Bob Mould.

Bob Mould is the Ben Franklin of indie pop. Founding member and driving force of ’80s punk trio Hüsker Dü (whose influence resonates today through Foo Fighters and Ryan Adams), Mould has succeeded at everything he’s tried, and he’s tried a lot. Credits include the post-Hüsker band Sugar (classic record Copper Blue), solo hits including “See a Little Light” (which appeared in Buffy, HBO’s Mind of the Married Man, and a commercial for TIAA-CREF), one half of the deejay phenomenon Blowoff, the theme songs to The Daily Show and TLC’s In a Fix, a stint as a writer for World Championship Wrestling (!), lead guitar on the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, gay rights activism, and a truly excellent memoir.

Eight-Day Week spoke to Mr. Mould last week. At 52, he retains a shocking percentage of the fire and enthusiasm that incubated “Celebrated Summer” and “59 Times the Pain,” and he drew the arc between his newest record, Silver Age, and the heyday of Hüsker Dü:

“The template for this record was Copper Blue. The notion of shorter/faster/louder guitar pop songs. As far as Flip Your Wig goes, I’m on record as saying that’s my favorite Hüsker Dü album. Beyond the great songs on there—“Makes No Sense At All,” “Divide and Conquer,” “Green Eyes”—after the records with Spot at the helm for SST, for me and Grant to take charge and to make the pop record that we always knew was in there. That was the end of the good times. Touring with Soul Asylum. That was the best of days.”

Mr. Mould has continued to innovate, even as many of his colleagues from mid-80s punk rock have fallen by the wayside. (We are grateful he went back on his 1998 promise to hang up his electric guitar.) He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the release of a video concert from a 2011 appearance. "There was a tribute show of my songbook at the Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and this is a movie about the event. Kickstarter has been a great way for artists to underwrite projects that fall a little bit out of the mainstream."  The project raised over $100,000 from 1800+ backers and now fans can see artists like Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters), Ryan Adams, No Age,  Britt Daniel (Spoon), The Hold Steady, The Shins and even Margaret Cho perform songs from the Mould catalog.

Mr. Mould, who is playing on Wednesday night as well, says both shows will rock, but notes that Bear in Heaven, who are opening Tuesday night, released one of his favorite records of the year.

The Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, doors 9pm, tickets $25.

Tuesday: Fringe
We'll offer a full review of Fringe tomorrow, but consider this a reminder to set your recorder. In a fairly disappointing season for new TV shows, Fringe stands out as one that at least has some potential. From the fertile mind of J.J. Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost), Fringe goes to the edge of science where things cross over into the weird and supernatural. In the pilot episode, an FBI agent (Anna Torv) tracks down the genius son (Dawson's Creek's Joshua Jackson) of an institutionalized former Harvard professor (John Noble)—the only person alive that can help her solve a case involving an entire plane full of dead passengers. We won't tell you more, except that there's some crazy stuff involving a woman going into a coma in order to read another person's mind. We're thrilled to see Mr. Jackson back on the small screen, but also concerned that he may forever be Pacey Witter, even when he's supposed to be the smartest guy in the room. [Fox, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: The Claim
We will watch anything by the great Michael Winterbottom (even 9 Songs, which is basically a hipster porno). But The Claim is actually one of our favorites. It's based on the Thomas Hardy novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, but this is about a prospector (Peter Mullen, in the film) who trades his wife and baby for rights to a coal mine. Twenty years later, his wife and daughter (played by the always wonderful Sarah Polley) turn up in his town, called Kingdom Come, along with a railroad surveyor (Wes Bentley) who's deciding whether to lay railroad ties nearby. Yes, it's an Old West movie, but it's not a western; Kingdom Come's got a frigid, snowy landscape, and the ladies act like ladies and the men are gentlemen (for the most part). With a budget of $20 million, this was Winterbottom's biggest budget to date, and it was a commercial flop upon its release in 2000. He followed it up with the huge indie hit 24 Hour Party People. [IFC, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: The Cho Show
We've only caught one episode of The Cho Show, which seems to be VH1's answer to Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List, but it seems pretty cute! The reality series follows comedienne Margaret Cho through her everyday business—dealing with her Korean parents (who want her to have a baby so badly that they buy her baby clothes); soothing crazed, sobbing fans (yes, she has them); and managing her career, which seems to be in pretty good shape. In this episode, she endeavors to immerse herself in the world of pop celebrity, and records the requisite pop single and a sex tape. We can't wait to see what her parents think. [VH1, 11 p.m.]

