Too Goddam Happy: An Evening with Roseanne Barr

“Derek!”

I jumped — I had been focus­ing intent­ly on my lap­top screen and the loud gut­tur­al whis­per rat­tled me.

“Yes Patri­cia?”

“Aman­da bailed on me, do you want to go see Roseanne tonight?”

“Yes, I would be delighted.”

“Okay, the show is at 7 and Cap City is 20 min­utes away.”

“Let’s leave at 6.”

We left at 6:20.

Per­fect.

Patri­cia and I stopped across the street from the com­e­dy club under a canopy to tem­porar­i­ly escape the rain and light up some of her favorite med­i­cine. Two oth­ers hur­ried across the street to us, ani­mat­ed by the same idea. The old­er and short­er of the two had gray streaks in her wavy pony­tail and the taller woman wore vibrant lip­stick. The tall one was a native of Iraq who spoke with what sound­ed to me like a Slav­ic accent and rec­og­nized me from the open mic scene before pass­ing her doo­by back to her companion.

“It’s all wet from your big lips,” said the short­er woman.

I start­ed laugh­ing. She wasn’t sug­gest­ing what I thought she was, was she?

“You know what you want to call what she was doing.”

“Not me, ma’am. But I know the phrase you were suggesting.”

Wow, I thought, This audi­ence is ready for anything.

We legged it to the front doors which brought the box-office min­is­tra­tions of a man with shoul­der-length brown hair and a long-suf­fer­ing coun­te­nance. He endured my friend’s delayed reac­tion in hear­ing that she must present her ID. How many peo­ple at a live Roseanne show, I won­dered, express sur­prise at hav­ing to pro­duce iden­ti­fi­ca­tion? I felt for him, but smiled inward­ly; this was going to be a great show.

The show opened with near-deaf­en­ing cheers which at inter­vals became loud­er and loud­er, so much so that it could only sweep up the enthu­si­as­tic in its grip and leave a skep­tic shocked at its crescen­do. I fell into the for­mer cat­e­go­ry. I don’t claim to know much of Roseanne; I’ve seen between ten and twen­ty hours of her on screen, two hours of her live, and had a very brief per­son­al encounter with the star. Her hair was divine — a short-cut blond ​‘doo not unlike a pix­ie cut framed her twin­kling eyes and smil­ing cheeks as she poured her atten­tion into the ador­ing per­sons assem­bled to wit­ness her and her tal­ent. Doing what she could for those less well-off than her­self, she encour­aged the audi­ence both at the begin­ning and the end of the show to tip their wait­ress­es well.

There was one woman sit­ting in front of me to the right who took in the expe­ri­ence at times with almost reli­gious rap­ture. Hers weren’t the only hands I saw raised towards the stage at thir­ty degrees, fin­gers out­stretched hun­gry for spir­i­tu­al nour­ish­ment in the style that only Pen­te­costals can prop­er­ly accom­plish. The ide­o­log­i­cal exci­ta­tions of her audi­ence ran the gamut and no mat­ter how ani­mat­ed the crowd became over some issue or anoth­er, she always main­tained her poise, rea­son, and char­ac­ter­is­tic humor. At one point some­one at a table to my imme­di­ate right became so enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly anti­vax while Roseanne was jok­ing about the COVID vac­cine that even Roseanne had to check that momentarily.

Roseanne knows her audi­ence and their ten­den­cy to be vocal and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry. At one point dur­ing a bit about run­ning against Barack Oba­ma in 2012, she was inter­rupt­ed by a heck­ler who inter­ject­ed apro­pos of noth­ing: ​“Big Mike!” in ref­er­ence to the idea some sub­scribe to that Michelle Oba­ma is actu­al­ly a man. With mas­ter­ful grace, wit, and a twin­kle in her eye, Roseanne grat­i­fied the audi­ence at first by call­ing Michelle a man (see­ing her penis wig­gle at such and such a time, and adjust­ing her balls while drop­ping her daugh­ter off at col­lege) but then turn­ing it mas­ter­ful­ly on the audi­ence by say­ing she nev­er thought Michelle was a man, but hat­ed her intro­duc­tion of Baked Hot Chee­tos into schools.

Yet anoth­er team of Roseanne enthu­si­asts seat­ed near to the stage to the left of cen­ter respond­ed to the ques­tion, ​“did any­one here recent­ly grad­u­ate from col­lege,” with a flur­ry of com­ments about hav­ing been home­schooled. Sec­ond gen­er­a­tion home­schooled. Roseanne sent their heads fly­ing out of the park with a well timed bat strike that they wouldn’t have been able to get into col­lege anyways.

The show con­tained a Q&A por­tion where­in Roseanne fields ques­tions from the audi­ence and she makes ​“psy­chic pre­dic­tions” about their lives and future, pref­ac­ing heav­i­ly not to ask her any­thing about her­self. Deliv­er­ing exclu­sive­ly dis­ap­point­ing answers for all the right rea­sons, or answers at first aimed to please but with an iron­ic twist, she gave her fans exact­ly what she promised them — a pes­simistic real­ism mixed with merriment.

At one point a young lady inter­rupt­ed the show to ask if the star would sign her jack­et — a request which was refused and append­ed by com­ments call­ing the woman ​“sweet” and hint­ing that she may sign the jack­et after all.

The show cranked away for two hours, span­ning top­ics from her tele­vi­sion-num­bers-record-break­ing return to ABC to the way she and her gen­er­a­tion were cor­po­ral­ly pun­ished to a top­ic near to aging men’s hearts, Via­gra. When she asked the audi­ence if any of the men present took Via­gra, one man seat­ed dead cen­ter two-thirds of the way back in the front floor area pulled from his wal­let a twelve-blis­ter pack­age of blue pills and waved them with tri­umph and enthu­si­asm in the air. My eyes did not waver from this bald­ing erec­tion enthu­si­ast, though the ever-present Roseanne iden­ti­fied three men who were bold enough to own up to their pre­scrip­tion cab­i­net. She con­tin­ued by ask­ing one of them, not the wal­let man, if it enhanced his per­for­mance. The always-pack­ing com­bover king erupt­ed in a, ​“Fuck yeah!” which brought down the house momen­tar­i­ly. He had had his moment and the show moved on.

Close to the end of the show the sit­com star read for the audi­ence a series of notes addressed to those she would speak to if she were to com­mit sui­cide. She addressed these to sub­jects such as her moth­er, her daugh­ter, McDon­alds and ABC. Such a com­pe­tent impro­vis­er is she that a close observ­er in the audi­to­ri­um could see that each of these epis­tles were read from a blank legal pad. Always with a mind to give peo­ple a rea­son to keep going and not quit the strug­gle of life, she lat­er humorized on how she would nev­er do that because it would make too many peo­ple too ​“god­dam hap­py.” Her thought­ful­ness in revers­ing the sui­cide joke to leave peo­ple with hope, I love her for that.

The show closed with an exhor­ta­tion to not wait around to tell the peo­ple you care about that you care so why don’t you go ahead and call them up and tell them to fuck off, and end­ed with a stand­ing ova­tion of great inten­si­ty which I will not soon forget.

Fol­low Derek

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