Sammy Davis Jr. would not fare well in her front row.

This Valentine’s Day, why don’t you treat your girl to what she really wants? The lights down low, maybe a little Champagne, and a quiet evening of searing public humiliation courtesy of Lisa Lampanelli.

The Queen of Mean (and we really should have asked her if the Leona Helmsley estate ever came after her for the nickname) has three comedy specials, a Grammy-nominated album in Dirty Girl and now a book, Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat, and Freaks. (Incidentally, she’s also a former Rolling Stone copy editor, a fact that always gets mentioned in these writeups because there’s nothing journalists love more than holding up former journalists as a model of success. It’s how we remind ourselves that we might have merit as a profession. Hunter S. Thompson got paid to write articles! Just like us! Kind of. Except better and smarter.)

Lampanelli performs at The Pearl inside the Palms Saturday at 8 p.m., the night before Valentine’s Day. Tickets are $49.75. We talked to her about her pending nuptials to a freakishly large-sacked man, why she’s waiting for Don Rickles to die and how even an insult comic has to still worry about what her mom thinks of Andrew Dice Clay.

The night before Valentine’s. Can people expect a romantic evening with Lisa Lampanelli?

About a romantic as a shovel to your cunt. Can you put “cunt” on your entertainment website?

I absolutely can.

I’ll spell it C-U-N-T-T-T. It has a lot of “t’s” at the end. I say it with a nice cadence.

So you’re getting married soon, right?

Yeah, Oct. 2. But it hasn’t tainted my sense of humor or anger. I’m still the angry twat I always was, so people can expect that at my show.

Any Valentine’s Day surprise in that regard? Are you going to bring your fiancé out?

Oh, he comes out every show. Let me tell you, I’m the one girl comic who has a fiancé with enough guts to come on stage when I introduce him. I say “Get up here Big Balls,” because, you know, his nickname is Jimmy Big Balls because he has a huge nutsack. I don’t make him show his nuts to the fags or anything in the front of the stage because they’ll go crazy, but he does indeed come out and show his guns. So, yeah. That’ll be a little romance for all the cornholers in the crowd.

You’re going to be out here a week before Don Rickles. It’s like Insult Comedy Week here.

Oh, that’s awesome. Is he playing in the Palms?

No, he’s going to be at The Orleans.

Oh, OK. Man, there’s a bunch of old bastards who go to that place. What a bunch of skeevy bastards there are. See, the Palms I like because it’s cool and hip and young. It’s really the place where everything is happening. The only unhip people there are going to be me and my fiancé, because we’ve turned into the 48-year-old “Can you turn the music down?” assholes. Rickles is the shit. That’s my hero.

He still puts on a great show.

Dude, I know. I saw him a couple years ago and I was scarred. I was like, man, if I’m 83 years old and I’m still doing that, kill me. Seriously. When’s he going to die, old Jew, when? Get in the coffin.

Is that what needs to happen for you?

Yeah, I need him dead, because I’ll tell you why. I want to be the only insult comic left in the world. Because right now there’s me and him, and he’s getting in the way of my greatness. So you know what? Die, Jew, die.

The kind of comedy you do, insult comedy and a lot of crowd work, you don’t see a ton of comics doing it in their act. Is it a harder brand of comedy to do?

Your thing is either meant to be or it isn’t. You can’t do it unless you’re really likable and people let you get away with a lot of stuff. A lot of comics don’t have that little something where people go, “Oh, she called me the c-word, but I’m not offended. It didn’t hurt my feelings.” It’s a personality type. Me and Rickles, trust me, he’d agree with me on this: We’re not the best writers in the world and we’re not the best actors in the world, but one thing we have is likability that lets us get away with a lot of crap. I think that’s why less people do it. They don’t kind of have that thing, they have other strengths.

How’s everything been with the book and all that?

It’s cool. I was really, really pleased because I actually got good reviews. It’s the kind of thing like when I did The Tonight Show for the first time, I was going I got to do it so I’m true to myself and still preserve edge without cursing. Because you can’t curse on network TV. It’s the same thing with the book. I wanted to preserve, oh, I’m still funny even though I’m doing a meaningful book. I really love it. I’m actually really proud of it. When I look at it I’m like, I can’t believe I wrote a serious book but with a punchline every three sentences so that people would keep laughing but still care more about how I really grew up. It’s good. I loved it.

Do you feel like now this opens up more doors for you to explore other avenues of just different types of projects you’d want to do?

Yeah. Honestly there’s like three chapters on co-dependency and all my struggles with love addiction, which is really funny because the string of boyfriends … talk about losers with a dream. I was like, wow, that could be a hysterical Broadway show called Love Addict. So I started working on that with a writer. Having written the book, the hard part is done. The plot is there. The beginning, middle and end are all there already. Then also, there’s a part about me being at fat camp, which is hysterical. I was there for 28 days. There’s totally a movie in that. If I hadn’t written those, I never would have even thought to do stuff like that. So yeah, you’re right, it does open up your mind to other things.

You’ve mentioned in interviews the writing process itself you weren’t a big fan of.

No, it sucks. It’s hard.

Do you think you have it in you to sit down and bang out a screenplay?

Oh, no. I would definitely use that as a template and then hire an awesome writer. Even now they’re developing a sitcom script for me, and a producer is developing it with some writers. They interview me, they talk to me and they base it on my character so I don’t have to sit down at the friggin’ IBM Selectric and bang it out, with my Liquid Paper for mistakes.

How far along are you in that process?

