COMIC TURNS UNEXPECTED DRIVE INTO `TRAVELOGUE'

Most comics an hour late for her performance might have been frazzled, might have had difficulty getting into the rhythm of her act. Instead, Paula Poundstone turned her misfortune into a droll Interstate 55 travelogue.

Festus is funny to her.

She was late to her rainy Wednesday night performance at Academic Auditorium at Southeast Missouri State University because her plane couldn't land here.

"We almost touched down, and they decided they couldn't see the runway after all," she explained with that quizzical can-you-believe-it look of hers.

The nearly 800 people who waited good-naturedly for Poundstone to appear were rewarded with ample proof of the comic talent that has positioned her as one of the most deft comics currently working.

Unlike her televised performances which consist mostly of set pieces that still incorporate her own spontaneity in person, Poundstone's wit is breathtaking when she interacts with the audience.

Early on, she sounded a recurring theme: her puzzlement over the naming of Missouri colleges. "It was like they couldn't remember the name; they all have directions," she said.

An hour later, talking to a radiologist who said he works at a local hospital, she delighted the audience by asking, "Would that be Southeast Missouri Hospital?"

Or her continuing repartee with a woman in the audience who said she studies too much to listen to music. Poundstone patiently explained to her that it's not necessary to keep turning the knobs on the tuner all the time.

Later, mentioning the song "New York, New York," Poundstone reminded everyone that this poor woman would not have heard it.

She has the talent of seeing life through the eyes of a child even though she is 32 years old.

Her uproarious descriptions of the mayhem her six cats create had audience members nodding their heads in agreement, then rolling around in their seats to the simple sound of a cat throwing up.

She also went after President Bush, President-elect Clinton, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Barbara Bush and the Democrats for what they did to Hillary Clinton during the campaign ("They just sucked the brains right out of her head.")

She reserved her special skewer for Ross Perot, using the spotlight to make a shadow likeness with her hand and saying, "I think he really just wanted to be on the dollar bill."

If Poundstone fails, it is because her delivery is so rapid that many of the asides to her own lines fall short of the microphone. Or because sometimes her political talk, which is decidedly anti-conservative, can be more invective than humor.

But most of her pokes don't draw blood, whether she's lampooning the "Do not spit" signs in the New York subways or the new wave of policemen on bicycles.

"I wonder, if they get in a high speed chase, if you're going to hear (sings the witch music from "The Wizard of Oz").