POUND WISE and PAULA FOOLISH : POUNDSTONE’S RUMINATIONS, FROM POLITICS TO POP TARTS : PEARLS FROM PAULA : Poundstone Mines Her Own Life and Times for Gems to Bring to Brea

While history may have trouble deciphering the madcap sequence of events and propaganda that became the Persian Gulf War, Paula Poundstone believes she has it pretty well figured out.

“I figure if you go to the bottom of the WHOLE thing,” said the never-completely-tongue-in-cheek Poundstone, over the phone from her Ft. Myers, Fla., hotel room recently, “10 years from now it’s gonna turn out that some yellow ribbon salesman somewhere was at the root of the entire thing.

“I love the idea of tracing it. You know, you go through the Pentagon, you go through the ambassadors, you go through the emir of Kuwait. And then it’s one little ribbon salesman basking in the sun. . . .”

The 31-year-old Poundstone’s obvious delight at having stripped this politically charged issue to an absurd core is, as always, evident in her stifled-laugh method of delivery. Those familiar with her routines--and 45 weeks a year on the road plus frequent television appearances indicate that her audience is substantial--know that when she hits her punch lines it’s about as subtle as if she were passing a kidney stone: First there’s the crooked-jaw smirk, and then the barely suppressed guffaw that pushes the ends of her sentences out, like a bad case of whooping cough.

On stage, Poundstone’s delivery takes on additional unorthodox elements. The 12-year veteran of the stand-up circuit--whose latest trip to the Southland brings her to the Brea Improv tonight through Sunday--is prone to drape herself across stools, hopelessly entangle herself in mike cords and even sprawl headlong across the floor for much of her act. Audience members often are left to wonder whether she even knows she’s under a spotlight, and not talking to them over the phone from her bedroom.

“I kind of like lying on the floor because it’s just sort of disarming and silly,” she says. “But mostly it’s just out of a sheer sort of laziness, honestly. I don’t like to stand up for the whole time. I get tired.”

The frankness, like the quirkiness, is a Poundstone trademark. Her routines, which earned her a 1989 American Comedy award for Best Female Stand-Up, run the gamut from ruminations on Pop Tarts and cats to thinly cloaked political and social daggers. And, since she relies heavily on improvisational skills honed to a lethal edge in clubs from Boston to Seattle, seldom is her act delivered the same way twice.

To a cosmetic surgeon she uncovers in the audience, she might remark: “You’re a plastic surgeon? Gee, that must make the whole ‘Daddy’s got your nose’ game a little scarier, huh?”

Poundstone was born in Alabama but lived there only a month before moving to Sudbury, Mass., a suburb west of Boston, where her parents still live. She returns to the Bay State occasionally to perform (she does annual benefits at the regional high school from which she dropped out) but will tell you frankly that she has few other ties to the place, professional or familial.

“I never made too much headway in Boston, actually. Partly because it’s always hard where you start out. It’s like living with your parents--they never quite realize when you’ve grown up or moved along or whatever. They only remember how sucky you used to be.”

That comment may also go a long way toward describing Poundstone’s estranged relationship with her family, including her three older siblings. At 19, the would-be comedian moved to San Francisco, and then on to Los Angeles, and she has seldom looked back, even for affirmation of her success.

“My father one time asked me to change my name, which I guess I felt was a negative kind of comment. But, I don’t know. . . . On one hand I’m told how embarrassed they are, and on the other hand I understand they have like videotapes and things. So I think that they probably have mixed feelings.”

Poundstone herself has mixed feelings about her abbreviated education, though she doesn’t espouse the politically correct “stay-in-school” message one might expect.

“Do I have regrets? No, not really. Sometimes I wish that I had more education, certainly, but it’s not like I couldn’t have done that. . . .

“I try to read and I attempt to educate myself even still.” Her daily schedule usually allows some time to monitor CNN, C-SPAN and the “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” Ask her about virtually any current event and she has an opinion, often backed by research and more than a little sarcasm.

On the Persian Gulf War: “I’m reading the Israel-Arab Reader, and when I started it I couldn’t understand a word of it, so somebody recommended Thomas Friedman’s book ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem,’ which I read, and it was a really good book. But, you know, once you get behind, you’re never gonna catch up again,” she laughed. “It’s a little late for me to try to understand the Middle East now. I don’t have a clue about it. I feel certain that our government is lying to us about the specifics of our involvement because, traditionally, they do.”

On the President’s State of the Union address and Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who “makes such a public display of shoving people out of the way to get to shake the President’s hand. . . . It’s always a great moment of glee for me to watch who he pushes: If everybody knew Robert Dornan, he could have his own (comedy) network. I mean, I hate the man, but I think he is hysterically funny.”