This producer, who produces the show Mercy on NBC, they took a really big liking to me. I don’t even know how people heard of me. It’s just like, “Oh, so-and-so’s a fan” and I’m like get out of here. So he and I went through a process of interviewing writers and finding the right guy. The guys are writing up the script and I guess then we’ll pitch it to the networks. It’s one of those things where TV is always in the back of my mind but I never count on it. It’s like having a 401(k). You’re not going to really count on it. If it happens it happens, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. Trust me, TV is the hardest thing I think anything anyone in entertainment ever tried to conquer. Getting a show on the air sucks. Again, we’ll see what happens.

With you, though, you’d have to tone it down so much.

Well, there’s a lot of edgy shows like Modern Family, things like that, where you can do a lot with edge, but obviously, just language. And again, I’ve done The Tonight Show seven, eight times. Kimmel and all those, you can’t use language. So I’m getting kind of used to it. But it’s still preserving what you do. Your whole character and attitude. Roseanne was really very edgy. In her standup, too. As long as you don’t sell out, it’s OK.

Obviously, speaking of The Tonight Show and Kimmel, what was your take in that whole thing?

I watched Jay on Oprah, and I was like, you know, he has a point that he was offered a job and he took it. I don’t think it’s Leno’s responsibility to look out for anyone else. The whole thing about not backing off – but if you’re forced to retire and you don’t want to, why can’t you come back to work? And NBC is the real fuckups in the whole thing. They’re the ones who screwed it up in the first place. They had to fix something that wasn’t broken. I think they’re the fucking douchebags.

Kimmel came out strong in the whole thing – in the one episode where he did it as Jay, and then he went on Jay’s show – and really, you kind of saw the gloves come in the whole thing. Do you think it’s prepping the world for a little more rough-and-tumble comedy?

Yeah, definitely. When I saw that Kimmel clip, like, when you saw it weren’t you shocked?

I thought it was brilliant.

Oh my God. I was just so embarrassed that he blindsided Leno like that. And also that Leno kind of didn’t see it coming. I don’t know how you can’t see that coming. But yeah, I think people are really starting to like edgier stuff. Even like the Dave Attells and Jim Nortons. Those kind of guys who really kind of put it out there. If I have to see one more clean and clever white guy, I’ll just kill myself.

You don’t like, say, Demetri Martin or someone like that?

Oddly enough, I do. But that’s not safe, either. He’s definitely quirky. There has to be something quirky or something. Not just an observational straight-up, boring, like Seinfeld-type guy. Seinfeld was Seinfeld. Hey white guys, you’re not him. Don’t try that at home.

Right. So what else do you have in the pipeline right now?

I just signed a deal with a production company for a talk show, too. We’re meeting next week and then pitching it probably within the next few months. We’re going to pitch it first to E! and see what they say, kind of as a companion to Chelsea Lately. If that doesn’t work out, fuck it. Then I’ve got to tape a new special because I did my last special, my gosh, one year ago Sunday. I’ve got to start working on that. We’re probably filming that in November, probably a one-hour special. And I think, oh my God, I’m exhausted already. And I have to stay on the road to make money. That always helps.

Are you doing the roast this year? Are they even doing one this year?

They do two every year, but this year I heard they’re only doing one I think. It depends on who it is. If I really like the person, I like to do it. If you respect somebody and like them then you can roast them. If you don’t like them then you kind of can’t make jokes about them because it comes off as mean. With Cable Guy and Foxworthy and Pam Anderson, those were easy because I like them. It always depends on the subject too. Also, you know, last time for Larry the Cable Guy I was roastmaster. It’s hard to take a step down and just be another roaster. So it depends on that, too.

Is there any kind of rivalry or competition between you and Jeff Ross on something like that?

No, I mean, because I think we’re at different stages of our career. He’s been doing it a lot longer than me so I think he knows he’s an established guy and really could give a fuck. And also Jeff always picks a good spot in the roast for himself. He always picks fourth or fifth and he knows he comes up there and kills it. Most comics don’t even hang around together. So if anybody has a rivalry with me, I don’t think about it. I don’t hear about it. I just think of myself all the time. You don’t understand how self-centered comics are. We don’t care about anyone but ourselves. We’re worse than actors or musicians, believe me.

You mentioned Attell and Norton, did you ever consider doing a big tour with guys like that?

No, because they don’t sell tickets. I sell the tickets and they kind of do my show. Basically, Norton will do one show at a place in Minneapolis and I’ll do two at a bigger theater. So I don’t need them at this point. I mean, Dice approached me to do a tour. First of all, Dice to me, has bad karma. There’s something about Dice that I think it’ll be signing a deal with the devil if I had to perform with Dice. I think my mom would kill me. I don’t know. It seems odd to me. I’m sure I’ll be on the way down soon or I’ll need to pair up with other comics sort of like Kings of Comedy. I give myself two more years to be knocking on Attell’s door.

Dice just signed a headlining gig at the Riviera out here.

Oh, I know, I got the text about it. “Oh, Lampanelli, it’s going great.” I’m like oh, whatever you fucking fat bastard.

How did that relationship come about?

It was really weird. I remember we were both on the Gene Simmons Roast, but he didn’t say hi because I guess he had to leave. But then I heard through Norton or somebody that he thinks I’m great. Oh, he’s a fan? Oh, that’s really cool. So then I bumped into him at an airport in L.A. and he was like “Dude, we’ve got to do Nassau Coliseum or Madison Square Garden together.” And I’m like, I don’t know. I would really, to be honest with you, like to do them by myself first. I would love to get to the stage in a few years where I go, wow, I actually did it without any help. I don’t want to do it as a part of anything. So that may be ego, but it’s also, I have these goals in my life that you go, ooh, I can check off Carnegie Hall. I can check off Grammy nomination. I can check off Radio City. You want to do those things, and Madison Square Garden by myself would be one of them. So, I may regret it, but I kind of want to wait until I can do it, if that’s ever possible.

By Jason Scavone

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