terryl (12/10/82)
Went and saw the opening night of her new tour. Portland was the first
stop, and the tickets were worth the price($20.00). Bette was her usual trashy
self, poking fun at herself and at a few famous people in the world(Queen of
England, and a few local references that didn't make any sense unless you lived
in the Portland area). The show was two sets, the first lasting an hour and a
half, and the second lasting just a bit over an hour. During the first set,
Bette was a little nervous, and forgot a few lines when she was talking to the
audience and telling joke. But she was really good (read raunchy), and told a
couple of jokes that almost brought the house down (I'm not sure I would want
to post them to net.jokes, even after rotating!!!!)
The first set was standard, with Bette singing and telling jokes. It ended
with a clip from her latest film, "Jinxed", overdubbed in Italian with English
sub-titles. The scene was the ghost town scene with Jack Elam, and the way it
was presented was very funny. After the film clip, she came back on stage and
cracked a few jokes about the film, like the way they pulled it out of the
theatres so fast, the film developed stretch marks.
The second set was just fantastic!!! She opened the set with the announce-
ment about the opening of a new downtown club called the "Rajneesh" (again a
local reference) and the death of disco. Bette and her back up vocalists then
came out in mermaid outfits in motorized wheelchairs, and sang a couple of
disco songs choreographed with the wheelchairs!!! You had to see it to apprec-
iate it. It was a riot. She then did a bit about female breasts, complete with
hand puppets and balloons to accentuate the bit. After that, then the show
settled down to Bette singing the rest of the show. Her encoure consisted of
her singing "The Rose", and after that, she got a standing ovation from the
audience.
I would heartily recommend to see her when she brings the show to your
area unless you are of the type that gets very embarrassed at the slightest
mention of any four-letter words. Most of her language was clean, but there
were a few times where she was on a roll and the language got very dirty.