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People usually don't cry when they hear "Cold Sweat," the James Brown funk classic that Carla Zilbersmith sang at Berkeley's Hillside Club in January. So the red-headed performer felt obliged to tell the crowd why her friends were in tears. "For those of you who don't know, I was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease a couple of weeks ago," Zilbersmith said. "Which sucks. Because I hate baseball." Jaws dropped, laughter erupted. "I'd really much rather have been diagnosed with a basketball disease," continued Zilbersmith, known for her outrageous humor and moxie long before she got amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the fatal neuromuscular disease that killed the Yankees slugger whose name became synonymous with it. "Maybe Wilt Chamberlain disease. That's the one where you have sex 20,000 times and then you die." Zilbersmith, who refuses to play the self-pitying sick person, laughs at the memory. "I like really inappropriate jokes," says the singer, actress, writer and comedian. She's sitting on a kitchen stool in the Albany apartment she shares with her 16-year-old son, Maclen Zilber, and where she writes the hilarious, poetic and heartbreaking blog, Carlamuses (carlamuses.blogspot). She began writing it in 2006, the year before she found out why she kept falling down. She'd thought her stumbling was a metaphor for the breakup of her marriage to jazz saxophonist Michael Zilber, whose name she merged with her maiden name, figuring she was a Smith who made a Zilber. The blog has become Zilbersmith's main means of expression now that she can no bottega veneta Wallet longer perform her one-woman show, "Wedding Singer Blues," and her singing gigs are probably over. Her breathing has gotten weaker, she says, and her tongue feels heavier. An excellent mimic, she can't do a Scottish accent anymore. Zilbersmith's Friday gig at Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley, where she'll sing tunes from her new CD, "Extraordinary Renditions" - she does Joni Mitchell, James Brown and Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes with equal flair and feeling - could be her last. "I'm hoping to hell that's not the case," says Zilbersmith, 45, who said goodbye to teaching and directing this spring after serving as artistic director of the College of Marin drama department for 14 years. She specialized in teaching movement, "which is another reason it would be kind of a joke to continue Bottega Veneta Outlet to teach," she says with typical frankness and charm. In a recent blog titled "Butterfly in a Box," Zilbersmith wrote of "this huge sadness knowing that there are only a few gigs left." Each performance is a gift, says the singer, who has lost the use of her left hand and is preparing for the not-so-distant day when she will have to use voice-activated computer software to communicate. "I always felt like I was best friends with the audience. But now I feel like we're lovers. There's this thing between us that's so wonderful. And I just love singing so much. "Between the gigs and the blog, I feel people are having an emotional experience, and not just a cliched thing, 'cuz there's a lot of laughing. I always tell horrible, offensive jokes," adds Zilbersmith, who recently returned from a trip to London with her friend Edith, one of a cadre of generous friends who've rallied around to help with daily tasks and accomplish some of the items on Zilbersmith's bucket list. Visiting London was one. In addition to attending a performance at the Globe theater, Zilbersmith, who noted that she "walked like a bowling ball being thrown by Barack Obama," insisted that Edith push her wheelchair up to a group of guys drinking at a pub. She described the scene on her blog