Live Nude Girls

Elayne Boosler names her 1991 special Live Nude Girls as a deliberate bait-and-switch, teeing up an extended runner about strip clubs and the men who frequent them. She opens the show by estimating she has been doing stand-up for 89 years, depending on what year the viewer happens to be watching. It is the easy, seasoned banter you get from a comic who is fully in control of her timing.

Filmed at the Majestic Theater in Dallas, the set serves as her fourth hour for Showtime. At this point in her career, she was a proven draw, having forced the industry to pay attention several years earlier by self-financing her own special when cable networks refused to back a woman. The act moves smoothly from early nineties financial complaints about adjustable mortgages to a strange, specific tangent about surviving a bear attack.