Her Dream: Arise and Be Funny

Lynda Towle Moss figures the world is ready for her as a stand-up comedienne and vice versa.

“I’ve wanted to be a star since I was 3 years old,” announced Moss, a clinical psychologist, academician and, wonder of wonders, a self-admitted nerd.

Said Moss: “As a child I was one of those smarties, and the kids called me a nerd. Well, nerds do well in life.”

And while she has a thriving practice as a psychologist in Orange, Moss also wants to get on with her life as a stand-up comedienne. But she vows to continue her practice, no matter how successful she is as a comic.

“I had dreams of Hollywood when I was living in (Burlington) Vermont,” recounts Moss, who has lost weight to help get in shape for her assault on the comedy world.

She said losing weight also helps in her practice.

“Now I’m good on helping people with eating disorders,” she boasted, although admitting that she really didn’t want to do jokes about how fat she was. “I have 15 more pounds to go.”

While she has spent a good part of her life studying psychology--she has a bachelor’s degree, three master’s degrees and two doctorates--”Now I really want to be a famous comedienne,” she said in an interview in her office in Orange.

So it was time for her to do a little shtick:

“My mother told me to marry a doctor and my father told me to become a doctor. I may have been the only child in all of Vermont who got a stethoscope for her third birthday present.”

Moss said her mother used to “parade guys home for me to look at. They were all medical students because we only lived a couple of blocks away from the University of Vermont Medical School.”

So she married Herbert A. Moss, an attorney who practices in Santa Ana..

“It was funny how I met my husband,” said Moss, who lives in Villa Park. “I crashed a party with a friend and met him there, and later he said if he was the guy at the door protecting against party crashers, he wouldn’t have let me in.”

Her first stage appearance some months ago, an unpaid comedy gig at the Laff Stop in Santa Ana, is still fresh in her mind:

“The minute I got up on the stage, I said to myself, this is wonderful. This is easy. It was like an addiction. It felt good, it felt wonderful. I loved it. I mean, I loved it.”

She has yet to be paid as a stand-up comedienne, but Moss had comedic exposure when she gave the commencement address at a private college a few years ago.

“The students really cracked up. They couldn’t sit in their seats,” she said. “Everyone liked it except the people in charge of the school.”

She said the school now requires commencement speakers to submit their speeches in advance.

“I was poking fun at the school,” she said. “I remember saying people were ransacking homes near the college but didn’t take anything from the college because it didn’t have anything worthwhile to take.”

Moss will give a sample of her comedic skills when she gives a sort of lecture on “A Belly Laugh a Day . . . the Mental and Physical Benefits of Laughter” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The benefit performance will be at the South Orange County YMCA Hotel for Women, 1411 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Admission is $5, although there are “scholarships” available for those unable to pay.

Moss doesn’t divulge her age.

“I’m a different age at different times, and I’m many people at many times,” she said.

But she is confident of success as a comedienne.

“I have all the ingredients, and I’m Jewish.” she said.

Mitsuko Yasukochi Funakoshi said she realized her life’s dream last week by receiving her associate in arts degree from Fullerton College after 48 years of waiting.

She completed her graduation requirements at what was then Fullerton Junior College in 1941, but like many Americans of Japanese ancestry, she was forced into a relocation camp after the start of World War II.

“Mitsie,” as she is called by friends, recently petitioned the college to review her transcripts of 48 years ago.

They were accepted and last week with others in full graduation regalia, 66-year-old Mitsie received her diploma.