By Jason Norman

As they and a few hundred other pairs checked out Margaret Cho’s spitfire comedy Friday evening at Old Dominion University’s Webb Center, Donna Hughes-Oldenburg’s eyes rushed through about every task two overseers could do.

They leaked tears of laughter. They went wide at hysteria-induced shock. And once in a while, they looked toward their owner’s past.

“Sometimes she goes places I wouldn’t necessarily go,” said Hughes-Oldenburg, herself a former stand-up comic, “but I like her sense of humor. She’s sharp and politically astute, really clued in to the political climate, especially of Asian-Americans and the gay community.”

When she heard that one of her favorite dark humorists was coming to town, Norfolk resident Ruth Peele couldn’t quite comprehend it.

“I was in disbelief,” she said. “I was ecstatic. Margaret Cho’s so real, so full of truth. She’s just a genius. You’ll be crying, and you don’t know if it’s because you’re laughing so hard or because she touches you so deeply.”

That’s an experience that many Monarchs wanted to undergo, Women’s Center president Julie Dodd discovered over the past year.

“We had been hearing from a lot of students that they wanted to bring her here,” Dodd said of Cho. “As soon as we got it worked out, the Student Activities Council said they wanted to co-sponsor. She’s a comedian, but she’s also a real social commentator. She deals with the social oppression of all types.”

The Cho show was the first of three events to commemorate the Center’s 30th anniversary; on March 21, women’s rights leader Gloria Steinem is scheduled to speak at Webb, and the Guerilla Girls theater group will perform March 30, also at Webb.

Arguably America’s most well-known female stand-up humorist of the past decade, Cho’s comedy tours have inspired the feature films I’m the One that I Want, Notorious C.H.O., Revolution and Assassin. She’s been seen recently on television on The View, ‘Til Death and Sex and the City, among a multitude of other specials.

While Cho put on her final performance preparations backstage, opener Ian Harvey warmed up the audience.

“I’m a blackout drinker!” Harvey confessed. “Once, I blacked out so bad, I went to college for an entire year, and ended up with a .9 GPA! I could have blown higher on a Blood Alcohol Level machine.

“My last girlfriend was jealous and obsessive-compulsive,” she continued. “If she thought you were looking at me, she’d kick your ass, trash your house and clean up afterward.”

Harvey wound up her act, and the queen Korean comedienne trotted out from backstage and noticed a banner that ODU Out (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender organization) president Darrell Templin had put together.

“I’m gay,” it blared, “but I still want to have your babies!”

“Oh, you want to have my babies?” Cho asked with a laugh. “That’s so nice! Do you want to carry them too?”

After the laughter died down, she described a recent trip down to Birmingham’s Civil Rights Museum.

“One day, there’s going to be a museum that’s solely for gay rights,” she hoped. “One day, we’ll be able to see the monocle that Madonna wore for her Express Yourself video – and then we’ll go into the Kelly Clarkson Rotunda!”

Then she quickly jumped to politics.

“When I see (conservative activist) Ann Coulter, I think, ‘This is why women shouldn’t work,’” she said. “She to me is Kunta Kinte. I saw her say, ‘I would say that John Edwards is a f****t, but then I’d have to go to gay rehab,’

“I don’t know what you do in gay rehab! In gay rehab, you must find a tinted moisturizer for your skin! You must flip houses on Key West! You must have an all-tranny production of The Vagina Monologues! You must plan Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral, as you see it!”

Cho, who often brings her own bisexuality into her act, described a make-out session with Smith in Revolution.

“Anna Nicole Smith was a great woman,” she said. “Let’s dedicate this show to her tonight. But that girl did some drugs. She did so many drugs that she’d make Courtney Love say, ‘No, that’s OK, I have to go to work in the morning.’”

Her own upbringing also gave Cho a great deal of material.

“My father told me that I’d never be a pretty girl, so I had to work on getting a personality so people would like me anyway. I went and told my mother what he had said, and she said, ‘Nobody hates Daddy like I hate Daddy!’”!

With cheers and laughter in her ears, Cho went after one of her favorite targets.

“Politically, it’s so embarrassing, between us and the rest of the world,” she said. “Did you see what happened when President Bush went to Guatemala? They ritually cleaned every site he was at! I could have told them that that wasn’t going to work. We’ve burned so much sage trying to get rid of him!

“Did you see that Bush wants three thousand more troops in Iraq?” she asked in mock shock. “Yes, I support them, and that’s why I DON’T want them going there! I don’t want them to die in some needless war!”

After sharing her sentiments with a standing ovation, the crowd filtered out for the night.

“In the gay community, she’s an icon and a role model,” Templin said. “We had to come out and see her; it was obligatory.”

To Hughes-Oldenburg, television couldn’t come close to the real thing.

“She was excellent,” she said. “She’s much funnier live than on TV. She’s more real and uncensored.”