On the Rob Lowe scandal: “Remember when they made Rob Lowe go speak about drug abuse in high schools? I thought, ‘What makes this man an expert on drug abuse? Because he was involved in videotaping sex with 16-year-olds? How does that make him an expert on drug abuse, either pro or con?’

“If I were in a high school and Rob Lowe was speaking, I would just keep raising my hand: ‘What about that videotape you made? OK, I don’t really give a (bleep) about this drug thing, but what about that vid. . . . Is that videotape available anywhere?’ ”

And on the Milli Vanilli “scandal”: “OHHH what a big scam! I was so upset when it was no longer in the news. I stayed up night after night waiting for television programs to be interrupted with yet another Milli Vanilli update.”

Poundstone wasn’t always so outspoken and/or aware. In fact, she admits to not knowing what the Iran-Contra hearings were when a friend mentioned them a few years back. And even now, she veers away from certain subjects--not because of their sensitivity but because she fears her grasp of the issues isn’t firm enough for her to find their funny side.

“My intention isn’t to upset people or bother people; my intention is to entertain,” she explained. “It’s not like I’m a historian or an expert on anything. Particularly recently, I guess, I’ve made some effort to be political, but it’s also what interests me lately. Everything that I do on stage is a reflection of sort of how I spend my days and nights.”

Just how Paula Poundstone spends her days and nights at present is sometimes the stuff of which comedy routines are made, and sometimes the stuff of working nightmares.

Most days she is up early either doing radio guest spots on the road, running to the airport to pick up tickets, or actually en route to her next tour stop. Few weeks actually find her at home, in the company of her five cats. The grueling pace is, she admits, “kind of wretched.

“I got sick of the road about nine years ago,” she said. “I still really enjoy the audiences. If there was a way to kind of do a “Bewitched” thing and just be in the club and then be gone from the club when you’re finished--not have to be away from home all the time--it would be great. But, since there isn’t. . . .”

And too much time away from stand-up, she worries, might break what’s not broken now. “It’s a little bit like being an athlete in that, I mean maybe you never exactly forget how to do (stand-up) entirely, but it takes some sort of staying sharp and in tune a little bit. For me anyway.”

Still, staying sharp does not guarantee that every performance will be a hit. Bombing on stage is never far from any stand-up comic’s mind nor, Poundstone was quick to reveal, from her own recent memory.

“I keep thinking that I’m going to get to a point where things don’t go awry anymore but it always seems to pop up. Not too long ago, I was in a club in Levittown (Penn.), and interestingly enough the first night was great--it’s not like it was across-the-board horrible or anything--and then, I think it was Saturday second show, it was just such a disaster. From before I hit the stage, people were just shouting rude things, and the handful of great audience members were sort of overwhelmed by the wretched ones. . . .”

Afterward, the club manager asked Poundstone why she hadn’t called on a bouncer for help. “I said, ‘Listen, you would have had to flip the whole building up and shake people out the door.’ It wasn’t a matter of throwing one or two people out, it was the whole crowd except for three women in the center of the room. I needed to declare. . . . martial law or a curfew of some sort.”

But Poundstone is quick to point out that the opposite can happen, too. She said she has had nights when “afterwards I’d come away--even though I knew better--thinking, ‘I must be some kind of a genius.’ They make you feel so good.

“And then I’d go to another club the next week and fall flat on my face.”

The secrets to both her successes and failures, she said, have been elusive.

“I honest to God don’t know what the elements are that make it effective or whatever. I try to reproduce it, like wear the same outfit or eat the same meal before. . . . Ultimately it sort of depends totally on the audience. But, at the same time, I think I can work a variety of crowds.”

Poundstone has worked Orange County crowds before, most recently at the Irvine Improv last July. Typically, she has few rigid plans for her Brea performances, but one thing she does not expect to do is an extended barrage of regional humor. She admits to barely knowing where Brea is, let alone what (if anything) makes it funny. Ditto for the rest of O.C.

“I don’t know anything about (the county), other than that it’s in California and they have a lot of malls,” she said. “But that doesn’t make it too different from any number of other places in the world.”

If nothing else, Poundstone probably can fashion a few jokes out of getting lost on her way to the club, as she did during a 1988 engagement in Irvine.

A fan recently expressed the hope of catching her in Brea. “Yeah,” she answered, “well I hope to find Brea. . . .”

Who: Paula Poundstone.

When: Thursday and Friday, March 28 and 29, and Sunday, March 31, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, March 30, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Where: The Brea Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea.

Whereabouts: Take the Lambert Road exit off the Orange (57) Freeway and go west. Turn left on State College Boulevard and right on Birch Street. The Improv is in the Brea Marketplace, across from the Brea Mall.

Wherewithal: Admission is $10 on Thursday and Sunday, $12 on Friday and Saturday. (Tickets are general admission unless you make dinner reservations.)

Where to call: (714) 529-7878.