The very first thing Kathy Griffin says after we greet each other over Zoom, on Monday, January 20, is, “Start the recording!” She’s got a lot on her mind and is raring to go.

It’s a challenge, and a pleasure, trying to keep up with the comedian when she’s on a roll, either poking fun at her famous neighbors in Malibu, or, more seriously, riffing on her unnerving time spent in the crosshairs of a federal investigation into that controversial photo of Griffin holding a colorful prop. Her world hasn’t been the same since.

So, if it seems the famously loquacious comic is especially ready to let her spirit (and self-described big mouth) fly like a just-freed bird, well, that’s exactly the case. As Griffin notes, she’s got her voice back. For years, she couldn’t book substantial work due to the hell-storm of outrage, especially from the MAGA faithful, that followed that photo.

The past several years have proved a long, punishing road. In addition to the federal investigation, Griffin faced lung cancer, resulting in the removal of half of her lung and a permanent change in the sound of her voice; divorce from husband Randy Bick; a pill addiction that led to a suicide attempt; and the loss of her beloved mother Maggie at the start of the pandemic.

Now, Griffin, in her inimitable fashion, is talking about it all in her latest stand-up tour, her first in years, My Life on the PTSD List, a mordant title tweaking the name of her Emmy-winning Bravo reality show. The show hits Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theatre on February 1.

“I feel confident about this show and this material,” Griffin says, ecstatic to have stepped out of showbiz jail and back into sold-out evenings at venues like Carnegie Hall and the Chicago Theatre. “I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t. I’d be like, ‘Well, I’m trying stuff out.’ I feel like, okay, I’m talking about the PTSD stuff. I talk about my drug addiction.”

Four and a half years sober, she also talks in the show about trying to take her own life. ” I tell it in a way that’s funny,” she says. “Because I feel like now is the time for all of us to have hard conversations, and I feel it’s the job of a comedian. I’m so old-fashioned, I actually believe comedians have a job to start conversations and make people uncomfortable and be inappropriate and say wrong things.”

For Griffin, that includes the celebrity takedowns that have been her bread and butter. “Don’t worry,” she insists. “I still have a lot of the old Kathy Griffin razzle-dazzle, but…I feel like our country actually has a bit of a collective PTSD. Yeah, some of it’s from COVID, but honestly, I think more of it is from Trumpism.”

METRO WEEKLY: First, happy MLK Day.

KATHY GRIFFIN: Happy MLK Day, because that’s what it is, which at least that part has to kill him. I’m on a news blackout since Election Night, which I know makes me a bad American. I just need a freaking break, because I still can’t believe how stupid people are. Except for the Kathy Griffin audiences, who are all brilliant. Okay, I thought the inauguration was fucking tonight. I didn’t know it already happened or whatever.

MW: It’s happening right now.

GRIFFIN: Like I said, I’m trying to avoid it all. I just want to say that there is no amount of money that could have made me go. So I am not speaking to Carrie Underwood, even though I don’t know her and I’ve never met her. I don’t know what’s going on with these performers. I actually had some friends over last night because we were calling it “Fascism Eve,” and I, by the time this article comes out, who knows if the country will have even taken it in that we are now a fascistic society. The United States of America is the People’s Republic of America.

But I am very excited about going to the capital and playing the Warner again — which is a dream, I can’t believe I get to play it again — but I just want your readers to understand, this is your old friend Kathy Griffin, who you know and trust, and just look up the word fascism. Can you just do that for me? Can we just fucking look up the word and stop acting like, “Well, all presidents are the same, anyway, and so I don’t even see the difference?” Or, here’s my favorite, “I don’t see how it’s going to affect my life.” Oh, slow clap. Oh, you will, honey. You fucking will.

MW: When they’re sending out the goons to round up people for deportations, I guess it’ll sink in then.

GRIFFIN: Yeah.

MW: And they plan to do that from day one or two or something in Chicago, which is on the hit list of deportation raids according to Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan.

GRIFFIN: I’m from Chicago. And Chicago already has a tragedy going on, which is entire immigrant families are begging on the streets, sitting together on sidewalks saying, “We are a family. We were dropped off here.” Remember when they were doing the bus drop-offs? Ron DeSantis would send people. I haven’t lived in Chicago for a long time, but it is a heartbreaking thing when you see a family with children in Chicago where it’s wind-chill -27 on a good day.

