Friday, May 2, 2003 | 9:28 a.m.
Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].
Wendy Liebman's recent trip down the aisle was a long time coming in more ways than one.
Followers of the petite comic may recall how, early in her nearly 20-year-old career, she joked about having an ex-husband. Turns out she had never been married.
"One guy gave me a piece of coal once, and he told me he'd marry me when it turned into a diamond from all the pressure, but ..." quips Liebman, who takes the stage Tuesday through May 11 at The Improv at Harrah's.
For a while the New York native garnered laughs with tales of her engagement. Those were true, to a point:
"When my fiancee proposed, it was very romantic -- he turned off the TV. Well, he muted it ... during the commercial."
Finally, on April 12, she and fiancee Jeff Sherman wed. Less than a month later, marriage is already affecting Liebman and her comedy.
"That's why I got married, to tell you the truth, because I needed new material," Liebman joked during a recent call from Naples, Fla., where she was performing a private gig for a gathering of Cadillac salespeople.
Look for her act to soon take a domestic turn, she says. "I love being a housewife ... I love doing laundry. Except I have a little bit of separation anxiety, and you have to separate your laundry, so I have a little bit of a problem there."
Along with her new husband came his two sons, ages 8 and 12, making Liebman (who has lived for three years with the trio in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley) officially a stepmother.
"The only thing that's changed," she says, "is they just started saying things to me like, 'I don't have to listen to you; you're not my mother' -- you know, like my husband says to me."
Liebman and Sherman met in 1999, when the TV writer (Sherman's credits include the late-'90s ABC series, "Boy Meets World") was hired to pen an animated sitcom based on and starring Liebman. It was one of several unsuccessful stabs Liebman has made at landing a self-titled sitcom.
A show with a fitting premise has yet to present itself, she explains. In previous pitches to network execs, "I was always ... the single girl who just moved to L.A." Part of the "problem," 42-year-old Liebman speculates, may be that her subtle delivery style just doesn't lend itself to a half-hour show.
Problem? Liebman, named Best Female Standup at the 1997 American Comedy Awards, has built a successful career dropping precision-guided one-liners that explode seconds after they're expected:
"My parents and I are very close ... genetically."
"Younger guys have been approaching me ... and asking me to buy them alcohol."
"My HMO is so expensive, they charge me for a self-breast exam. It's a flat fee."
"I'm old-fashioned, I like it when the man pays ... for sex."
David Letterman took notice: Liebman has guested on his late-night show nine times."That's the thrill of my life," she says, crediting Letterman's TV antics for inspiring her, as a college student, to pursue a career in comedy.
It's fitting, then, that efforts are under way to land Liebman her own late-night talk show. She wants to host a "one-on-one" interview show, possibly on a female-oriented cable network such as Lifetime or Oxygen. Having majored in psychology (she graduated Wellesley College Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude) and, having once worked as a psychological researcher, Liebman says she'd relish the chance to chat about topics of substance. "It's a different kind of communication and I think I'd be good at it."
Also on her to-do list: releasing her first comedy CD. Trouble is, she can't seem to work up the nerve to record it.
"Every time I work in Vegas, though, I feel that much more ready, because the audience there is such a cross section of the country," she says. "I really feel like it's a good place to get a pulse on what people think is funny."
Talk about putting the cart before the horse: Liebman's website (wendyliebman.com) features a long list of potential titles for the disc. She's leaning toward "Playmate of the Year," with cover art of her at age 5, "because I was playmate of the year in kindergarten."
Also on Liebman's to-do list: help organize a comedy concert benefit this fall for her favorite charity, RX Laughter, which works with hospitalized, cancer-stricken children and teens in an effort to prove the theory that laughter is truly the best medicine.
"We all say that, and we all know that, but we really want to show that it will help people," Liebman says, adding, "I think there's a healing component, especially when you laugh with other people."
Nobody knows that better than the comic and her new brood. "I thought I was gonna be an old maid," she says, reflecting on married life. "But now I have my husband and the boys -- now I'm a maid."
Out for laughs
Who doesn't remember the luggage-lobbing gorilla from the old American Tourister commercials? That was comedian Tony V in the monkey suit. He headlines (sans suit, we suppose) at the Riviera Comedy Club Monday through May 11.
Care for some tunes with your laughter? No problem: Guitar-strumming jokester John Joseph takes The Comedy Stop at the Trop stage May 12 to May 18. Also on the bill is funny piano man John Barillaro. The two will join forces for a bit during the show.
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