If things are a little noisier than usual in Denver this weekend, comedian Paula Poundstone says not to panic.
“I’m taking my 8-year-old son with me to Denver,” she said, “so that would be him.”
Poundstone is a single parent of three children, nine cats, one dog, a bearded dragon lizard and an elderly bunny. So the majority of her life is spent on the run in Santa Monica, Calif.
Poundstone took a call at 9 a.m. last week to talk about her appearance Saturday at the University of Denver, a benefit for public TV station KBDI-Channel 12. Poundstone often arranges her interviews for as early as 5 a.m. so she can still have time to get her three adopted kids, ages 15, 12 and 8, to their three different schools on time.
“During back-to-school season, my eyeballs cross so much, I swear I have dried out a couple of times,” she said. “It’s just exhaustion. You really gotta move.”
Poundstone is moving now in support of her new tome, “There is Nothing in this Book That I Meant to Say,” to be released Nov. 6, and a one-hour special for the Bravo network that airs the same day. That one’s called, “Look What the Cat Dragged in.”
So what did the cat drag in?
“Just me,” she said.
Poundstone’s comedy revolves around “a little bit of politics, raising my kids in public schools and having a houseful of pets,” she said.
She’s troubled by the state of public education in America. “Around the world we have all these remote countries that have been embroiled in civil war forever, and yet they seem to be overtaking us academically by the day,” she said. “I don’t get it. I don’t think these other countries are using as many sight words as we are. I think that’s the key.”
Her book is a series of biographies of towering historic figures, and in the telling of their stories, she tells her own. One recounts how Abraham Lincoln walked miles just to borrow books.
“I thought, ‘Wait a minute, my house is full of books,”‘ she said. “Now, I don’t want to put the jinx on my kids, but I don’t think a one of them is going to be president. And certainly they won’t emancipate the slaves – that much I’m sure of.”
Poundstone always told her kids they can grow up to be whatever they want to be, “but I have refined that as the years have gone on,” she said. “Now I have said to them, ‘OK, well, at this point, one or two things are out.
“My oldest daughter just announced to me that she’s going to get a college scholarship. And I said, ‘Really … for what?’ And she said, ‘Basketball or volleyball.’ Now, to the best of my knowledge, my daughter has never touched a volleyball. And unless there’s some kind of late-onset basketball genius, I don’t think it’s really gonna happen quite that way.”
Poundstone’s book includes a chapter on Joan of Arc. As a student of public schools, she admits she knew nothing about the Catholic saint when she started her research.
“Come to find out, in really freakish ways, there is just parallel after parallel between her life and mine,” Poundstone said. “God began speaking to her in the form of angels when she was 12. And as most people other than me already know, she was instructed to crop her hair, wear men’s clothes, don the weaponry and restore Charles to the French throne.
“Now although I have never actually been told to fight, I was on my way to a house one day when God said to me, ‘You are wearing that?’ – which is practically the same thing. … And I wear a thick, high-waisted cottony brief! Now fashion certainly doesn’t dictate that I do that, so I would have to say there is some higher power driving me.”
Poundstone has noticed that her touring demographic has shifted since she joined the cast of NPR’s irreverent “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” current-events quiz show, which is taped before a live audience in Chicago.
“I admit I’ve noticed more of an older white demographic at my shows a little bit – maybe even a medium bit – but there are often whole families, which really charms me.
“There is something so funny to me about kids who listen to NPR. They are so sweet. They actually read the news, thank goodness. I tell you what, I wouldn’t want to meet the Fox kids. Somebody has to be minding the store when the rest of us cash out.”
Life on the road can be a blur, but Poundstone has one very specific Denver memory – buying her first Nancy Drew books for her daughters at the Tattered Cover.
“My cat, Hep, has taken quite a liking to Nancy Drew as well, so from Denver came really good things for my family,” she said. “Heppy lays on my chest while I read to the children and she really digs her claws in – I’m pretty sure it is her anxiety over Nancy Drew’s next adventure. I keep saying, ‘There are 50 books, Hep. I think Nancy is gonna make it through this one.”‘
As the conversation ended, we poked a little fun at a press release issued by Poundstone’s publisher promising “a dash of startling honesty” in her novel.
“I actually think I’m always honest,” she said. “Whether or not that startles people, I don’t know. But I think it’s funny when people are talking to you and they say in a hushed tone, ‘Listen, I gotta be honest with you,’ and then they proceed with what they have to say.
“I think, ‘Well then, so what came just before? These were just fake niceties we were using on each other up until now? So now, let’s take a moment out of lying to each other to tell the truth for a second …”‘
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
