The Complications of Purchasing a Poodle Pillow

For the inaugural show of her current residency at The Steve Allen Theater, I was joined by writer David Pardue, who wrote the following review. Get tickets for the indefinite run of this delightful show here.

Mary Lynn Rajskub's show at the Steve Allen Theater is called "The Complications of Purchasing a Poodle Pillow" and she's in residence every Sunday for the rest of April. According to the management at The Steve, the show is ostensibly a platform for Mary Lynn to riff on whatever the heck she feels like; whether or not this means it's a one woman show, or whether there will be other performers on future dates, is not clear.

On Easter Sunday, the first night of the run, it was definitely a one-woman show. And as there was little mention of the titular Poodle Pillow, I'm as clueless on the subject of purchasing one as ever before. Perhaps they need to show title to Tangent, or even better, Diversion, as this describes Rajskub's enjoyable freeform style of monologue very accurately.

Rajskub started off by mentioning (without clarification) that Easter always reminds her of The Police. She invited an audience member on stage to sing a karaoke version of "Every Breath You Take." Appropriately, in her performance, the "you" of the song became Jesus prior to the resurrection (' Since you're gone, Jesus, I've been lost without a trace'). The unknown audience member more than held his own, and even harmonized with Rajskub now and then.

With the opening Easter hymn out of the way, she then launched into a story about going to the Independent Spirit Awards and endlessly circling, trying to find parking. Perhaps the premise of the story doesn't seem all that fruitful a topic, but somehow in all her tangents and digressions, Rajskub ended up summing up the history of her entire career. "I started out in performance art," she noted. "Then I started making fun of performance art, and then I ended up in comedy." Her friend brought her out to LA, hooked her up with a manager at a time when she was so new to the business she didn't really know what managers did. Nowadays, as she put it, she's gone "Hollywood" and has a whole team -- managers, agents, stylists, publicists, etc. "Someone who warms my socks," she added. "By hand."

And now that friend was with her in her car, still trying to get to the awards show, still trying to find parking. Suddenly she's recognized as a "TV superstar" and parking magically materializes for her. "There's my girl!" winks the parking attendant at her, opening a space.

She mentioned how surreal the whole awards show was – going into paparazzi mode on cue, being paired up with Cuba Gooding, Jr. for a publicity photo for no reason in particular, and smooth-talking with Cuba ("is it pronounced 'Cooba?'" she questions) despite never having met him before, nor really knowing why she was being photographed with him in the first place.

Success as a television superhero has changed her life, and has put her into some situations even more unusual than chumming around with Cuba Gooding, Jr. – anyone who's seen her performance for Microsoft can attest to that.

But the next story she tells topped them all. She was invited to participate in a conference run by the Heritage Foundation entitled: "24 and Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?" Rajskub reported the title (it's f'reals, believe it or not) to a disbelieving crowd with a scream of anguish.

Soon enough she found herself in Washington DC, talking in chambers with Clarence Thomas. She described her brain as floating away from her body due to the surreality of it all; and that the subject of her conversation with a supreme court justice was, of all things, her art, and why (in her words) it "looks kind of like the art of a retarded adult."

When it was time for the panel, she found herself being introduced by Rush Limbaugh. Then she found herself being kissed by Rush Limbaugh. On the lips. The pictures of the kiss made news around the world. "Chloe and Rush Limbaugh are dating!" she crowed. It led her to imagine what it would be like if he really was her boyfriend.

Rajskub is at ease about political affiliations; it's everyone around her who gets up in arms about the implications of the show she's on. She reported a phone call she got from an ex who was less than happy with the photo he saw in his local paper. "When he kissed you, did you feel him sucking your soul out of your mouth?" he asked.

The other stories she told on Easter night demonstrated similar attempts on her part to be open-minded and go with whatever experience is offered to her. She described how her attempt to connect with herself on a yogic weekend retreat got foiled by the pesky knowledge that her bank account was overdrawn. And then she related how not being asked out by the cool guy in school ended up in trying to please a guy she didn't even like by consenting to a threesome.

And if that seems hard to follow, believe me when I say that on the night it also involved Rajskub duct-taping herself in the same fashion as this. The premise was different, but the taping bit was the same. So maybe the last diversion ended up going somewhere planned, and the threesome story was just a means to an end. Much like 24, it's hard to separate fact from fiction and in the end, does it really matter? The sell-out crowd was entertained, and gave her a well-deserved ovation at the end of the show.

I never did find out about the poodle pillow, but I don't feel like I missed out on anything. In the end, she went a different, non-poodley way. The joy of MLR is in not knowing exactly where she's going to take you, but the trip will be a good one. This is why a story about trying to find parking ends up digressing into all sorts of new corners and entertaining places.

In a way, though, the wildest digression is Rajskub's career itself. From performance art, to Mr. Show to computer goddess to Rush Limbaugh back to duct-taping herself in some performance art at the Steve Allen Theatre, maybe it's all been a bunch of crazy diversions, but what a ride it's been.

Los Angeles based writer, David Pardue also writes for thecoming.org.

You can read other reviews of local comedy shows by David here,

and here.