Too Goddam Happy: An Evening with Roseanne Barr
July 27, 2024
Welcome to a special submission by Derek Dimpfl. You've seen him all over Austin performing and hosting the weekly Gnar Bar show. We present his accounting of going to see Roseanne Barr a few weeks ago.
Have an idea, show review, fan fiction, or something else brilliant you'd like to share in a column? Submit your pitch here: comedywham@comedywham.com
“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
- Linktree — linktr.ee/derekdimpfl
- TikTok — @derekdcomedian
- Instagram — derekdcomedian
- Youtube — youtube.com/DerekDimpfl