D-Lister Kathy Griffin said she's going to hell, and Tucson is partly to blame.
Here's the story: She mocked the disabled during a gem-show gig in Tucson last February while the cameras for her Emmy-nominated Bravo reality show, "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List," were rolling.
OK, it wasn't just the disabled; it was wheelchair-bound children. In particular, one child, Jacob, who was confined to a wheelchair, hooked up to tubes. He doesn't talk beyond a mumble, and he can't move, at all.
Do you see where this is going?
Griffin greeted the kid with a high-five: "What's up, bud? Don't leave me hanging."
Ouch, groan.
It gets worse.
When it came time to pump the gem-show crowd for donations for a children's charity, they rolled out — you guessed it — Jacob.
"I am sorry, but if that isn't pimping your kid out," Griffin retorted before a sold-out audience Sunday at Tucson Music Hall.
Jacob made sounds that his mother translated into perfect sentences as the child's thank-yous to the generous donors.
Griffin was aghast.
And herein lies the reason that she is bound for hell.
"It was so heinous, it got cut from 'D-List,' " Griffin told Sunday's audience, the majority of whom were bent over, howling. The laughter was so loud that it reverberated almost as intensely as the bass-line-thumping dance tunes that saturated the hall before Griffin took the stage.
Ah, to finally be the object of America's notorious celebrity basher's gossip. Sweet.
Griffin said she bombed that corporate show, and she blamed one of the organizers, who slipped her a note before she took the makeshift stage in a tent at Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa. The letter laid out taboo topics and words, death knells for comics like Griffin whose funniest insights, delivered in profane language, are mostly about male and female anatomy, and what they do with it.
The Tucson fiasco is but one reason for her impending trip to hell, Griffin explained.
When watching the ABC reality show "Dancing With the Stars," Griffin imagined a not-so-pleasant scene involving celebrity dancer Heather Mills and the fate of Mills' prosthetic leg.
"I didn't just want the leg to fall off. I wanted it to fly off in a high kick and hit someone in the head and kill them," Griffin explained, then blurted out: "I know that I'm (f---ing) going to hell. My handbasket is all pimped out. So don't bother e-mailing me to tell me I'm going to hell."
Throughout the two-hour-plus concert, Griffin dished on everyone from celebutante Paris Hilton to ABC talk-show "The View" mother-hen Barbara Walters, who, according to some gossip spinners, could be Griffin's boss if Griffin is tapped to replace Rosie O'Donnell.
Some Griffin excerpts:
On Hilton: "I have met Paris Hilton a couple of times. I can tell you, she's, uh, retarded.The more I meet these super-famous people, the more I realize they are just the way you think."
Poor Paula (Abdul): "Are you watching that show ('Hey, Paula')? I love that (f---ed)-up junkie. We knew she was loopy, but we had no idea she's our new Whitney. 'I am tired of the world not treating me like the gift I am!' "
Oprah Winfrey and her prison, er, I mean school: "How funny was it that two of the girls' parents (at Oprah's Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa) complained it was a prison. In one, they complained that the girls weren't allowed to eat junk food. Excuse me. Ten days ago they were eating twigs."
Review
Kathy Griffin in concert Sunday at Tucson Music Hall.
