"Everyone who comes to a Margaret Cho show is either gay or Asian," one of our companions said as we fought our way into Symphony Hall on Friday night among the oceans of Banana Republic pants, leather jackets, and nicely-pressed colorful tops, for the first of Ms. Cho's SF shows on her new Assassin tour. "Or both!", responded our gay Asian-American companion.

Margaret Cho is, of course, San Francisco's no-holds-barred Korean-American comedienne, and a proud dropout of Lowell High who then went on to star in the first-ever Asian-American TV comedy, All American Girl -- which then became the first-cancelled Asian-American TV comedy. And then the subject of Margaret's real breakout one-woman show and book, I'm the One That I Want. She brought her latest stand-up show back home, to an ecstatic, cat-calling crowd.

Hit the expand-o-tron below for more Bush jokes than you can shake a stick at, and an update on Margaret's mom's health.

Margaret's long-time opening act Bruce Daniels opened the show, like he always does. Big ups to Bruce; he did a great job -- a gay African-American comic mocking Badlands! ("I can't wait to go! I've brought my drivers' license.... and my passport.... and my Costco card.... and my library ID...."). Ha! We can't wait for his and Margaret's new movie (Bam Bam and Celeste) to come out!

And Margaret....? Well, she didn't disappoint the rabid long-time fans in attendance, thirsty for nashhhh-ty sex talk and anti-Republican sentiment. Jokes about Bush being a failed Nazi and the quality of the first lady's, um..... personal attributes had the crowd screaming and pounding their feet in delight. And the usual assortment of "you know you're a queen when...." jokes were warmly received too (there was a lot of delighted "OMG THAT IS TOTALLY TRUE!!!!" squealing from the crowd).

Now, we had a good time -- SFist always has a good time at Margaret Cho shows, and it's always great to see a community of raunchy gay-friendly Asians and Asian-friendly gays laughing until they cry. But -- we don't know, something was missing this time around. Maybe it's just that we watch too much of the Daily Show -- so the political stuff seemed like Margaret Cho guest-anchoring for Jon while he's away. The political jokes just seemed a little.... obvious. And we feel like we've heard a lot of the gay jokes too. Whaaa? Gay men don't have sex with women? Gasp! Alert the media!

What we love the most about Margaret Cho shows are the personal stories. Okay, what we love the most about Margaret Cho shows are the personal stories about her mother. The show seemed a little short on those. We would have loved to hear Margaret's take on being banned from the Democratic National Convention, for instance, and we would definitely have loved to hear more wacky mom hijinks. But Margaret brushed aside the DNC thing, and, in sadder news, Margaret's mother just had a heart attack. The crowd audibly gasped when Margaret told us. She's recovering well, and Margaret had some small jokes to make about it, but she's obviously still pretty shaken up about the whole thing and (understandably) not really in the mood to make the funny about it yet.

Not to say the show wasn't hilarious -- we're still giggling over, for instance, the Bjork impressions, and okay, we cheered for the anti-Bush jokes, even if they were totally obvious. But we hope Mrs. Cho gets better soon, and we hope the tour helps Margaret work through what must have been a difficult year. Like Mrs. Cho said, "You hafff go on tooo-ah! What about our ca-ree-aah?" (Margaret responds: "our career? When did this become Gypsy?") Meanwhile, we're totally looking forward to Bam Bam and Celeste!