Like any comedian worth listening to, Paula Poundstone possesses a flair for artful exaggeration that can border on crankiness.
Take, for example, her thoughts on her longtime home of Santa Monica, Calif., which Poundstone pegs as “scuzzy and awful.”
“There’s a storm drain that empties untreated into Santa Monica Bay, and if it does rain, all the trash and everything washes up on shore,” she said recently over the phone. “There’s just something about here that’s disgusting.”
Naturally, Poundstone has learned to emphasize the color in her observations for comedic effect, but one can also understand why she might hold a grudge against the city. Poundstone was arrested there in June 2001 on charges of lewd acts upon a child and child endangerment — shocking at the time, since she had fostered children since 1993 and adopted three of her own.
The lewd-acts charges were eventually dropped, and Poundstone completed an alcohol- rehabilitation program, but her troubles later attracted snarky jokes from “South Park” and “Family Guy,” and the news media treated her harshly during her lengthy custody hearings.
She took her lumps like any other celebrity, and after the storms cleared Poundstone returned to the observational, self-deprecating humor and commentary that made her such a ubiquitous face in the 1990s.
She may not average 45 weeks on the road anymore, but the Emmy-winning comic has found a happy medium that allows her to hone her craft while working for the causes that matter to her.
“Truth is, I never like to go out and stay out on (the road),” said Poundstone, who headlines a benefit for KBDI-Channel 12 at the University of Denver’s Newman Center on Saturday. “Once I was gone for a month and I was just miserable, so I flew back from Florida for two hours just to be home and see my cats.”
The Southern-born, New England-raised comedian sports a distinctive style that seems almost classic these days, eschewing profanity and shock value for improvised audience interaction and trademark cleverness. It’s an approach that has evolved steadily since her talk-show days.
“I have jokes I’ve told before and will tell again, but my favorite part of the night is talking to the crowd,” she said. “I have a horrible memory and I used to consider that a liability, but I’ve learned along the way that talking to people is really a beautiful thing.”
Poundstone’s versatility has always been one of her strongest points. She started performing stand-up at open-mic nights in Boston in 1979, eventually working her way onto late-night talk shows and comedy specials. She won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up Comic in 1989 and was the first woman to receive the Cable ACE for best stand-up comedy special.
She has appeared as a political correspondent for various talk shows, popped up on game shows and even wrote a column for Mother Jones magazine.
Now Poundstone writes children’s books and often appears on National Public Radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” She particularly enjoys the latter’s quirky news/quiz-game format. “It’s a bit like being a baseball player in a batting cage,” the 48-year-old said. “You get lobbed topics, but I actually do try and study the newspapers ahead of time so I can get the answers right.”
An avid reader and prolific writer — she’s working on her second book for Random House — Poundstone is also the newest spokesperson for Friends of Libraries USA, a national organization that raises funds for children’s summer-reading programs and other events.
“I talk to a lot of librarians, and there’s always a steady drumbeat of how libraries are places of community,” she said. “But a lot of them have also recently — and just in the nick of time — refurbished, because during this economic downturn, people have a tendency to borrow instead of buy.”
As long as the veteran stand-up evolves and diversifies while maintaining her loyal fan base, she’ll continue to flourish, too.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
Paula Poundstone
Comedy. DU’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. Saturday. 8 p.m. $40. 303-871-772 or .