Friday: Waitress
If you're in need of a good Friday night cry, try Waitress. The criminally beautiful Keri Russell plays a small town waitress and pie maker who dreams of escape from her nasty husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto) even while she's pregnant with his child. She stumbles into a passionate affair with her doctor, played by the too-neglected Nathan Fillion (we're pretty sure this is the first time we've seen a pregnant woman having illicit sex on screen), who makes her realize that she isn't so trapped at all, and opens up a world of possibility for a woman who never thought much of herself. Hal Hartley muse Adrienne Shelley wrote, directed, and co-starred. She was tragically murdered before the film's release, but her spirit is very much alive in this wistful, charming picture. [HBO-Z, 4p.m., and On Demand]

But the sudden-and quiet-departure of Tom Jones, the company's director of special projects and the man who presided over the Register during much of the 23 years he worked at Forbes Inc., has thrown the publication's already dim future into question.

Though there has been some speculation that Mr. Jones was edged out at the Register , both he and Forbes management insisted that Mr. Jones resigned. "I have decided, basically because of Sept. 11 and reaching an advanced age and wanting a quieter life, to tone down my responsibilities," said Mr. Jones, who is 57 years old. As a result, he said he will continue to serve as a consultant to the Forbes organization and to write restaurant reviews for Forbes magazine.

Mr. Jones spoke with The Transom on June 4, and at press time on June 11, Forbes had yet to appoint a replacement, although there has been some speculation that the job may go to Sabina Forbes, the daughter of Forbes editor in chief Steve Forbes who works in the company's publicity department, or possibly Mr. Forbes' other daughter, Moira Forbes, who works for the family business in London.

Forbes Inc. vice chairman Christopher (Kip) Forbes, who is close to Mr. Jones, called him "irreplaceable" and said: "We will painfully try to find somebody or, probably, several people to take over the functions that Tom did so brilliantly."

Asked if his brother's daughters were under consideration, Mr. Forbes-who spoke by phone from the Forbes annual sales meeting at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia-said, "Absolutely. As my father used to say, 'At Forbes , we don't preach nepotism, we practice it.'"

Since Sept. 11, Forbes, like a lot of media organizations, has also been practicing cost-cutting, and some question whether The Social Register , which is aimed at a narrow, waning niche, can be seen as a viable proposition at a company that's operating in lean-and-mean mode. Last fall, sources familiar with the situation said Forbes Inc. staff was cut approximately 20 percent overall but that Mr. Jones' division took an even deeper hit. Kip Forbes called the 20 percent figure "an exaggeration," adding: "It wasn't that much, but it hurt."

And the summer edition of the Register shows evidence of those cutbacks. Eight years ago, Mr. Jones oversaw the creation of The Social Register Observer , a quarterly, advertisement-accepting companion magazine for the Married Maidens who subscribed to the Register. But, as recipients of the summer edition of the Social Register will find, the Register and the Social Register Observer have now been folded together.

There are other factors that don't exactly bode well for the Register 's future. In the past, Forbes family members have not exactly trumpeted their ownership of the directory, which has excluded Jews, blacks and other racial and ethnic groups-an issue that arose when Steve Forbes ran for President in the 90's.

And then there is this. "I never hear anybody talk about it anymore. It's just not cited anymore," said Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of The Vanities and a journalist who has dissected society in America. "This is off the top of the head, but I think that that world of social luster has been so overshadowed by celebrities that it doesn't have any kick anymore."

Mr. Wolfe added: "There was a time when a girl of the year-that term was first applied to a debutante; Brenda

Frazier, I believe-and newspapers would send reporters down to the docks when people like that came in on a ship from England or France. That just doesn't happen anymore, unless the socialite has either done something notorious or something completely outside of the world of social distinction."

When The Transom asked Mr. Forbes if there was "no chance" that The Social Register might cease to publish, he replied: "Not no chance. Sadly, anything can happen, as we saw on Sept. 11." But then he added: "We are putting it in shape so it can survive another 113 years."

Mr. Jones said The Social Register was first published in 1886 "as an extension of a visiting list-a Victorian conceit where people kept lists of whom they'd have in their houses and whom they would visit."

"It was basically a list of one network of people," Mr. Jones said. "The first issues were descendants of the old English and Dutch families that settled this country." Later, it was "continued to include others who are part of that set." Mr. Forbes said that who does and does not make the cut was determined by Mr. Jones working with "an advisory committee," although there are some observers of the social world who are as skeptical of that advisory committee as certain New York restaurant goers are of the Zagat guide's voters.

