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Whoopi shares her thoughts - but we can't By CHRIS ABBEY A whole bunch of people who don't wince when they hear four-letter words gathered at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford Sunday night. They came to hear Whoopi Goldberg do an act that, she warned, "is NOT the Hollywood Squares. "And I'm not Oprah. So if the F-word bothers you ... Please leave now!" This group was ready for Whoopi. They screamed and whooped and hollered; someone held up a "Please Hug Me" sign - but no one left. Pat Rush, of Albany, has known Goldberg for 10 years -her son, Brad, is Goldberg's publicist - so she drove down with her friends, Pam Maple, Marilyn Small and Dee Sass. The women were looking forward to the show, AND to using the backstage passes that would get them in to see Goldberg after the show. Cassie Barrett of Medford brought her 91/2-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Jessica's friend Rochelle, 10, to a show at which few other children were in evidence. Barrett said she knew there'd be "a lot of the F-word" at this show." But her daughter "idolizes Whoopi," this was a rare chance, they'd talked about what she was likely to hear .... The hard part, she said, was finding a friend of her daughter's who also would be allowed to come. Barbara Policastro, of Medford, came with her adult daughter, Diane Peterson, visiting from Brooklyn, N.Y. ("just landed yesterday"), RoseAnn Cattanach of Eagle Point (hoping to get an autograph after the show) and Elsie Sodano, who came up from California. Before issuing her disclaimer, Goldberg - comedian, actress, and the center square on the popular "Hollywood Squares" TV game show - took a minute to admit that she didn't exactly know where Medford was - "I thought it was 50 miles outside of San Francisco" - but said she'd definitely be willing to come back again. Then she launched into a discourse on "Some of the Things That Have Bothered Me Lately:" The new "Planet of the Apes" movie. The White House move to Texas. The recent election mess. And menopause. Who knew menopause could be so screamingly (insert bad word here) funny? This subject struck a real chord in a crowd that was more female than male, and more -let's say mature - than young, for the most part. Goldberg talked about aspects of menopause that women probably don't discuss among themselves, let alone in mixed company, and she knows it; if they did, she said, "it wouldn't be so shocking." To strike a contrast to this passage of life, Goldberg began to describe her entrance into what she called "The World of Fem" in the early 1960s when she spotted one of the few children in the audience. "There's a little kid here!" she exclaimed, most likely spotting Jessica Barrett. "Did they warn you about me? They did? Oh, you are going to learn SO MUCH tonight!" And she probably did, but she won't understand it for years. She heard about a funny, graphic recounting of recent female history (including the donning of feminine hygiene product, girdle, stockings, and high heels - and the resulting walk; and the advent of modern feminine hygiene products, with their own drawbacks. Then Goldberg moved on to skewer men on "what guys won't talk about." Whoopi Goldberg feels a little sorry for guys. "They need to communicate, and where is their role model? We have Lauren Hutton. They have ... Bob Dole." But she also has peeves about the opposite sex, and a lot of those peeves have a lot to do with things that happen in the bathroom, and most of them, like much of her women's riffs, cannot be conveyed in a family newspaper. Suffice to say that there now exists a sizeable group of people in the Rogue Valley - you know who you are - who are going to find the word "blot" funny for a long time to come. Goldberg's show, usually 75 to 90 minutes, ran long as she shared her thoughts on commercials, communication, Sarah Jessica Parker, prescription drugs, The Gap, liposuction and bodily changes. Well into the show, her cell phone, placed on a chair behind her, went off. She had a brief talk ("You're where? San Francisco? I thought you were in Harlem!") and told the audience to "say hi to Bill," then returned to her recap of peeves, adding in some thoughts on Bush ("We need to baby him. We have three more years"), Clinton and Gary Condit. After recounting the unfortunate phrase she'd taught her 21/2-year-old grandson, Goldberg left the stage to a standing ovation. She came back out to explain that the cell-phone call was a signal used to let her know she's running overtime, and "I went way overtime here," because she and the audience were having such a good time, and again averred that she'd be back to Medford. She did do one more bit, a short piece at a request from an audience member for "the panties story." It also was really funny, and we can't tell it to you here either. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.