Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Columnist Lisa Ferguson: There’s no shtick shortage for humorous Hooper

Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].

Maryellen Hooper won't need new material for her stand-up act anytime soon. The events of her life during the past couple of years have provided plenty.

In 2001 -- after six years of joking about their courtship onstage -- the comic finally wed her fiance, Mark.

"I kept trying to tell him ... 'A couple more years and we're legal anyway. I would like to have the pretty dress,' " Hooper quipped recently about the couple's long engagement during a call from their Los Angeles-area home.

Hooper's 1930s-inspired wedding, like most, was preserved on videotape. Then it was shown to a national audience during an episode of the popular "A Wedding Story" on The Learning Channel (Cox cable channel 38), where it continues to air in reruns.

The couple were tailed by a camera crew for two days prior to the ceremony, during the nuptials and through the wedding reception.

"You can't get better video than that," Hooper, who performs Tuesday through June 22 at The Improv at Harrah's, says of the experience.

Some of the show's most tender moments are interviews with the happy couple explaining their love for one another. "So I'll always have a videotape of him saying that I'm the best thing in the world," she says. "So in 10 years, when we're fighting, he'll go, 'You're an idiot.' " That's when Hooper will call for a not-so-instant replay. " 'Well, let's look at the videotape, shall we. I believe I'm the sun and the moon.' "

One drawback to having TV cameras at the wedding, Hooper says, was how it "weirded out" some of the guests who spoke about the bride and groom. "People were like, 'Uh, I've known Maryellen for five years.' I'm like, 'Mom, it's been longer.' "

In the episode, Hooper and her husband were also shown making improvements to their 70-plus-year-old, fixer-upper home. Prior to purchasing the place, "It was actually the crack house on the block," she says, "The neighbors were so happy to see us. They were like, 'Young people with tools ... our property value is saved.' "

But work on the property has been slow and, at times, painful. In her act, the redheaded Hooper jokes -- in her signature storytelling style -- about the agony of making repeated trips to Home Depot for supplies, and then to the emergency room after she was electrocuted.

"Every little project turns into 12," she explains. Like the time she bought a plant to put in the yard. "Well, if we're gonna do that, we might as well rip up everything that's out there and we might as well put in a sprinkler system ... So my $4 plant has now cost us three grand."

Such everyday events are what have kept Hooper's comedy career moving forward since she began performing 18 years ago.

"Just like any other job, every year something has happened that's made it more fun and exciting," she says, be it her two appearances on "The Tonight Show" or being named Best Female Stand-Up at the 1998 American Comedy Awards. Also, "I just keep changing my act so it's not old and stale to me, so I don't get bored."

That's important in a field such as comedy, which is dominated by men. "There are still clubs that are run by good old boys who don't think chicks are funny. Anytime you're a minority, you get generalized," she says.

Female comics are fewer and father between, Hooper theorizes, because it takes a comic at least a decade of working on the road to "really find yourself ... and by that time a lot of women end up getting married or want to start a family ... so they end up dropping out or they get writing jobs where they can stay home."

It really takes a certain sick person to keep yourself out on the road. That's why there are so few of us left after so many years."

Hooper is looking to branch out. A thespian in high school, she continues to take acting courses and says she hopes to someday venture back to the stage or small screen via a sitcom.

"I think it would be fun to each week relay a different story and act it out, as opposed to telling it" as she does in her stand-up act, she says. "I have so many stories now that would make great episodes."

Meanwhile the 39-year-old Hooper is mulling ideas for a new comedy CD -- the follow-up to her 1999 offering, "Dignity Under Duress."

Also, she says, cable's Comedy Central has expressed interest in having her star in another stand-up special following her 1996 performance (while wearing an unforgettably wacky black-vinyl ensemble) in the "Lounge Lizards" special.

Of course, one of Hooper's biggest fans -- her mother -- is wondering whether the comic's next project will be a joint effort, producing children with husband Mark.

"You never know," Hooper says, "it depends on how badly I need material."

Out for laughs

Local comedy club frequenter Eddie Brill -- whose day job is warming up audiences and coordinating comedic talent for "The Late Show With David Letterman" -- stars in the latest installment of "Comedy Central Presents," airing at 10 tonight (Cox cable channel 56).

Julie Scoggins held a potpourri of jobs -- a cab driver, a pole climber for a cable-TV company, a truck driver and a route salesperson for a snack-food conglomerate -- before breaking into comedy. Learn whether she's finally found her calling when she plays Comedy Zone at the Plaza tonight through Sunday.

Funny man Greg Giraldo, a Harvard Law School grad and frequent guest of Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn," settles in July 15 though July 20 at The Improv at Harrah's.

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