By 1918, there were reportedly 18 volumes of The Social Register representing 26 cities, but as the celebrity culture waxed and society waned, those editions were eventually shrunk down to a single volume.

The Social Register 's archives represent a rich chapter in American history, and some observers of the Forbes family say they could represent a handsome tax write-off if they were donated to a university or museum.

Mr. Forbes denied that this might be in the works. The archives, he said, are "still used on a regular basis." But he did admit that the company is "looking at a less-cost-per-square-foot place to put them." Currently, the Register 's offices are housed at 381 Park Avenue South.

The next edition of the Register is scheduled to be published in November and, according to Mr. Forbes, will need to go to the printers at the end of October. Mr. Jones will be helping with the transition.

As for the transition that society is undergoing, Mr. Forbes said:

"It's changed, but it's certainly not diminished. Defining society and remembering what it was-there has always been a demand for it. Its obituary has been written many times, and somehow it keeps rearing its head."

Then Mr. Forbes said he had to go. "I'm here at our annual sales meeting," he said. "I want to go downstairs and make sure there are going to be more."

Hitch & Howell

"This is an all-star cast," paper-thin socialite Nan Kempner said as she surveyed the packed front room of Swifty's, the Upper East Side eatery, on the night of June 10. Ms. Kempner had come to celebrate her friend Jane Stanton Hitchcock's new mystery novel, Social Crimes , which will be published this month by Talk Miramax Books.

Ms. Stanton Hitchcock, friend of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, mystery writer and wife of Washington Post writer Jim Hoagland, usually sets the scene of her novels among the inhabitants of New York's highest tax brackets, and that night she'd managed to rope in an impressive number of its preternaturally preserved representatives. Designer Mary MacFadden came by, as did Republican fund-raiser Georgette Mosbacher, former Talk editor Tina Brown with hubby Harry Evans, Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman and Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner all contributed to the crush.

ABC's Barbara Walters, impeccable amidst the throng in a lilac-colored suit, had read the book and bought extra copies for a couple of friends. "It's a very small part of New York," she said of the characters that people Social Crimes . "But people always like to read about the rich, and they always like to know the rich have troubles."

In this latest work, Ms. Hitchcock's main character is Jo Slater, a New York socialite whose billionaire husband ditches her for her best friend. It's a familiar plotline in real-life New York, but Ms. Hitchcock, who wore a fuchsia get-up and a string of pearls around her neck, claimed that "all the characters in the book" were based on "me."

Society, Ms. Hitchcock said, is fertile terrain for fiction, because "beneath those smiles there's always something different, and that is so intriguing." Right then, Liz Rohatyn and husband Felix walked in. "What a great article from Mr. Norwich!" Ms. Rohatyn immediately said, mentioning the large 1,965-word New York Times story about Ms. Hitchcock that had appeared the previous week.

"I don't believe it!" Ms. Hitchcock shrieked. "Can you believe this is happening?"

More cynical observers would have answered that yes, they could believe it-at least in regard to the Times story. Ms. Hitchcock is a longtime friend of The Times ' new big foot, managing editor Howell Raines. She was even romantically linked to Mr. Raines-who got his own extra-grand profile in last week's New Yorker -before she married Mr. Hoagland.

Asked about the connection, Ms. Hitchcock said that although she was thrilled about the piece-"it was the best thing that ever happened in my professional life"-she hadn't given a thought about her connection to the head of The Times .

"I understood from Billy that he loved the book and it was a totally professional decision on Billy's part and The Times ' part," she said. "Certainly, Howell and I are friends, but I didn't think about it, to be very honest. I think that everyone is professional enough."

According to a Times spokeswoman, "Howell was not involved in the article at all and his relationship had no influence on the conception of or the editing of the piece."

-Elisabeth Franck

Foer + Krauss = ™?

At the Border's bookstore on Park Avenue and 57th Street, 25-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer's critically successful novel Everything Is Illuminate d is prominently displayed just below the work of New York's newest literary Wunderkind, 27-year-old poet Nicole Krauss, whose first novel, Man Walks into a Room , has just been published by Doubleday.

According to sources familiar with the writers, their display-floor proximity accurately reflects Ms. Krauss' and Mr. Safran Foer's current romantic situation. Sources familiar with the couple say they've been dating for several months, and were "cozy" at the after-party at restaurant L'Acajou following Mr. Safran Foer's recent reading at the Chelsea Barnes & Noble.

