MARIA BAMFORD

The cover of Maria Bamford's new CD/DVD shows the comic with her two pugs, both wearing blonde wigs. How can you now love her? –Libby Molyneaux

L.A. WEEKLY: Congratulations on your new CD/DVD: Maria Bamford: Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome . Do I need to buy both?

MARIA BAMFORD: They come together! It's 50 minutes of stand-up (audial) and 20 episodes of The Maria Bamford Show (visual), so, for $15, you're getting a lot of laughy meaning.

If you had a catch phrase, what would it be?

“It's all happening.” That means that whatever you're visualizing-it's happening- your Lear jet, your two-headed Snuggie, your deep contentment, your Medicines Sans Frontiers nutrition bar- is trotting towards you at 3 mph- so that it won't hurt when it hits you head on.

Who do people say you look like?

This one girl I know who was trying to get into stand-up. No wait, that IS you. I used to work with you at Aramark Uniform Services in Burbank. How is that going? That's great. Good for you. Huh. Well, good luck.

What's hanging above your sofa?

Lots of California landscape paintings. No art with people or buildings trying to bring me down.


Where do you go to be alone?

The back of the airline gate where there's area to crouch with a Diet Coke and notebook and make furtive calls to friends I don't know the last names of.

Proust section, a la Vanity Fair : What do you regard as the lowest depths of misery?

Being crunked out on a 60-ounce blended Mochacchino in the window seat without a pen.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Working on jokes with comedy friends (Jackie Kashian, Larry Vazeos, connecting with other comics, and end of the week of shows with a glass of milk and box of animal crackers. I also enjoy cool, windy days. And groups
of people talking about their feelings in the now.

Your favorite virtue?

Compassion – it's like pity, but without the rage. Like a marshmallow that's not deepfried, sandwiched in chocolate or gourmet-flavored. All virtues that are not limited to a sect: the universal virtue.

Who would you like to be other than yourself?

I would have liked to be someone who's described in People magazine as “risen from the ashes — like a toned, oiled, incisive Phoenix- the once dowdy and insecure star is now coming out of her cocoon- like an elegant,
moisturized, trenchant butterfly- who's got her priorities in the right place. She says, “First, comes my spirituality, next, family and friends and lastly- comes career”. And that's a huge transformation for this one-time-gold-medal-winner who once seemed to only think of Diet Coke, filth and compulsively signing up for UCLA online accounting courses. “It's like I was once a fetus or a pile of logs or something less formed and now I'm a baby or a log cabin or something more defined and acceptable.”


Fri., May 29, 8 p.m.; Sat., May 30, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., 2009

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