REVIEW: 'Queen of Mean' Lampanelli lives up to billing

Gale Figlerski / The Citizens' Voice No one in the front row was safe Saturday as comedian Lisa Lampanelli entertained a packed house at the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre.

A transcript of Lisa Lampanelli's performance Saturday at the F.M. Kirby Center would include liberal use of the phrase "(expletive deleted.)"
"The Queen of Mean" threw out almost 50 repeated profanities, slurs and dirty slang during the first five minutes of her set at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts in Wilkes-Barre.
Lampanelli lived up to her title with scathing jokes revolving around homosexuality, race and sex - with a healthy dash of celebrity bashing to round out the evening. The packed crowd rolled with Lampanelli's raunchiness throughout the night, prompting the comic to remark well into her show, "You know what I like about you guys? There's not one person who looks offended yet."
While most of her material remains unprintable, the comic did cover territory that was marginally more family-friendly - still, if all the family members are over 18. As she herself said, "I'm Lisa (expletive deleted) Lampanelli."
The self-proclaimed "dirty girl" commanded the stage throughout the night, getting into imitations of Julia Roberts treating an airplane aisle like a runway or Clay Aiken's tendency to talk like Blanche Devereaux, the southern belle of the sitcom "Golden Girls."
She expressed affection for the "American Idol" runner-up, whom she met on the set of the fifth season of "Celebrity Apprentice." Lampanelli joined Aiken and stars like George Takei and Debbie Gibson on the reality show, which premieres tonight.
"Clay Aiken is fantastic," she said, hailing him as someone who can take a joke.
Not so for reality star Beth Chapman, who once challenged Lampanelli via Twitter. Lampanelli shared several unprintable jokes about the wife of Duane "Dog" Chapman, star of the reality show "Dog the Bounty Hunter."
Zsa Zsa Gabor, however, proved to be a good sport after Lampanelli joked about the actress' leg amputation on Twitter. Lampanelli said she received a card from Gabor saying she and her husband "got a kick" out of her tweet that Gabor was selling her house "because she's downsizing now that her shoe collection got cut in half."
Lampanelli circled back to share behind the scenes stories from the set of "Celebrity Apprentice," including the continuous tension between her and her co-star, Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza. Lampanelli said she spent most of her time on the show screaming, crying and eating.
"I am the Meatloaf of this year," she said. "I gained so much weight on 'Celebrity Apprentice' I'm going on 'Dancing with the Stars' to lose it."
Comedian and writer Mike Morse began the night with a rapid-fire, sometimes spastic set about growing up in New Jersey and being a father. Morse, a frequent opener for Lampanelli, wore a T-shirt hawking his radio show "Miserable Men," which broadcasts every Sunday on Sirius/XM satellite radio.
The comic said the good-looking ladies at the Kirby Center impressed him because, as a native of New Jersey, all the women he'd been with looked like Snooki from the television show, "Jersey Shore."
He checked to make sure there were no children in the audience, adding that he and his wife agree kids are annoying.
"Unfortunately, we have two," he added.
Morse described his 6-year-old son as "the Tasmanian Devil on crack, drinking espresso," since his diagnosis with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - which in his case, should stand for always distracted, hopping and dancing.


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