I just want people to be more fucking alarmed. I’m sorry. And I know it’s a little late, because I’ve been ringing this bell since May 30th, 2017, when I jokingly tried to decapitate someone, and I got in so much trouble. And if one more person is like, “Oh, if you did that picture today, people would like it.” And I’m like, “Well, you know what? Where the fuck were you then?” Because people were too fucking scared, or thought I was the problem and that I was promoting violence. Get the fuck ready for the rounding up in the streets.

MW: For me, that picture is now a historical artifact.

GRIFFIN: Do you know that I got into a fight with the Smithsonian? Some fucking cunt — yeah, I said cunt — at the Smithsonian, someone who’s in the art world, said to me, “The Smithsonian is trying to get a hold of you. They want the dress that you wore in that photo.” And I’m such an idiot. I was like, “Oh, okay.” So I think I either put it on Twitter or something, and then someone from the Smithsonian is a total Trumper and she did this rant. And I was in a Twitter beef with the fucking cunt at the Smithsonian, who’s like, “We will never want that dress. We want nothing to do with Kathy Griffin, ever.”

And I felt like saying, “You know what, honey? History is long. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” I have that dress. I live in California now, where we have fires every five seconds because, as Trump says, we don’t rake the forest. “Rake the forest,” not climate change because, you know, that’s for crazy people. But let me tell you, when I evacuated last week, I grabbed that fucking blue dress with that bow on it, and I was like, “You know what? There’s going to be some gay museum in Boytown somewhere that’s going to say, ‘I will honor that dress.'” Think of me evacuating with my fucking blue dress!

MW: So, how are you and your loved ones in California?

GRIFFIN: Well, look, I live in a fire zone, and everywhere’s a fire zone now. I evacuated, and I do live in Malibu now, which is population 13,000. And I talk about it in my new show. I have a whole new set of celebrities to torture that live out here because it’s like an hour out of L.A. And one of my neighbors, who I really can’t wait to run into at the grocery store, is named Mel Gibson, who, I want to remind you, punched the teeth out of his baby mama when they got into a fight. Punched. Her. Teeth. Do you know how hard you have to hit someone to punch their fucking teeth out? And let’s not forget the racial shit and the sugar tits and the antisemitic shit. Now, you know that he is on Trump’s, like, ambassador council?

MW: He’s an ambassador to Hollywood.

GRIFFIN: He and Sly Stallone and Jon Voight. And I don’t know Angelina Jolie, but now she’s going to have to clean up her dad’s mess again for another fucking four years because that guy’s out of his fucking mind. [Trump] really gathered quite a group to celebrate his start of fascism.

MW: America’s Golden Age, he called it. Another MAGA celebrity who I grew up watching was Roseanne Barr. Have you seen Roseanne doing some kind of MAGA rap in those blonde braids?

GRIFFIN: No!

MW: Yes, yes.

GRIFFIN: Nooo!

MW: With some guy named Tom MacDonald. I don’t know who he is, but I guess he’s a big-deal rapper to MAGA people.

GRIFFIN: Is he a MAGA rapper? Okay, can we just talk about that? I mean, I don’t know Kendrick Lamar, but if I did, I would call him and say, “Hi, would you mind doing me a favor? Can you please release a song about this?” Okay, you have to understand, I grew up loving Roseanne. As a female comedian, to watch this woman, who didn’t look like other women on TV, she was a big woman, and she looked like a real American mom, and she escaped the Mormons, and her whole routine was, “I’m from Utah, but I really go, ‘And you want to have sex instead of watching Wheel of Fortune? Fuck that.'” I watched her on the Johnny Carson show. I know I’m dating myself.

I know her. She gave me my first TV gig. She had a series for six episodes called Saturday Night Special, and there was a cast of players, and she was trying to take on Lorne Michaels, which I respect her for, because somebody fucking should have. And then she gave a part to me to be a regular, and the same with Jennifer Coolidge — it was Jennifer’s first TV gig too. And she was a great boss. She wasn’t crazy. She’s loud and boisterous and all that, which I love anyway, and I gotta tell ya, I don’t know what I would say if I ran into her now. First of all, I don’t know where I’d run into her, but she’s said stuff about me publicly that’s so like, [impersonating Roseanne] “She’s as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside.”

