robert.kahn@newsday.com

April 2, 2008

Not long ago, Margaret Cho was interviewed by a radio DJ. He asked her: "What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and you were blonde and had blue eyes and weighed 100 pounds and were ... beautiful?"

Well. A less-tolerant interviewee might have just smacked the fella, but Cho, whose four one-woman shows all have been turned into concert films, chose to answer idiocy with irreverence. "I said to him, 'I'd probably faint, because I'd be too weak to stand,'" Cho said last week by phone from Los Angeles, where she was preparing to hit the road with her first tour in three years: "Beautiful."

A follow-up to such crowd- pleasers as "I'm the One That I Want" and "Notorious C.H.O.," the new act comes to the Capital One Bank Theatre at Westbury tomorrow. Cho will be joined by pal Liam Sullivan, a People's Choice Award winner whose "Shoes" video has been downloaded 40 million times on YouTube.

What other areas are you delving into?

In a speech Barack Obama made [last month], he was talking about how people are always saying he's "too black" or "not black enough," and I could relate, because that's something I've certainly always gotten. People have criticized my take on my own ethnicity as being "not Asian enough" or "too Asian." I don't understand what any of those weird qualifiers mean. Race isn't something that we have to "measure" in order to be. That's a ridiculous notion, but it's a great place to go for humor.

On the matter of self-esteem, you'll be turning 40 soon. How's that milestone looming in your life?

I don't really think about age too much, because I still feel like an immature teenager. I'll probably celebrate by getting a tattoo. I have quite a lot of my body tattooed already. I'm looking to get more Japanese-style, bodysuit stuff to add to my collection.

You worked with Liam Sullivan last year Off-Broadway, when you did the "Sensuous Woman" burlesque show. How did you guys connect?

I met him because my husband made the robot for Liam's "Shoes" video. I was so blown away by it that I put it on my blog, and from there it went viral.

This summer, you'll be launching "The Cho Show" on VH1. Like "All-American Girl," it's about an Asian-American family. But this is a reality show, with your own parents.

I was able to bring the first Asian-American family to TV, and now I'm bringing the second. I am Number One and now I'm Number Two. It's pretty amazing that there hasn't been another Asian-American family on TV for more than 14 years.

How is it, working with your folks?

They're kind of shy. They never entertained the possibility of anything like this. They don't have cultural references to go by. There is no reality TV in Korea.