The brilliant and gorgeous Camille Paglia wrote a wonderful blog including some wonderful words about yours truly...
My partner, Alison, and I had the great pleasure of seeing Sandra Bernhard in "Everything Bad & Beautiful" at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia last month. What a searing, original presence Bernhard is -- and what a rebuke to the simpering micro-celebs with blank eyes who litter our entertainment mags with their banal bacchanals. Bernhard is a true role model to aspiring young performers, who need guts and gumption and cantankerous vision. She's shown how to make a mark on the world and still stay real...
You can read the entire thing on Salon.com
There were so many wonderful moments, but the highlight for me was when Bernhard veered into a split-second improvisation inspired by the two curving stairways framing the stage -- which looked like a set for the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet." Primly holding the mike like a candle, she suddenly became an acolyte in a religious procession, slowly mounting the steps while humming, then singing Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," whose classic lyrics she mischievously bent. Her superb band, the Rebellious Jezebels, immediately responded and carried her along as she repeated her liturgical homage on the other side.
It was hilarious yet eerie. I was utterly transfixed, as if by an occult manifestation. As a performance artist, Sandra Bernhard has few peers today. Her lineage goes back through early Barbra Streisand to Lenny Bruce and the comic monologist Ruth Draper, whose one-woman theater was famous throughout the world. But Bernhard's raging energy is sparked by the rock idiom, which gives her propulsion and a flirtation with danger.