Their jokes are so bad. They’re like knock-knock jokes. The MAGA comics are so lame. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers with these Trumpers. I mean, it’s cult-like to another level. I just am crushed as a female comic that that’s what Roseanne is, and that younger people will see her as this lunatic, which is how Hollywood painted her when she was at the top of her game. So I was always pulling for her to ultimately win for the real women out there and the women that wrote their own material and the women that did stand-up specials and then her own sitcom, and she fought those fucking male bosses at ABC, and she took over the power of the show, and then this? Oh, why? Of all people?

And I’ve known Trump for like 30 years. I mean, I haven’t seen him since the head picture — which I didn’t see him then, but I will haunt his dreams. Oh, one thing I can tell you that I’m very excited about is I got to meet Maxine Waters, and you know what she said to me? She goes, “I love you, girl. That picture scared the shit out of him.”

MW: Oh, good.

GRIFFIN: The highest compliment. I mean, because you have to admit, he really flipped out over that picture, like talk about the overreaction of the century. By the way, in history, no comedian has ever been investigated by the feds. And I’m not putting myself in their category, but even the great Lenny Bruce and the great George Carlin were investigated and harassed by local P.D. I had the Department of Justice trying to charge me with the crime of conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Secret Service.

It’s interesting, because my good friend Rosie O’Donnell, also a fellow resistor, said to me, “Are you going to wait for the knock on the door?” And I said, “You know what? That’s a fair question,” because Trump has mentioned literal enemies camps, so it’s not necessarily hyperbole. And I just said, “Well, you know what’s interesting is I’ve had the knock at the door.”

So I may be one of the few people that you want to talk to about this topic, because I had the feds coming over fucking twice a week. And then when they finally got me to come in, which is what they wanted the whole time, they wanted a video of a perp walk, they wanted the chopper above to get video of me, little D-list Kathy Griffin, going into the federal building in Westwood in Los Angeles. So finally, I did the interrogation under oath at my lawyer’s office after many, many expensive legal bills and negotiating with the Department of Justice.

But it’s interesting because I almost feel like, of course, I’m going to stay here. I’m a little bit of a mini-expert on this thing. I’m going to start getting more and more calls, for real, from people going, “Hey, I got the call. What do I do next?” Bette Midler called me when she got in trouble in his first administration, and she goes, “Jesus, I did a tweet and the fucking Secret Service called me.” And it’s so funny, so I’m now the patron saint of comedians and miscreants and misfits who get in trouble for speaking their minds. And I’m like, “Okay, well, here’s the first thing you do. Don’t do this, do this. Here’s the second thing you do. I fucked up when I did this, so don’t do that. Call this person, don’t talk to this person.” So I have the whole thing down, so I’m ready for all the incoming calls.

MW: Who did they think you were in conspiracy with?

GRIFFIN: You ready? Kathy Griffin, the new queen of ISIS.

MW: Really? Oh, no. Wow.

GRIFFIN: Because, when you look at me, I scream ISIS.

MW: You were radicalized.

GRIFFIN: Yes, yes. I scream training camps in Syria. I’m on the jungle gym in training, because they’re like, “Get me a 64-year-old Irish Catholic redhead who’s pissed off at the world. That’s the new face of ISIS.” I have cousins — not kidding, I will tell you, my fucking cousin Beth is one of them — I have cousins who I grew up with, loving, playing with my cousins, just hanging out, whatever, on Christmas, who think I am a member of ISIS. As if there’s cards, like a fucking library card. Sorry, I’m dating myself by saying, “Library card.”

MW: I have a library card.

GRIFFIN: My own fucking cousins, I can’t see. If I go home to Chicago, they won’t see me because I’m in ISIS. What the fuck do you do with that?! And they’re mad at me because I put that in my act. Sorry, Cousin Beth.

MW: Oh, well, I guess they had it coming.

GRIFFIN: Kind of. I mean, kind of.

MW: You’re not in ISIS?

GRIFFIN: I want to go on record. I do not harvest baby parts. I am not eating baby parts with Hillary Clinton or without her. And not only am I not the queen of ISIS — I am a tired old queen, but that’s a whole other story, that’s a whole other community — but no, I am not a member of ISIS, nor do I have the membership card.

MW: But you were on the No Fly List. What is that like? How do you get around, because you’ve got to go places?

GRIFFIN: You don’t. I was on the No Fly List and I was on the INTERPOL list, which is the international version of the No Fly List, and I was on the Five Eyes list, which is the terror watch list. So I couldn’t go anywhere for two months until my investigation was complete. And I’m the only one that they fully investigated, ending with an interrogation. I will tell you that in the interrogation, they asked if I have any weapons that I could decapitate someone with, and I had to not joke, which for me was very hard.

