Seen on the screen

SERIES: "Life on the D-List," 10 p.m. today, Bravo. (The channel is available on Dish Network but not on Time Warner Cable in the Raleigh market. It is available in Carrboro.)

THE LATEST: Tonight's episode is the second of seven in season three of Kathy Griffin's unscripted, Emmy-nominated series. This season, Griffin goes on a comedy tour of prisons, visits her hometown to meet with her old prom date, hits the dating scene as a recent divorcee and attends the Gay Adult Video Awards, among other things.

FROM HER LIPS: "I couldn't be less attracted to anyone in show business. I'm so turned off by actors and comics because I think they're disgusting, and I am one, and so I know."

DID YOU KNOW? Griffin began using humor as a defense as a kid. "Fair-skinned with freckles and wiry, red hair, I was picked on. The boys used to bark out the window when I'd pass with my schoolbooks and call me 'dog' and every name in the book. ... I thought, 'If I can be funnier or quicker than they are, then I have something on them, and they might back off.' And they did." After finishing high school, Griffin moved west with her parents to California. When she first moved to L.A. she sang in gay bars, her parents faithfully trekking to her performances. In the latter half of the 1990s, she joined Brooke Shields sitcom "Suddenly Susan." She also appeared in Eminem's video for "The Real Slim Shady."

LIFE OFF-SCREEN: Griffin, 46, was born in Oak Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb. She has three older brothers and an older sister; her father, who appeared with her mother on previous seasons of Griffin's show, died 2 1/2 months ago. "He passed away during production. The day after his memorial I had two shows in Las Vegas, and the reality crew came with me. It's a grueler. That's the thing with a reality show, whatever happens in your life, there's the camera."

FIND HER ON DVD IN: Her comedy videos including "Kathy Griffin Is ... Not Nicole Kidman" and "Kathy Griffin: Allegedly" and movies including "Bachelor Party Vegas," "Her Minor Thing," "Muppets from Space" and "Pulp Fiction."