By Michael Sommers STAR-LEDGER STAFF
 

NEW YORK—The coolest place to be on a hot summer night is Margaret Cho’s extremely funny tell-all turn, “I’m the One That I Want.” Rifting on sexual preferences, Cho ponders, “Am I gay? Am I straight?” Then she realizes: “I’m just slutty. So – where’s MY parade?” Convulsing a crowd of smart-looking people in their 20s and 30s, is this lively second-generation Korean American comic eventually relates the hilarious nightmare of starring in: her own TV sitcom. More or less playing a character based upon herself in “All American Girl,” Cho was forced by ABC executives to shed 30 pounds in two weeks (which led to kidney failure) and told by so-called experts that she wasn’t being “Korean enough.” That was true, Cho admits. “I do not play the violin.” Nor does she have sex with Woody Allen. Her ego-crushing experience, concluding with the sitcom’s quick demise, fueled Cho’s reliance on drugs, liquor and sexual promiscuity. “I was slowly turning into ‘The Rose’.” Cho has since cleaned up her bad habits (“Now I go to sleep instead of passing out.”), although her comedy remains unabashedly R-rated in content. She discusses how lesbians adore whale-watching, kids Karl Lagerfeld’s fan-waving affectations, and wonders where white supremacists get their clothes (“Is there a K-K-K-Mart?”) A self-described “fag-hag,” Cho observes, “When I was little, I always wanted to be surrounded by lots of gorgeous guys. And now I am, and I should have been more specific.” Still, she points out, gay men have always needed women like her. “We went to the prom with you!” Among the valley girls, network stiffs, and others whom Cho imitates, some of the funniest bits concern her dauntless mother, who comments on Cho’s dubious activities in broken English. “How you did such a thing?” she scolds. “You were not born tomorrow!” Clad in trendy black with a rainbow tie-dyed peignoir and 4-inch platform shoes, Cho amusingly carries on like everyone’s favorite sarcastic cousin. Her cheerful 80-minute turn is essentially a stand-up act, yet it’s cunningly structured to relate a good story about ethnic-American striving. Willing to mock her own flaws as much as others’, Cho’s struggle to hang on to her identity in a racist and sexist world is comical and heartening. She connects powerfully with viewers who feel themselves outside American society’s conventional images. Opening Thursday night, Cho is doing her funny business in the comfortable cabaret space at Westbeth Theatre Center in the far West Village, where the 225-seat room has been decorated with paper lanterns and bamboo trimmings in her honor. Eddie Izzard and Sandra Bernhard have enjoyed stand-up hits there in the last year, but the wry laughter that Cho creates in “I’m the One That I Want” rocks the joint like never before.