Chelsea Handler is Blunt, Sharp, Funny, and Definitely Rated NC-17

Santa Barbara Bowl Show Delightfully Defies Description

Chelsea Handler was indeed at the Santa Barbara Bowl on August 17, 2024. Photographers, however, were not. | Photo: Philip Cheung

What do you do when you’re assigned to write about a comedy show that is laugh out loud funny, but so f#$%ing @#$% @#E#$ that you can’t really describe it — at least not very accurately — in a newspaper?

I truly was chortling with laughter from the moment Chelsea Handler danced onto the stage at the Santa Barbara Bowl last Saturday in her white prison-ish-but-I-know-it’s-fashionable jumpsuit and sneakers and jumped into a riff about how homosexual men do not get enough credit for what they have contributed to society — which quickly segued into a long and impressively detailed discussion about anal sex.

Her Little Big Bitch show took us through an entertaining journey of her childhood as the youngest of six children, one who couldn’t wait to be an adult and spent much of her younger days either fine-tuning the joys of masturbation or trying to make money to escape her family and “get on with things.” Trust me, I can’t go into details but it was all super f@#$^%ing funny (an additional bonus was watching how much it made some of the more conservative types in the audience laugh too) and far too lewd to describe here.

“I’m as surprised as the next person at the shit that comes out of my mouth,” said Handler at some point as she shared true stories of close and almost close encounters with Governor Mario Cuomo, President George W. Bush, and even Bill Cosby.

Handler definitely tells it like it is, no holds barred, in consistently hilarious fashion. But if you know what to really know WHAT it is, you’re going to have to go to a show, because I definitely can’t go into details in a family newspaper.