only a handful of shows after the public fall, despite a few high-profile interviews and stories around that time.
“In the aftermath, I made up for lost time,” said Poundstone.
She credits her climb back uphill in comedy to hard work, not luck. And she’s labored to project an image as the “positive force” she wants to be.
Poundstone also is known for her love of animals. She has 13 cats and a new puppy.
An executive producer recently thanked her by sending about 35 pounds of catnip to her door.
“I don’t even want to speak to the amount of daily vomit by the cats,” said Poundstone. “If it’s one cat, it might be once a day. With 13, somebody always manages to throw up somewhere. But they really enjoyed the heck out of that catnip.”
PAULA POUNDSTONE
>> When: 8 p.m. Saturday; 6 p.m. cocktail hour; doors open at 7 p.m.
>> Where: Hawaii Theatre, 1130 Bethel St.
>> Cost: $40-$55
>> Info: 528–0506, hawaiitheatre.com
