For the record, I'm not one of Kathy Griffin's gays. I'm my own gay, my husband's gay and your gay, dear reader, but Griffin I can take or leave, so I'm not getting her initials tattooed on my butt.
I appreciate Kathy's status as one of our staunchest straight allies (though honestly, would she have a career without us?), and she can't go very long without saying something bitchy that will make me laugh.
On the other hand, she seems to have a very limited number of subjects for her celebrity slander, and I get tired of her smug, self-satisfied poses after every joke that gets any kind of laugh.
Still, if Joan Rivers pushes the envelope, Kathy Griffin pushes it in front of a moving train. Even her most devoted fans will have at least a couple of "Oh no, she dit-int!" moments in every show.
This brings us to her new DVD. It generously offers two of her four Bravo concert specials from last year, Pants Off (September) and Tired Hooker (December), for the price of one.
Mother Maggie Griffin, then 91, introduces the first show (with a glass of box wine in her hand, of course). "Take it for what it is," she says. "It's just Kathy."
Fortunately the Kardashians (all of whom are "dirty whores," according to Griffin) provided leadoff material for both shows—Kim's wedding for the first and Kim's divorce for the second.
It must have been a slow news quarter between shows, because in Tired Hooker Griffin tosses out names to reach her celebrity quota without having much to say about their latest escapades: Ashton and Demi's divorce, Lindsay Lohan reporting to the morgue for community service. The jokes write themselves, but not very well.
Nancy Grace, various Real Housewives and Kathy's "special-needs" rescue dog come up in both shows. She talks about Cher, who is apparently her only friend, in both shows, but the story of attending the premiere of The Zookeeper with her didn't make the Pants Off broadcast and is included as a bonus on the disc, along with four other outtakes.
The audiences, one in Costa Mesa, Calif., and the other in Atlantic City, N.J., are surprisingly diverse. There are plenty of gay men but also women of all ages and persuasions, in groups, on dates and with husbands. Griffin doesn't de-gay the shows to pander to them, talking about Marcus Bachmann ("I don't know this guy. I never met him. But he sucks cock!"), Grindr, Hugh Jackman's one-man Broadway show ("It's gayer than a glory hole in Johnny Weir's bathhouse!") and how gay marriage will lead to gay divorce, with "fabulous litigation for years!"
With no bleeping you'll probably hear several hundred more words (or one word several hundred times) than you did in the original broadcasts. One atrocious bit of editing was probably covered by a commercial break, but here Griffin jumps abruptly from reading a fan letter from a prisoner to discussing being in a New York hotel during an earthquake.
Another outtake, possibly cut from the broadcast by Bravo's lawyers, is about Jesse James—you know, the former Mr. Sandra Bullock—whom Griffin refers to repeatedly as a "Nazi."
Love Kathy Griffin, love her shows, even when they're no longer topical. Take the new DVD for what it is. It's just Kathy.