Representatives for Ms. Krauss and Mr. Safran Foer did not return The Transom's phone calls.

Everything Is Illuminated interweaves a fictional account of a young man's journey to uncover his family history in the Ukraine with a magical tale of his grandfather's imagined village.

Ms. Krauss' Man Walks into a Room is about a college professor who has irretrievably lost his memory. Ms. Krauss' grandparents are also Holocaust survivors. She lives in Manhattan. Mr. Safran Foer lives in Queens. Given the commute, things must be fairly serious.

-Rebecca Traister

Crazy Like Cho

It was noon on June 7 and the comedian Margaret Cho was in Room 715 of the Union Square W hotel. She was there to promote her new concert film, Notorious C.H.O. , which will be released on July 3.

"It's just a me-fest," said Ms. Cho, who was wearing a billowy silk dress she got at the mall and sheepskin boots. "And it's stupid. It's like I went to this party last night and it was for me , and there's a big poster of me, and I'm like, This is weird. It's just this weird thing where you have this inflated sense of self-importance because people are really caring about what you're doing or they need you for something.

"That's why I think a lot of famous people that I know are super creepy-because they think that the whole world cares," Ms. Cho said. "Fame is such an illusion. It doesn't make you different from other human beings. It's just this kind of circumstance that could be temporary, but it makes people crazy."

Ms. Cho, 33, started doing stand-up at 16 and got a ABC-TV series in 1994 called All-American Girl , the first network show starring an Asian-American. It was also one of the first times that a network sitcom star seemed to have little compunction about admitting that she was bisexual. Actually, Ms. Cho doesn't like that pert little label. She prefers to be called "a slut."

After the show was canceled in 1995, she partied way too hard. Then she made a dramatic, well-received comeback in 1999 with an Off Broadway run of I'm the One That I Want , followed by a tour, a film and a book of the same title.

Her material these days is very raunchy stuff with a little motivational self-help thrown in. Ms. Cho has no trouble answering questions about the last time she performed oral sex on a woman-"Last summer!" she said-or about the same-sex relationships she's had.

"They've been awful," she said. "So heartbreaking and stupid and full of games," that Ms. Cho claimed that when it comes to women, "I've had it with them!" Not that she necessarily blames the women she's dated. "I have bad taste in women," she said.

Now she dates a British guy in Los Angeles. "I'm a big snow queen," she said. "When you enjoy the company of Caucasian men. I mean, I think it's great."

What did she think of all those white men who exclusively date Asian women who don't speak English?

"Yeah, that's great! It's totally hot. I don't know, the air of colonization is just very sexy in a relationship," she said. "I think it serves both parties very well. [The men] get a girlfriend that's probably, in quotes, 'hotter' than they would get here. There's a kind of a social-idea stereotype that Asian women have this sexual mystique about them that is very exotic and erotic and it's all a myth, but if it's believed, then it works."

So it's O.K. for white guys to have a thing for Asian women? The Transom asked.

"I love being fetishized, I think it's hot," Ms. Cho said. "I think people should appreciate a good objectification now and again." But she also pointed out that eventually that dynamic ends. "At a certain point, when you're saying, 'Why don't you fucking take out the goddamn trash for once?' you can't be fetishized after that. Relationships become real very quickly."

The Transom's eggs Benedict arrived. Ms. Cho reached into a bag for her health-food lunch, which included something called a "sun burger." She's a clean liver (meditation, yoga, a therapist) and she has one, too: That day she was marking four years of sobriety.

Ms. Cho said that she began thinking she might have a problem with alcohol in 1995 when, while driving drunk, she hit a car full of "gangbangers" in L.A.

"All these gang members came out of the car," she recalled. "I screamed at them for so long that they freaked out and left. I was so scary that they were like, O.K., fine, and they took off. And I felt bad, we sort of exchanged cards, and I was screaming and they were threatening me and I was screaming more, and it was just this fight …. Somehow I just talked my way out of it and intimidated them." She ended up feeling really guilty and sent them $200.

Ms. Cho's unfazed, extra-tolerant attitude probably comes from growing up in San Francisco, where her parents ran a bookstore and drag queens were her best friends. Was there something she hadn't done sexually that she'd like to?

"Mummification! That's where you get either wrapped in bandages or like latex and you're completely covered up and then they have like a hood and then they put straws in your nose so you can breathe. Then you're suspended-it's kind of an extension of bondage but it's about sensory deprivation. I've always thought it would be really interesting."

