Surely, She Jests

An unending stream of sitcom reruns plays on television every night, but in Los Angeles, some people prefer to go out and search for laughs, even on a dark and stormy night. On Wednesday, an audience of 140 mostly young men and women braved rain-slicked streets to see an array of all-female comics perform at the Laugh Factory. They did not come to consider whether women can be as funny as men, or if professionally witty women are oppressed by gender-specific stereotypes and a sexist comedy establishment. They came to laugh.

Since January, the Sunset Strip comedy club has been hosting a changing lineup of stand-up comedians on Wednesday nights, calling the midweek show “Inside the Girls’ Locker Room.” From 10 till well after midnight, a responsive crowd chuckles at stories about mothers-in-law, therapists, strippers, gynecologists, dates from hell and parents. The lighter side of supermarket rage, premenstrual syndrome, body odor, drugs, pornography, childbirth and marriage is visited. When the delivery is right, Vietnamese nail salons, Catholic school girls, Monica Lewinsky, Martha Stewart and Hitler inspire guffaws. The women draw some of their comedy from their black, Jewish, Irish or Mexican backgrounds. They follow an unwritten code, which seems to judge ethnic slurs against one’s own tribe as permissible and fat jokes cross-culturally amusing.

The mistress of ceremonies is Sheena Metal, half of the Sheena and the Princess team whose weekly show on KSLX is the only program on the FM talk radio station with female hosts. Metal opens the show by vowing there will be no whining onstage, no boy bashing, just aggressively raunchy monologues by women who reserve the right to talk as dirty as male comics always have. “I’ve learned that my fans want to hear the filthy stuff,” she says backstage before going on. “They want to hear what I can’t say on the radio.”

Metal doesn’t break the audience in gently. It is evident that if they don’t want to hear a woman discuss sex, sex toys, bodily fluids, bodily functions and sexual dysfunction, they might as well leave. Although she has promoted “Inside the Girls’ Locker Room” on the air and through her e-mail network, some in the crowd came to the club unaware of the night’s special program. Tourists curious about the L.A. comedy scene, couples who want some entertainment with their alcohol and a few groups of college students, all are willing to give the comedians a chance, even if they’re as surprised by the estrogen-heavy roster as they’d be if they’d wandered into a real women’s changing room. On a more typical night at the comedy club, the ratio of men to women comics is 8-1.

The pioneer women of stand-up--Joan Rivers, Totie Fields and Phyllis Diller--were consistently self-deprecatory. Then came Roseanne, whose angry, erotically blunt voice announced her arrival as the fierce domestic goddess. Metal manages to uphold those traditions, and to extend and tweak them in her own way. Although she confides she lost 120 pounds in the last year, she still considers herself overweight and long ago abandoned euphemisms for her size. When she describes her voracious sexual appetite and the lengths she’ll go to satisfy it, the audience isn’t sure whether she’s kidding. She throws their prejudice right back at them. Having offered a group of good-looking young men cash for services she’d like them all to render, she says, “You think I wouldn’t do that, just because I’m fat?” Her wicked grin answers her own question.

After Metal has explained to the audience that hormonal upsets are a scam perpetrated by women bent on getting their way from men, she asks, “Isn’t this great? We’re so informative.”

The evening’s message, if any, is truth, Metal believes. “It isn’t about vulgarity or profanity, it’s about women being honest and not caring if they sound sexy,” she says. “The fantasy is that women who look like Pamela Anderson are hot, and they’re the only ones who want sex all the time. There’s a huge dichotomy between the women men fantasize about and who they get to be with. Most men want to [bed] Pamela Anderson, and they wind up having sex with women who look like me.”

Metal does five minutes of material between each performer’s 10-minute set. There’s Sarah Silverman, whose cerebral, occasionally political brand of trash talk is delivered at a low decibel level; Rachel Bertrand, a wholesome Canadian who finds new ways to complain about the boyfriend who got away and her father’s gift for inflicting humiliation. Topics overlap, but each woman is distinctive. Sunda, who goes by one name, does the only affectionate Cher impression. And there is no one quite like Lahna Turner, who accompanies herself on guitar as she sings original compositions guaranteed never to make it into any other troubadour’s repertoire. (That circumstance could change if the demand for the ballad of a spermatozoon suddenly increased.)

This is not an open-mike night. Competition is heated for the Wednesday night spots at the Laugh Factory. Several of these comics have already appeared on late night television, although they’re not yet national headliners like Margaret Cho or Rita Rudner. Despite Metal’s promise, many of the performers aren’t especially raunchy.

“I don’t like to be dirty,” says Sue Costello after her set. A petite, blond 33-year old with a Boston accent, she’s been doing stand-up for 13 years. She’s learned that a good act is as structured as a concerto. “It takes 10 years to figure out who you are onstage,” she says. “When I started out, I needed the people to approve of me. Now I just enjoy myself, and when I’m in control, the crowd loves it.”

Although much of Costello’s routine is prepared, she isn’t afraid to scrap it. She’s talking to a quintet of college seniors sitting front and center when a man in the audience lobs a rude question. She knows if she doesn’t take charge, he could turn into Mr. Heckleman, so she feigns shock, then focuses attention on him.

“What do you do?,” she asks.

“I’m a journalist,” he replies.

“Oh, really? Who do you work for?”

“I’m independent.”

Costello has been given comic gold. “Oh, yeah,” she tells the audience. “He’s homeless. I’m independent too. I’m an independent superstar.”

Having dispensed with the interruption, she returns to the students. The guys have come without dates, and they’ve already become stars of the evening. Pleasantly surprised by how pretty nearly all the comedians are, they didn’t mind when Bertrand said they were cute. Or when Costello cooed at them, acknowledging their looks and the air of macho cool they exude.

But at the end of the evening, their highest praise is reserved for the last, least glamorous and crudest woman to take the stage: rookie Marilyn Martinez.

“She was gross,” says Francisco Jordan, a 23-year-old UCLA student. “And really funny. I’m coming back next week.”