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Paula Poundstone does not like the term crowd work.
And yet, she is one of the all-time greats at it.
No one has ever taken the generic What do you do for a living?
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There were two things that facilitated that.
People were very touchy about this five-minute thing.
If you went on a second longer, you could hear knives sharpening in the back.
I had nothing else to do.
I then became notorious for going over, because now I dont know what five minutes is anymore.
Oh my gosh, people get mad at me.
There you might be bringing on, like, I dont know, 25 people.
And your job is you fire up the night, tell some jokes, and bring up a comic.
After work, Id take the bus home from downtown San Francisco.
Id take a shower and head out to the club on the bus.
Oftentimes I still had like a big bite of Pop-Tart in my mouth or a Hostess apple pie.
There was this sort of group feeling.
They were my next-door neighbors when I was growing up in a small town in Massachusetts.
Mrs. Ross, who was really a wonderful woman, went partially deaf when we were kids.
Hearing aids werent what they are now.
So, at the Rosses house, it was the fun house.
We would go down in their basement.
There was a part of the basement that was really undeveloped.
There were no lights in there, and it was our hide-and-seek place.
I could never even measure how much time went by when we were down there.
Somebody would come down and say, like, Oh, its dinnertime now.
You have to go to your house.
We just laughed and laughed and laughed.
So, my goal as a comic is to re-create the Rosses basement as much as I can.
Not as loud, I suppose.
I love working theaters.
Its a real different vibe than the handful of clubs usually theyre music clubs where I work.
Generally speaking, its not an issue.
But every now and then, theyll be like, Well keep people quiet.
No, I dont want to keep people quiet.
If somebody was being an asshole, thats one thing.
On Why Her Audience Is Her Best Friend
It could mean a couple of things.
Like maybe Im a really lousy friend and I dont do well in regular relationships.
But also, I tell them things about my life.
They were laughing because, Oh my God, I have that.
Theres nothing I can say about my life that somebody else cant say, Oh yeah.
Im a single mom, and maybe that made it more so, in some ways.
And it turns out, no, it happens totonsof people.
But when youre going through it, it does feel like a slog.
So, thats why theyre my best friend.
Plus, dont you want to have a great time with your best friend?
And I have a great time with the audience.
