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Grandma Dottie flaunts a mouth most potty

At 79, she's now a riotous standup comic. But her grandchildren wouldn't be allowed to hear her risque routine.

By LOGAN D. MABE, Times Correspondent
Published May 19, 2006

Literally overshadowed by the lights, the speakers, the microphone stands, Casper clambers up onto a bar stool like the child she was 70 years ago. That was a long time before she discovered what might be her first and last true gift: making people laugh.

Casper, a grandmother from Lutz, rests her aluminum cane at her side. She's wearing elastic-waisted jeans with flowers at the hem, a coral blouse, white tennis shoes and a fanny pack.

She's perfectly outfitted for the early bird special. This, however, is an evening of bawdy comedy for a well-lubricated crowd at a bar on St. Pete Beach.

"We've got time for one more song here, then it's time for Dirty Dottie here at Philthy Phil's," says the guy playing bass for Caribbean Cowboy, the band that will take a break before Casper takes the stage.

And then she's there, wielding the microphone like a lion tamer's whip. Anything to bring the rowdy crowd into line.

People are yakking, glasses are tinkling ice, a motorcycle roars by the open-air venue. What's an old broad gotta do to get a laugh around here?

Casper launches into her dancing lesson bit. The one where she learned belly dancing, then pole dancing and finally, ahem, lap dancing. That's when she asks the guy in the front row for his business card so she can schedule a little extra practice.

Here's the one that slays them, though. Casper speaks gleefully about how much easier it is to get beads at the Gasparilla parade now that she's just a year shy of being an octogenarian. "I don't have to lift my T-shirt very high any more to flash," Casper says, sober as a judge.

The crowd, and it's a packed house of about 75 on a rooftop deck, falls out as one. Laughing hardest, perhaps, are Casper's children and their spouses. In fact, a son-in-law, who is best friends with bar owner Mark Ferguson, helped arrange the gig. If there were room for aisles, people would be rolling in them.

And with that, Dottie Casper has them. And she'll decide when she'll let them go.

"They don't expect these things out of an old lady," Casper said later. "People enjoy the unexpected."

Casper used to deliver exactly what was expected of her.

Born in New Jersey, she went to college at Mount Holyoke. Along the way, she met Mark Casper and married him. He became an attorney and Dottie became Donna Reed, mother of five children and keeper of home and hearth.

As her children grew, Casper moved back into the workplace, seeking those safe professional roles for women of her time. Schoolteacher, swimming instructor, that sort of thing.

But after a few years of seeing small children traumatized by the sink-or-swim methods of other swim coaches, Casper decided to return to college to study psychology.

The psychology degree led Casper into marriage counseling. She helped others learn what she worked on at home. How to keep it together. Dottie and Mark Casper were married for 45 years until Mark died about 10 years ago.

Dottie has a joke about this, too.

"My husband Mark and I were married for 45 years. I was a marriage counselor and he was a divorce attorney," Dottie tells the Philthy Phil's crowd. "If he could see me now, he'd roll over in his ashes and fall off the mantle"

Casper loved Mark, but it wasn't until after his death that she found her comic muse.

"When Mark was alive, he was the center of any group," Casper said. "I thought things, but I didn't say them. Then, after he died I went on a cruise with a friend and said everything that came to my mind and everyone was laughing. I was having so much fun."

When Casper got back from the cruise, she found her way to a comedy workshop at Side Splitter's Comedy Club in Carrollwood. The guy running the show wondered what the little old lady was doing there, but he let Casper take the stage. After she was done, he invited her to one of the club's open mike nights.

"I asked, 'What's open mike?' and that's when Aaron took over and taught me comedy," Casper said.

That's Aaron Poliakoff, general manager of Side Splitter's.

"Aaron was my mentor," Casper said. "He taught me how to set up punch lines, how to make a long story short, what to use and what not to use."

And Casper, the lifelong student, learned well.

"Dottie was in our first ever Saturday afternoon comedy workshop," Poliakoff said. "Everyone always loved Dottie and just wanted to give her a hug. But you would never expect anything she said to come out of her mouth. If I said the things she does, people would throw things and hurt me. She's the grandmother everyone wanted."

This is a grandmother who jokes about going to the Home Depot in search of stud finders. "But all I could find were a lot of woodies," Casper says in exasperation.

This is a grandmother who jokes about her membership in the Northdale OWLS, the area's fast-growing organization for the retired set. Yes, Casper said during her set at Philthy Phil's, most people think it stands for Older, Wiser, Lively Seniors. But she always thought it meant, "Old Women Love Sex!"

"Oh my God!" hoots blushing 19-year-old Sarah Trostle, who has taken time away from her job as greeter at Philthy Phil's to catch Casper's act upstairs. "I can't believe she said that!"

"I don't know what it is, but somehow I connect with people," Casper said after the show. "And it feels good to stand up and see people laughing."

Casper, a cunning and competitive pingpong player, doesn't let "the age thing," slow her down, regardless of the endeavor. Even when she plays against her grandkids, she's looking to win.

"She's full of funkiness and energy and loves to learn new things, and I think that's what keeps her young," said Bobbi Spencer, who teaches Casper in an improvisation class at Mary Jo's Performing Arts Academy in Northdale.

"To be a standup comic at any age is tough. It's one of the most rejection-filled arenas you can put yourself into. And then to take the chance that the age thing is going to work against you."

A couple of weeks before the Philthy Phil's show, Casper did her act at a morning coffee gathering of the Carrollwood Area Business Association at the Northdale Recreation Center.

Now, it was well before 8:30 a.m. and people in suits were mingling around with coffee and cream cheese Danish, but Casper didn't want them to start their day without a laugh.

So she cleaned things up a bit, joking about how seniors deal with four-way stops (they basically sit there all day) and how they sport special bumper stickers ("That's not my car leaking, that's me.")

Then she hit the crowd of about 200 with her "I'm running for president" bit, which includes Casper's ruminations on a suitable running mate.

Yes, she tells the bleary-eyed crowd, she considered pop singer Michael Jackson so she might secure both the black and white vote. But really, she felt obligated to draft actor George Clooney as her vice presidential candidate.

"Because I can't think of anyone I'd rather have under me," Casper says.

A lot of people went to work that morning with coffee stains down the front of their suits.

Casper enjoys making people smile and laugh. But her craft is not wholly philanthropic. She takes something away from each performance, as well.

For one, there's a certain sense of validation.

"I'm 79 years old and I'm proud of my age," Casper said. "I love growing older. It frees me up to do things I couldn't dare to do when I was younger. I worked all my life and now this is play for me."

And there is the exhilaration of playing a room like Philthy Phil's (or even the Northdale Recreation Center) when she absolutely nails it.

"It's the best feeling in the world," Casper said. "There are only two other feelings that are similar; Marriage counseling when something clicked and something good happened - and the only other feeling was good sex."

[Last modified May 18, 2006, 13:09:09]