Celebrity Setup

As told to David Colker, August 2, 2001
 

Stand-up Margaret Cho takes more than her  show on the road—she’s got some nifty portable  gadgets with her too. Comedian Margaret Cho has had a lot of ups and  downs—including addictions and a disastrous  sitcom—in her career, but even the worst  instances have been fodder for stand-up routines  that have won her a large and varied following. Raised in San Francisco (her Korean-born  parents are also a source for her comedy), Cho  became hugely popular on the college circuit by  the time she was in her early 20s. At one point,  she did 300 shows in two years. Her popularity  led to the short-lived “All American Girl” TV  show and then appearances in movies and  numerous other television programs. In 1999, she  toured with her one-woman autobiographical  show, “I’m the One That I Want,” which also was  filmed for release in theaters; the VHS and DVD  versions will be released this fall. Cho, 32, lives in Los Angeles. She is  workshopping her new one-woman show, “The  Notorious C.H.O.,” which will play at Universal  Amphitheatre in September. COMPUTER: I have a portable Sony Vaio that is  very small. It’s really my very good friend, my  lifeline, because I spend so much time on the  road. I need it for e-mail—I think I check more  frantically for e-mail than anyone in the world. I  use it to communicate with friends all over the  world—Thailand, Canada. It’s really important to  me. It’s where a lot of my personal life happens. Q. That sounds sad. I use my digital life as an addition to being with  people. Part of my work involves going into  different communities and building up  relationships, and then having to leave. With  e-mail, I can keep up with these people, and I  constantly do. Q. Did you work in Thailand? No, that’s where a group of friends I travel with  are right now. We are going on a trip to Vietnam  in the next couple of months—somewhere in the  middle of my upcoming tour—and with e-mail  everything is so much easier to plan. Q. You also use the laptop for writing? Yes. I wrote both my one-woman shows on the  computer and the book version of “I’m the One  That I Want.” Doing it on a computer has made  organizing much easier because I’m a scattered  person by nature—I would write things down all  the time and then lose them. Now that I put them  on the computer, I’ve got them. I keep everything. Anyway, writing is some form of daily meditation  for me. HAND-HELD: I have not gotten one yet. I feel  my laptop would be jealous. It feels like I would  be cheating on it if I got some cute, young, trophy  Palm Pilot. BOOKMARKS: I mostly do a lot of shopping  online. I’ve actually bought clothes from different  vendors, especially a site  [http://www.stopstaringclothing.com] that has  these great 1950s fashions. They re-created the  Marilyn Monroe dresses from “The Seven Year  Itch” and “Niagara” that I ordered—they are really  beautiful and reasonably priced. I’m pretty much  outfitting the tour from there. I’m also a sucker for Amazon.com—I always look  at the “recommendations” for me based on what I  bought in the past. It’s always health and beauty,  weird sex and martial arts. Q. Martial arts? I practice taekwondo, a kind of Korean karate,  and I am terrible at it. I go to class and get beat  up by 14-year-old boys. But it’s a great workout  and spiritually centering. It’s good for me to allow  myself to be bad at something. Q. Do you go to comedy sites online? No, I really don’t. I just never think of it. I like to  go to music sites, like Lloyd Cole’s  [http://www.lloydcole.com] because he’s a great  musician and I like the site. I also go to the site for  Vaginal Davis [http://www.vaginaldavis.com],  who’s opening for me on the tour. She’s  phenomenal—an incredible artist, writer, doctor  [of psychology] and drag queen. I also go to the site for BBC America  [http://www.bbcamerica.com] because I like to  watch their shows. Q. Do you use the Web to research travel  destinations? No, because we are usually traveling with guides.  And I get to be surprised. CELL PHONE: Absolutely. I have a Motorola  that is tiny, and I use it all the time. But not when  traveling in Asia because you can’t get good  service in the Himalayas. It’s kind of a relief, but  it’s also inconvenient. I want to call someone up  and tell them what I’m looking at. TECH TOYS: I have a Sony MiniDisc recorder  that I use when I’m in comedy clubs and trying out  new material. I am using it now while I’m  workshopping the new show—it’s plugged right  into the sound board. HOME THEATER: No, I have a TV and a DVD  player and an ancient VCR. I’m building a room  onto my house that will be my library. I’ll have a  room devoted to reading as opposed to a room  for the TV.