Ms. Cho said she's not "into" pornography but she watches it. Sometimes she even checks out violent porn. "There's an incredible like rape culture in Japan, that's really like weird," she said. "There's all those films like Rape Man , which are so like-have you seen those? It's so intense. It's just so violent, like there's all the Guinea Pig movies, have you heard of those? They're these Japanese films that are like snuff films. They don't have a lot of sexual content, it's all about straight-up violence."

According to published reports, Japanese law-enforcement officials investigated the Guinea Pig films and found them to be made with special effects, but, just based on Ms. Cho's description, they're pretty disturbing.

"There's one where they make this girl listen to music super loud!" she continued. "Then they have her drink a big bottle of whiskey and then they put her in an office chair and then spin her super fast. There's no nudity, it's just straight up 'let's just fuck with this woman until she dies .'" Ms. Cho said. "To me that kind of stuff is fascinating cause I'm like, Why is this for the general public, what is this for? I guess it serves the same function as films like Faces of Death .

And according to Ms. Cho, one of the guinea pig movies proved to be too intense for one reputed American connoisseur of porn. Guinea Pig I , II , and IV are still available, she said, but it's hard to get Guinea Pig III: Flowers of Flesh and Blood after actor Charlie Sheen saw it and alerted the F.B.I.

"Like [ Guinea Pig III ] is just completely unavailable because Charlie Sheen was so traumatized," she said. "You really have to do something to traumatize Charlie Sheen and make him get up and do some shit."

-George Gurley

"Power corrupts" is a tired theme that is not necessarily restricted to political yawns in Philadelphia. It's kept scriptwriters burning the midnight oil for decades, and here it is again in Hollow Man , a poundingly violent though flatly familiar science-fiction yarn derived from the Invisible Man flicks of a bygone era. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, the mad brain behind such idiotic time-wasters as Robocop and Starship Troopers and such erotic trash as Showgirls , it's got enough special effects aimed at 12-year-olds and filthy sex jokes aimed at horny thirtysomethings to make a big summer noise at the box office. But despite an all-points-bulletin performance of enviable dexterity and guts by Kevin Bacon, and enough bared female breasts to keep the prigs oinking, Hollow Man has a plot as synthetic and transparent as the leading character.

The movie begins with a close-up of a rat chomped into ratburger by invisible fangs, and never pauses to take a breath from that scene on, building horror upon horror with predictable results. Mr. Bacon stars as a brilliant molecular scientist who discovers a serum to make things invisible. Elisabeth Shue plays his sexy lab partner and former squeeze who knows from firsthand experience how egomaniacal and arrogant he can be. Her distrust, plus her new role in bed with another member of the research team (played by Josh Brolin, a dashingly handsome actor who is better known as Barbra Streisand's stepson), guarantees a terrifying future at the hands of an evil genius-but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mr. Bacon can make gorillas disappear, but the next phase is human testing. With Nobel Prizes and stuff dancing in his head, he disobeys orders from the Pentagon and volunteers to be the first guinea pig. In true Jekyll and Hyde fashion, the experiment goes horribly awry and cannot be reversed. So they cover him with a latex substance that looks like pink instant pudding, cut holes in it for eyes and a mouth, and wait. In time, Mr. Bacon, fueled by latent tendencies fertilized by a lifetime of watching Boris Karloff movies, digs his new transparent status so much that the women can't sit on the toilet without wearing red thermal 3-D glasses to monitor his presence. "It's amazing what you can do," he cackles, "when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore." Before you can say "Read my lips," he escapes from the research lab and wreaks havoc on Washington, D.C. So much for the plot.

The rest of the movie pits the insane "Hollow Man" against his entire research team as he hatches fiendish ways to kill them off, one by one. While Mr. Bacon rapes, pillages and murders at will, I found myself longing nostalgically for the predigital days of Claude Raines in the original Invisible Man . He was a fiend who at least showed some style. The actors play touchy-feely with objects that are not there, say things like "Quantum signatures stable," and talk about "cellular bond instability" while exposing their buns and ta-tas. But Andrew Marlowe's script, which seems to have been written by computer hackers on a rampage, never approaches the human factor. Most of the horror is restricted to the top-secret government research lab, which makes the film cold, clinical and claustrophobic instead of spooky and gothic. The hypodermic needles and vats of bubbling acid of Bela Lugosi's mad-scientist programmers were creepier and more frightening than the high-tech control boards and hospital equipment behind glass you see here. Most of Hollow Man looks like it takes place in a recording studio for a Spice Girls video. Under the circumstances, the actors sweat for credibility like salt-mine slaves.

