Hail Margaret Cho!

Surely one of the funniest people alive, she is now playing at your local theater in Notorious C.H.O. Raunchier than I'm the One That I Want--and, to me, not quite as good--the film of the Seattle concert is nevertheless a piece of comic brilliance. Cho explores menstruation (what if straight men had periods?), colonics, sex clubs, self-absorbed boyfriends, and--of course--the wisdom of her hilarious Korean mother. Though she has an enormous gay following, Cho's appeal is to anyone who is outraged with the world the way it is, but who is also ready to laugh uproariously at it. I was in tears through most of the film, and the few segments I found only moderately funny were a relief: I needed to wipe my eyes and give my lungs a break.

As hysterically funny as the first film, I'm the One That I Want is, the book by the same name is a marvelous treat. Cho is a gifted writer, and every page has laugh-out-loud lines.

Perhaps the best thing about Cho is that she has taken all of the dreaded ism's--racism, sexism, homophobism, fatism--dusted off their media-dredged dreariness, and re-exposed them for the horrors they are. Horrors that, in the light of Cho's genius, are some of the funniest things you'll ever see or hear.