I just want to say, I don’t know about this go-around because who knows if people have turned and they’re one of him or whatever, but at least the first go-around, I actually thought that the people interrogating me, I thought they knew it was bullshit too. Of course, they couldn’t come out and say it. I don’t want to say I felt for them, but I didn’t feel for one minute like they were like, “Oh, yeah, we got to get this bitch. She’s definitely going to kill the President because she’s in ISIS.” But when they did ask me if I had means to kill him, I did not joke, I was a good girl. But I did have to admit that I do have a giant sword in my house. And if you could have seen me explaining to the Department of Justice why I have a sword from The Gay Swordsman, which is a gay porn company, which I am the proud recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Hag Award, because I am such a hag that I actually was given an award by a gay porn company. You’re welcome. You’re welcome, America. I am out there helping the gay porn community however I can, one gay sword at a time.

But when those words came out of my mouth about, “Oh, I have a sword, it’s a gay sword,” and then they both took out, I’m not making this up, they both then started writing for the first time in the interrogation. And if you could have seen my lawyer as the words, “I have a sword in my house,” he did that slow turn, like, “What the fuck are you doing?” Because, for some reason, and by the way, I want to challenge the legality of this, I was not allowed the ability to confer with my lawyer at any point during the interrogation. So I couldn’t turn to him and be like, “I’m not sure what that question meant,” or anything. So this poor bastard, my own lawyer, who, by the way, I don’t know if you ever saw that movie The People vs. Larry Flynt back in the day, but my First Amendment lawyer, he just retired, was the guy that Edward Norton played in that movie. Because I thought, “If you can represent Larry Flynt, Kathy Griffin is a walk in the park.”

MW: Should be.

GRIFFIN: Little did he know, Larry Flynt was easy apparently compared to me. But yeah, so I do have a little bit of a secret laugh, picturing myself explaining The Gay Swordsman to the Department of Justice, who were not familiar with that award show.

MW: Did the gays have your back during this period, or did it feel just lonely and cold?

GRIFFIN: Okay, I’m going to be honest. What I call the civilian gays, meaning the community, had my back like no one else did. I mean, on social media where I was not allowed to look — I had to have a couple of trusted friends look at my social media because the death threats were so specific and videos of my house, and people parked outside my house with cameras, and it was really bizarrely seismic. But, ugh, I’m just going to be honest, the power gays ditched me. And what I mean by that is what I really needed from my own beloved community of showbiz, or TV and streaming, or live stand-up or whatever you want to call it, but how I’ve made my living for decades, they turned their back on me real fucking fast.

I won’t name names because I’m still too intimidated, but I was cold-calling gay, powerful agents, showrunners, people that had actual power, not like somebody at my fucking level, not like some D-list on some TV show that was like, “I love you, but I can’t get you on the show.” I mean, I was calling powerful guys that I had shown up for every one of their charity events for free and hosted or donated or even received awards from. And honey, it was a hard pass. That was one of the hardest things — not only did I lose about 75% of my friends who never came back, never apologized or came back, they were all very proud of themselves, but to have the power gays not even… I mean, I was calling guys going, “Can I just have five lines in your TV show or your movie? Just five lines, three lines, just something to just let people relax and be like, ‘It’s okay to hire Kathy Griffin.'” And I was out of work for six and a half years, and that was the hardest part of all of it, because I love my work so much. Like I said, I’m so honored to be able to play the Warner again. The D.C. audiences are off-the-charts fantastic and smart, anyway.

But to be out of work, and I talk about this part a lot in the show, I did everything from becoming addicted to prescription pills, which let’s just take a break. You have to laugh at, that I was fucking 57 and became a junkie at 57. Who the fuck becomes a junkie at 57? Me, because I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m sitting home all day. Nobody wants to talk to me, nobody wants to be seen with me. If I left my house, I was physically assaulted.

I was walking down the street one time and this guy just literally pushed my shoulder and I just kept walking. What am I going to do? I’m 107 pounds, and I’m a middle-aged woman, and these MAGA people are fucking nuts, man. They are crazy. And don’t even get started with the people that verbally would stop me wherever I went and just be screaming, “You’re a terrorist. You’re anti…” Not to be an asshole, but I fucking went to Afghanistan and Iraq on two separate trips and performed for the troops, and they’re telling me I’m a traitor and I’m a terrorist and stuff.