Gifted, versatile, but eternally boyish, Kevin Bacon is that rare breed of actor who actually improves with age. Now that he has finally grown some chest hair, I can't wait to see what he looks like with wrinkles. For a beautiful woman with talent to spare, Elisabeth Shue has an obsession with bad hair styles and ugly, unflattering clothes, but she's right up there with Sigourney Weaver when it comes to slugging it out with muscles in a world of male-dominated mayhem. You may lose count of the number of times she gets cracked in the jaw and knocked unconscious without so much as a nosebleed, but you gotta love her comic-book indestructibility. You have no idea what a foxy chick can do with a flamethrower.

A Cast Digs Its Own Grave

Some excellent but misguided people trash their talents in Better Living , a dismal debut fiasco by director Max Mayer described in the press handouts as "a comedy about families, the elements that bind them together, and about hope in the face of hardship." It is, in fact, about nothing of the sort. It is, as far as I can see, about nothing at all.

Olympia Dukakis plays the mother of a dysfunctional family in some nameless New York suburb trying to cope in the absence of a lunatic father (Roy Scheider) who disappeared 15 years earlier without a trace. In and out of a house that looks like a demolition site wanders a morbid assortment of characters better suited to an experimental play staged in downtown Newark. The uncle (Edward Herrmann) is a drunken Catholic priest who has made cynicism a way of life. Daughter Gail (Wendy Hoopes) is sleeping with a motorcycle-riding moron who dreams of becoming a pop singer but seems to have a big future only in a life of crime. Daughter Elizabeth (Deborah Hedwall) is a public defender with temper tantrums who worked her way through law school as a prostitute. Daughter Maryann (Catherine Corpeny) is a weak manic-depressive who is so screwy she still hasn't gotten around to giving her eight-month-old baby a name.

When the derelict father returns home unannounced, the only thing that keeps them out of the cracker factory is a family project-digging a tunnel through the cellar and dynamiting a hole in the backyard while living on 200 cans of stewed tomatoes. They get through the day (and the movie) with electric drills, chainsaws and an interminable amount of screaming hysterics guaranteed to drive you out of the theater with your hands over your ears. I guess it's supposed to be a dark comedy, but there is nothing remotely funny about watching actors who have all been seen under more professional circumstances reduced to the status of amateurs. Confined within the walls of one set, this tedious maelstrom of madness is nothing more than a filmed stage play, and not a very good one, either. Even on a budget the size of an hour's take at the popcorn stand, all Better Living does is underscore the need for caution when handing out money indiscriminately to first-time directors.

Margaret Cho's Crackup

Filmed as a live 90-minute comedy act on a stage in her native San Francisco, I'm the One That I Want is a raucously funny showcase for one-woman show-business-survival instructor Margaret Cho. The star is an avowed lesbian performance artist, brilliant monologist, writer, actress, the first Asian-American to star in her own network TV sitcom, a sensation on the underground club circuit and self-proclaimed "Queen of the Fag Hags." Candidly discussing the fast demise of her short-lived show All-American Girl , the subsequent depression that led to her slow descent into alcohol and drugs, the strength that drove her into rehab and the sense of humor that shaped her into one of America's most popular comedians, Ms. Cho makes it clear that her raunchy brand of "heterophobic" comedy is not for every taste. (She would really have given the Republican convention something to pray about.) But she has pinchable cheeks like S.Z. (Cuddles) Sakall, a rosebud mouth, a body like the foothills of the Berkshires and an infectious honesty that turns audiences of all persuasions into cheering mobs of supportive fans.

You can't resist her lament that, in a nation that celebrates everything else, there is still "no parade for Slut Pride" and "no such thing as a straight man with visible abdominal muscles." Sharing her frustration over her inability to fit in, her addiction to diet pills, the pitfalls of trying to be what everyone else wants her to be, the hypocrisy of network television, the phoniness of a bogus Hollywood culture that pretends to be colorblind while enforcing ethnic stereotypes, and the paucity of jobs for minorities in the entertainment industry, she's like a comrade in arms for Bruce Vilanch and Sandra Bernhard. Whether her targets are the Ku Klux Klan, her Korean mother, Karl Lagerfeld or Alcoholics Anonymous, she hits a bull's-eye every time, and she's absolutely adorable doing it.

In the end, she even leaves you with something to chew on: "The problem with not being yourself is that when you fail, you fail as somebody else." The girl is not only one hot comedian, she's one smart cookie, too.