Madigan: 'Just running around telling jokes'

Kathleen Madigan: “Gone Madigan,” Fri., Jan. 27, 8 p.m., F.M. Kirby Center (71 Public Square, Wilkes-Barre). $27. Info: 570.826.1100, kathleenmadigan.com

When Kathleen Madigan says she doesn’t sit down to write jokes and that the material merely flies into her head, she means it. Even a casual discussion about the farm she owns deep in the Midwestern woods turns up a colorful comparison between that and her home in Los Angeles.

“People always go, ‘Oh, aren’t the woods creepy and scary?’” Madigan said last week on a phone call from L.A. “Right now, I live 10 minutes away from where they just found that human head next to the Hollywood sign, so you tell me. I’ve never found a head on my property in Missouri — I have yet to find a head in a bag.”

Madigan will bring that quick wit to the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre on Friday, Jan. 27. This will be her first sojourn here, but another comedic heavyweight has told her what to expect.

“I’ve been all over Pennsylvania, but I haven’t been there,” she explained. “But my friend Lewis Black has. I just saw him the other night, and he said it’s awesome … He said the venue’s great, and the crowds are great.”

Black is on Madigan’s short list of favorite funny people, along with the likes of Wanda Sykes, Ron White and Greg Proops. According to her, making a name for oneself in comedy should come about the good old-fashioned way — through hard work.

“Any time somebody says ‘Internet sensation,’ I just go, ‘Forget it.’” she said. “Because the reason you’re a sensation is because it was unexpected. Well, if it was unexpected, the reason is because no one expected it because you hadn’t done what you were supposed to.”

And what you were supposed to have done is perform standup on the road for years, the way her favorite comedians have.

“The people that I like, they’re not necessarily older, but they’ve been doing it hard for 20 years,” she explained. “I mean, there’s a lot of young people that I know that are five or 10 years into it, that I think are really funny, that you would not know their names. But the reason you don’t know their names yet is because they haven’t been doing it long enough.”

Madigan has been at the game herself for 22 years, making countless appearances on “Late Show with David Letterman,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” She’s also had specials on Showtime, HBO and Comedy Central.

Having been on so many mainstream programs, Madigan certainly has no bitterness toward the cable networks, but she has noticed a recent trend in regard to women in comedy.

“I think standup is always pretty fair, as long as you’re funny,” she said. “I think the network-TV thing, they tend to go for hot before they go for funny. And it didn’t used to be like that. Roseanne (Barr) wasn’t hot, you know what I mean? Not everybody has to be 100 pounds and hot. It’s actually kind of the antithesis of funny.

“I don’t understand the choices because you’ll see those people come and go. None of it sticks. And they’re young, and they’re hot. Well part of the problem, again, they’re young. So they can’t be solid and confident, not with that little experience. Nobody can.”

The ‘absurdity of the situation’

Madigan gets very animated about certain topics, proving she’s got just as much a talent for intelligent discussion as she does for making people laugh. Performing for the troops overseas at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s USO Holiday Tour of Iraq and Afghanistan is one of the topics that gets her going, and she noted that one performance turned into more because she saw how important it was to the soldiers.

“They’re still our countrymen, and I still feel horrible for them because it’s freezing, and it’s an awful place to be, and I hate that everybody’s forgotten they’re there,” she shared. “I mean, there’s over 100,000 Americans in Afghanistan, and whether you agree or disagree, should we be there, shouldn’t we be there, is it working, is it not, they are there.”

She explained that she remains respectful with her material, but isn’t afraid to point out what she called “the absurdity of the situation,” like one particular instance where people on a military base were forced to relieve themselves in a bag.

“As you’re standing there doing it, you’re looking at 150 Humvees,” she said. “I’m like, somehow, the United States government, we got 150 Humvees here, but nobody could pick up a Port-A-Potty? They forgot about that? Like, why don’t you call the Missouri State Fair? They know how to do it.”

Madigan will also perform for Ron White’s Comedy Salute to the Troops to benefit the Armed Forces Foundation at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., in February, but otherwise, she remains amusingly nonchalant about what’s on the horizon.“I’m just running around telling jokes, which I love,” she shared. “I was on the phone with somebody in my sister’s car, a reporter or something, and I guess the guy said, ‘What are your goals?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think I have any goals.’

“And when we hung up, my sister’s like, ‘That is so pathetic!’ I said, ‘Why? I had a goal, I want to tell jokes and make enough money to pay my rent. Goal achieved. I’m done. I want to go to LensCrafters sometime this month and get my glasses fixed, how about that? Does that count? Or is that not a lofty enough goal?’”