Obtaining tickets (translation: promising to review in exchange for) to a sold out Kathy Griffin show is pretty exciting. Having realistic expectations for the seats being in the janitor’s closet, and then coming to find that they are in the THIRD ROW is cause for me to take time out from the last full day of my first ever trip to Portland to brag about it via blog, which I’m doing now from the publishing department of Portland State University.
When planning this Portland trip, I came to find that Griffin was performing a show on my second night here. I promptly started the begging process, not expecting much to come from it, and flipped my shits when – just a few days before take off – I received a confirmation email from Griffin’s assistant, Tiffany Rinehart, that two tickets were being held for me at the will-call booth at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The night of the show I sat in a puddle of over-stimulation until the house lights dimmed and a video montage of Griffin’s TV appearances (a highlight being a clip from her cat-fighty visit to The View) acted as an intro to the comedian taking the stage. Griffin started her act by poking fun at Portland for being so shady and weird (although I found it to be a lot less shady and weird than I had expected), and then she went into her infamous routine of raking front page celebs over the coals. I have to say that one of my favorite things in life is to watch any good comedian make fun of Whitney Houston, and Griffin does it best. The crowd was a mixed bag, and aside from a few stiffs in the front row, everyone more or less injured themselves laughing at least for or five times, which, if you’ve ever been to a live comedy show, is a major success.
Griffin ended up going over the alloted time for her act that evening and was all but yanked from the stage by her assistant. I’ve been meaning to Google whether or not some sort of Team Griffin emergency caused the speedy exit, but I’m assuming they all wanted to hit up Voodoo Doughnuts one more time before their plane took off.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE9-UihyigE 425×344]
