REVIEW: Rivers sends shock waves rippling through room

It's a good thing I know Joan Rivers has a kind and generous heart, because those weren't kind and generous words hopping out of her mouth Friday night at the Diamond Jo Casino in Dubuque.

F-bombs were flying before she even stepped into the spotlight, and continued pelting the crowd during the first of two shows in the casino's elegant Mississippi Moon Bar.

Elegant and outrageous made for a curiously palatable mix throughout the 90-minute show, which included opening comedian Brad Upton of Seattle and big band music from the ever-elegant Hunter Fuerste and his American Vintage Orchestra, based in Dubuque.

Rivers, 76, was the picture of elegance, too, with her petite figure clad in a simple black top and slacks, draped in a vintage '20s coat of shimmering panne velvet with black beading. True to form, she was every inch the fashionista, from her perfectly coiffed blond flip to her killer sparkling heels.

She began by laying down some simple rules of who could stay and who should leave. Gays stay, lesbians go. (Gays laugh, lesbians don't.) Also on the to-go list: people who are old, have ugly children, Chinese (they also don't laugh), are crippled, good-looking, fat, thin (like Victoria Beckham, she said, turning sideways and asking “Does this tampon make me look fat?”), people who were fat and are now thin and vegans (they have broken teeth and rickets).

If everyone followed her rules, she's be playing to an empty house.

And that's pretty much the secret to her success. She offends absolutely everyone, getting more outrageous and more over-the-top as she goes, until all you can do is laugh. Or leave, but it's much more fun to stay.

It's like a guilty pleasure to laugh at her shock waves.

Example: “I hate children. On Halloween, they say, ‘But Miss Rivers, we don't like apples.' Then just eat the razor blades.”

She also berated a bevy of stars, something for which she's well-known.

“Barbra Streisand has such crossed eyes, she can cross the street without turning her head right or left and be perfectly safe.”

“Nicole Kidman is very tall and thin. She always wears red dresses; with that white face, she looks like a ketchup bottle.”

“Tom Cruise has been in the closet so long I'm going to give him to Goodwill.”

She threw many more under the bus, from Madonna and Amy Winehouse to Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Dick Clark, Michael J. Fox and Mother Teresa. Apparently nothing is sacred.

She also offered up “life lessons”:

On first wives: “You grab and you take and you bury it with you. If the next bitch wants it, make her dig for it.”

“If you're getting divorced, grab and take everything you can. ... If he wants something, let him have the kids.”

“You have to look good and you have to smell good. If you're single, you don't fart. You have to be sexy. Forget the education. No man will ever put his hand up your skirt looking for a library card.”

Most of her bits on aging body parts can't be reprinted, but a couple of the tamer observations dealt with dating at her age:

“One guy gave me a hickey and left his teeth in my neck. Another one wanted me to meet his family. He took me to the cemetery.”

But in the end, she told us to always remember how lucky we are to be Americans and to turn to the people we came with and repeat after her: “I'm so glad, I'm so glad, I'm so glad ... I'm not you.”