So it’s hard for me to see those folks now that, like I said, could have just lifted a finger. I’m not saying somebody should have said, “Oh, I’m going to put Kathy Griffin starring in a movie.” I’m not even in the movie industry. I’m in TV and streaming. But just the fact that I still can’t get a stand-up special, and this tour that I’m on started as 40 cities and grew into 75 cities. And look, I’m not selling out. I’m not going to lie. I sell out some shows, I don’t sell out others, but I have gotten a standing ovation at every show.

I know I sound like an asshole because I have to toot my own horn. I’m a one-man band. I don’t have a network behind me. Bravo fired me very famously. I don’t have Peacock or NBC Universal anymore. I’ve been in fights with the head of CBS. I’m banned from CBS. Anyway, it hurts. It hurts. You know what? I wish I could be cool and act like, “Oh, I was the one that got the last laugh, and I’m back on this big tour, and I played Carnegie Hall in October, which was like heaven,” and all that’s real, but I have to be honest, people turned their backs. And those backs are still turned.

MW: So something that concerns me about this crowd is I don’t find them very funny. Trump isn’t funny, and these people aren’t funny. Roseanne? Not funny.

GRIFFIN: Okay, how about this? Because I’ve been asking my younger friends and I’m like, “Why would a Gen Z-er vote for Trump?” And they all say the same thing — they like the vibes. This is our fucking government we’re talking about. Now, I do understand if you’re a certain age, you’ve never seen the government function well in your life. I’m such a, as they would say, libtard. They love to call me a libtard. But you know, President Carter was my favorite president.

I truly was ignorant of how much white people hated that Obama was even in office. Jimmy Carter got in trouble one time for doing an interview saying he had lust in his heart for whatever. I can’t even remember if it was a movie star or just a beautiful woman. And poor Jimmy Carter did one thing wrong in four years, and Obama… Was anyone cleaner? Clean as a fucking whistle. And I admit, I thought, “Okay, we got the Black guy. Next, we’re going to have a woman, then we’re going to have a gay person. Well, here we go. We’re on our road.” And I guess I’m in my liberal bubble because I did not know the level of animosity.

I don’t know how any female could have voted for [Trump], and yet I do know women that will say shit like, “Well, he’s a good businessman.” And then when you go, “Who went bankrupt several times,” they’re like, “Oh, that’s just fake.”

And I’ve had experiences, like I went and I got an award at Oxford, even though I didn’t even go to college. I’m a beauty school dropout, and yet I got to go speak about my experience at Oxford, and I just took a taxi there because it’s at Oxford and they don’t send a fancy car or anything. So I take a taxi and the driver was Moroccan. So I did what I usually do, which is I just went, “Okay, by the way, as long as we’re in the car, let me get this out of the way. I’d like to personally apologize for Trump.” So the driver says, “What do you mean? He’s a great man.” And I went, “Um, you know he called Africa, first of all, a shithole country.” He didn’t even say continent, a shithole country. And then he recognized me, because I had opened my big fucking mouth again, and he said, “If we were in Morocco, I could cut your tongue out right now.”

MW: Oh my God!

GRIFFIN: I’m in a taxi in England, and it’s pouring rain, cats and dogs, and I’m on, well, I was going to say an expressway, but that’s a Chicago expression, the freeway, and it’s not easy to run out of a rolling car going 50 miles an hour. And let me tell you, that was… I’ve had so many experiences like that where somebody recognized me from that picture, and the shit people have said to me and will say to this day is nuts. And it’s going to get all ginned up again.

MW: It’s all so threatening.

GRIFFIN: To cut my tongue out? That’s a little extreme for me, a little much. You know, if I were Mel Gibson’s girlfriend, I’d only lose a couple teeth. How is this for Hollywood excellence?

MW: It’s a chilling time for sure. I think a lot about the world through the point of view right now of a teenage trans person that I know, and things that go on, I just think, “Well, how is this going to affect him?” And so much of it isn’t good.

GRIFFIN: Is he in a major city?

MW: He is now. Moved from Texas back to New York City.

GRIFFIN: Okay, okay, okay. Just you tell him Aunt Kathy said, “We’re not going to Texas for a while. You’re just going to be down to Zoom or send audio messages, but let’s just stay out of open-carry Texas for a while.”

