Comedian Margaret Cho on belly dancing, marriage and the Holy City Zoo
By Rob Nash
June 9, 2005

I first met Margaret Cho at the 1991 San Francisco International Comedy Competition. Forty comics competed over two weeks of preliminary rounds. Neither of us advanced. I think she placed 12th. I pulled in at a close 33rd. Now she's on her fourth major concert tour, "Assassin," stopping at Bass Concert Hall on Friday, and I'm . . . writing the odd comedy feature for XL. (Cough.)

XL: Most readers probably don't know you've been married to the artist Al Ridenour for two years.
Margaret Cho: He's great. He's one of the people probably responsible for Burning Man (the annual alt-fest in the Nevada desert). He takes care of me physically. I'm needy. He's the perfect caretaker. He tells me what to eat. If I'm left alone in the house, I'm such a boy, if food's not in front of me, I'll forget to eat. Like I don't know how to go to the store. I don't know how to . . . like, get it -- food. So he brings it to me. I'm so used to being in hotels and having room service.

Sounds perfect. Does he have a brother?
They're all married. One of the great boy families. Five boys all married young and all take perfect care of women.

Do you want to talk about sobriety? Are you sober?
Well, I don't think so. I'm clean. Sobriety is a whole, like, scene. I don't do all the things connected with it. I think I'm just old. You want to do drugs or drink but you forget.

So you don't drink or do drugs, and you don't go to meetings.
Yeah. See, I just . . . forget. I think you go out and do stuff that has nothing to do with drinking or getting high and that's like a meeting. I'm sure they'd say that's my disease -- talking. Now, I'm addicted to trim and textiles. I'm really addicted to high-quality thread.

So ... you're ... putting trim on everything?
I dance. I'm a belly dancer. We make our own costumes. I dance at a Moroccan restaurant in Hollywood. And in class. It's great fun.

Do they bill you as you?
No. I use my dancing name, Moran. It's my real Korean name.

Belly dancers have such beautiful form to their bodies. It's not Hollywood-emaciated-boys-with-breasts look. Curves and unflat tummies are honored. So you really want to let go of the American habit of holding your abs in when you belly dance, yes?
That's the hardest part. Not holding in for most women because we're so conditioned, so it's very freeing. This dance comes from a culture that respects age. Older women dancers are well respected. It's a different thing than the Hollywood culture. I was so jealous of the girls that would get parts when I started, and, 10 years later, they couldn't get arrested now. There's nothing for them now. They can't be in movies because they're too old at 35. I'm lucky I do comedy because it's a profession that embraces age, too.

I saw you last year and you were quite trim. What do you think of people going on TV saying 'I lost all the weight and I'm never going to look like that again' and later saying, 'I don't care about weight, this is who I am! Stop starving yourselves!' And then lose the weight again.
Your body is a living thing. And you can't make such sweeping statements, because we really don't know that much. There's diet and exercise but there's genetics in there, too. I try to stay in an acceptance thing. I know I'm thinner right now because I've been dancing so many years and my body has become used to that. If I stopped, I'd probably put more weight on. I don't do it for weight loss. And I'm married, I got a man, I don't gotta do nothin' no mo! I ain't gotta shave my leg-zes, I can let it all hang out. And belly dancing feels good.

How bout the early days? Do you remember your first open mike?
The Rose and Thistle in San Francisco. They were best known for a weekend show called "Even the Score." You wouldn't buy a ticket, you'd buy tomatoes and you'd throw tomatoes at the performers. And of course there was the Holy City Zoo. I think that's where I really began. I lived across the street. You came to my apartment.

No, I never did.
Ken was my roommate? I'm sure you came to my apartment.

Honey, if Ken was there, I'd have remembered your apartment. The Zoo was on Clement Street in Richmond. It closed in '91.
Now it's the new Chinatown.

Your first act, was it any good?
No. It wasn't any good. I wasn't any good for years.

When did you hit your stride?
Probably '89. I was doing a showcase night Tuesdays or Wednesdays at the Zoo hosted by Ed Crasnick. I just discovered the equation, I guess. You can't really say what it is, but it's a combination of confidence and cleverness and fearlessness and vulnerability. You synthesize that and almost come up with an answer to the equation. And that's what it is -- the answer. That's what I figured out. That's when I got it and was able to perform and not freak out; I'd still bomb now and then but I could figure it out. It all made sense.

You did a few Bob Hope specials. What was he like?
Old. So old. He couldn't hear anything. And his whole crew had been with him for 60, 70 years, so every week there was a funeral service. I never got to talk to him because he was so old. He wouldn't be able to look at anything. All his shows were fabricated by editing and shooting around his age. It's incredible what you can do with television to make a person look like they're animated.

Did he read a teleprompter? Could he hear through an earpiece?
No, they strung it together word by word. He couldn't tell the whole joke. He'd tell part, they'd stop and he'd tell part and they'd stop and they'd put in applause and laughter. There was never any audience.

I remember watching the Six Flags Fiesta Texas one and thinking he's still got it and you're saying it was all ...
Animatronic. Very different from what we saw. I'm still close with Lorene Machado who worked with him for 10 years. She directed my film 'Bam Bam and Celeste,' which we just finished. It's a fag and fag hag adventure. Two kids leave their hometown to move to New York. Alan Cummings plays my love interest.

Quite a stretch for him.
It's very sexy actually.

The new gay channel Here TV will run 'Assassin' Sept. 1. And it's a premium channel, so you can say naughty words.
Yes. They're a really important and innovative new channel. I'm proud to be to be a part of their programming. I haven't really been on much TV since '94. I haven't been too interested in it, so now I feel accepted and can do what I like.