A Night Of Laughs With Paula Poundstone At The Paramount
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Paula Poundstone will bring her comedy show to The Paramount on Friday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m.
By Connor Beach
cbeach@longislandergroup.com
Anyone looking for a night full of laughs will get just that when comedian Paula Poundstone stops by The Paramount on Friday, Dec. 1.
Poundstone, 57, grew up just outside of Boston, and always wanted to be a comedian for as long as she can remember.
“The first sentence of the summary letter written by my kindergarten teacher in May of 1965 said ‘I have enjoyed many of Paula’s humorous comments about our activities,’” Poundstone said.
In 1979 Poundstone started her career as a comic in Boston while busing tables to make ends meet.
“I was lucky enough to live in Boston when a couple of guys started producing stand-up comedy shows,” Poundstone said. “Comics have to come from somewhere, and you have to be really bad for a long time before you get good. They started having open mike nights, so I was able to be bad while the others were being bad.”
Poundstone said that, as her career began to progress in Boston, she decided to travel around the country on a Greyhound bus in order to experience what clubs were like in other parts of the country. After stopping in a number of cities, Poundstone ended up in San Francisco where she found crowds who were looking to see unpolished comics.
The comic has since appeared in HBO comedy specials, and she holds the distinction of being the first woman to host the White House Correspondents Dinner in 1992. Poundstone said the experience was exciting and memorable, but it wasn’t one of her favorite performances.
“The Correspondents Dinner was really hard to do because the group of correspondents have a sort of been there done that attitude, and so they’re kind of hard to entertain honestly,” Poundstone said.
Poundstone’s two-hour show at The Paramount will be split between her experiences raising a house full of three kids and pets and her favorite part of any show, taking to the audience.
“The truth is I don’t always know exactly what I’m going to talk about,” she said. “I have 38 years of material rattling around somewhere in my head; sometimes I grab some of it, and on a good night, and I like to think some are, about a third of the night is unique to that crowd.”
Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. show on Friday, Dec. 1. Tickets are $24.50-$54.50 and can be purchased at the box office or online at ParamountNY.com.
