Kakiseni

Ballsy Babe With Barracuda Brains Antares offers Karen Loftus (THE AMERICAN WOMAN) a jug of beer and a backrub by Antares 12-02-2002 .

Karen Loftus has created a marketable standup schtick revolving around her Californian sexbomb image and her feisty Irish roots. In a field traditionally dominated by men (like the legendary Lenny Bruce in the 1960s; Severn Darden, Alan Arkin, and Dick Gregory in the 1970s; Chris Rush, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, and Eddie Murphy in the 1980s) and not-particularly-pretty women (Phyllis Diller, Whoopi Goldberg, Shelley Duvall, and Roseanne Barr, to name a few) the fearless Ms Loftus stands out like a day-glo hot-air balloon.

The term “stand-up comedy” itself contains a wealth of Freudian subtext. To stand up before a strange (and possibly hostile) crowd armed with only a mike and a motor mouth – and keep its attention from flagging for a solid hour – is a job for pushy, priapic personalities. Women hoping to break into this tough, do-or-die area of showbiz, might find themselves dismissed as “lie-down comics” by male chauvinist pricks. But the moment Karen Loftus stepped onto the intimate stage at Wisma K.R. Soma and began flaunting her pornstar assets to a disco beat with a self-satirizing blonde bimbo expression on her face, it was pretty evident this lady has clanging balls of weapon-quality bronze.

In his famous red-suit days, local-hero funnyman-musician Rafique Rashid used to pop Upjohn vitamins to keep up his manic stamina. I have no idea what Harith Iskandar (who was in the audience) takes to keep his humour turgid, but with two bottles of Red Bull, Karen Loftus was able to sustain her frenetic non-stop verbal barrage on everything that has ever crossed her well-travelled path. It would be revealing to wire her up and record her metabolic rate during her fast-paced routine – and then compare it with that of your typical civil servant. I’m willing to bet she burns up more calories in an hour than a betudunged clerk in the Jabatan Ugama does in a year.

But what is all this high energy in aid of? Well, for one thing it has taken Ms Loftus places. She was a hit in the Edinburgh Fringe, before embarking on a sell-out tour of the Middle East, and making an impact at last year’s Singapore Comedy Festival. And, considering the effort and natural-born flair she invests in her work, Karen Loftus certainly deserves a place in the ranks of world-class comedy acts. (She explains, in one of her charming autobiographical asides, that her family name derives from the time when itinerant storytellers would barter their entertainment skills for a hunk of bread, a flagon of ale, and a couple of weeks in some farmer’s loft – a tradition she proudly continues, only now she gets to bed down in the cushy comfort of the PanPac.)

Karen Loftus’s stage persona is such a lovable hoot, any red-blooded male would be happy to buy her a jug of beer after the show and offer her a nice, long backrub. As for me, I look forward someday to meeting her wombmate (Karen says she has a twin brother, Peter, who grew up "normal.")