You know that when I play Texas, I cannot prohibit an audience member from bringing a firearm into my show? I ask, and it says on the tickets, which by the way, welcome to the world we live in that Kathy Griffin has to put on her tickets, “No firearms are allowed,” and I can stop the person and I have to pay for my own [metal detectors] and I have to pay for my own security and all that stuff. It all comes out of my overhead. It’s not magic money. And yet, if someone really wanted to, they could sue me. You should also know I have been sued seven times since the Trump photo. Seven times. I have a case now in Tennessee. I’ve had two in Kentucky, shock, and federal court, state court, L.A. Superior Court. I’ve had cases all over.

MW: I’m going to point out, because I live on 16th Street in D.C., that a protest is making its way down towards the White House right now.

GRIFFIN: Right on.

MW: You mentioned being vocal. I was going to ask you, because you sound really good today, how is your voice? I know that that has been a real challenge.

GRIFFIN: I talk about this in the show, too, because it really fucked with my head. So I got lung cancer, I never smoked, I just happened to get lung cancer, and they had to take out half my left lung, and I was injured during the surgery. And I make jokes in the show about how I might’ve been injured, which I won’t spoil, but leave it to me to have this half-a-lung loss.

MW: I can imagine.

GRIFFIN: They’re not appropriate jokes. They’re not for the kids. But anyway, I then had kind of a Minnie Mouse type of voice where I sounded like [high-pitched whisper] this, and I just thought, “Oh my God, what is next?” First, I was metaphorically silenced by the government. By the way, I’m not anti-government. I just want to go on record. I am not anti-government, I do not blame the Department of Justice. We need the Department of Justice, we need the IRS, we need firemen. We need to pay taxes. Let’s not forget that shit. I don’t love Trump’s government, but that’s me. So I was sent around by this surgeon and what I really feel is that this guy fucked up the surgery by permanently paralyzing my left vocal cord.

And it wasn’t until — and here I’m going to start name-dropping, so get ready — but I’m good friends with Sia, the singer. You know, “Chandelier,” “Titanium”? And she said, “Wait a minute, I know of a female surgeon, and you can get an implant for a vocal cord. It’s a new-ish operation.” And I just started crying. I went, “What? But [my doctor has] been sending me to other 85-year-old white guys, and they just keep telling me, ‘Voice therapy, voice therapy.’ And I’ve now gone to five different really good voice therapists, and I still sound like this.” And then sure enough, she put me with Dr. Anca Barbu, and she was on the Adele team and she just knows her shit. So just a few months ago, I got an implant in my left vocal cord, and I feel like I got my life back!

I mean, when I started the tour, I still had a voice like this. And I would just have to say at the beginning of the show, “Hey, guys, I have cancer. If you can hang with me, I think you’ll…” And it was amazing. The audience actually got over it in five, ten minutes. I would say, “Look, if I’m going to do an impression, you’re just going to have to know that if I do Trump or if I do Oprah, if you hear me yelling, ‘You get a car, you get a car,’ you guys are going to know. You’re going to know.” And I would just explain it to the audience and the audiences were so loving.

I played San Francisco Saturday night, so that’s like a wet dream for me. Come on. Ladies and gays. And there’s a warmth to these shows where it’s almost like, well, people online, they’ll say shit like, “I’m seeing you for the ninth time,” because they know I always change up my material. I haven’t even seen a comic nine times. That is so touching to me. So I just want to say, as much as I’m bitching and moaning, I’ve never had more gratitude in my life because these audiences, if they didn’t just take out their wallet and buy a ticket, I would not be talking to you now. And that’s why I haven’t talked to you for seven years, because I had nothing to fucking promote.

And so I’m so grateful to be back at work and telling my dick jokes and my celebrity stories with some PTSD thrown in, because people just committed the act of buying a ticket. And so, slowly, when you say, “Comeback,” it’s like the industry has to see me sell enough tickets to finally go, “Okay, we’re no longer squeamish.” But I’m still fighting the squeamish, one ticket sale at a time.

My Life on the PTSD List plays The Warner Theatre, 513 13th St. NW, on Saturday, Feb. 1. Tickets are $75 to 194. Other stops on the include Boston (1/31), Miami Beach (2/15), Portland (2/28), Seattle (3/1), Philadelphia (3/15), Albany (3/29), and more. Visit www.kathygriffin.net.

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