SF Weekly proclaims ME the Best Comedian in SF
Current mood: okay
SF Weekly Best Comedian (2008) W. Kamau Bell http://www.myspace.com/wkbonline
Comedian W. Kamau Bell finds himself buffeted, even more than most of us, by those great fartlike gusts of technological wind, aka anonymous Internet comments. After he popped a short version of his great show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve, on YouTube, Bell found himself the target of some confused people. One: "White on black racism essentially no longer exists in America." Another: "I liked it better when coloreds were well groomed and polite like Flip Wilson and Sammy Davis. This negro seems very uppity." The one Bell immediately worked into his show, though, was "FUCK N****RS WHITE POWER!!!" Through a series of grammar and punctuation jokes, the comedian managed to make this imperative sentence very, very funny. "Maybe it's a question," he mused, "or maybe this person is just in need of a comma." (We're paraphrasing. He was funnier.) He stopped short of actually diagramming the statement, although we're here to tell you that, along with the rest of the show and its going-there examination of racial politics, some actual sentence diagramming may have taken place. The man wants to be called an "Americanized African," and he likes his punctuation: Confused people have no chance against real comedy and real awesomeness.
JUST LIKE LED ZEPPELIN, skinny jeans, and The Boston Celtics, racism continues to make a comeback in America. White people havent talked this bad about un-white people since Martin Luther King had that dream. And since The W. Kamau Bell Curve opened last October to end racism in about an hour, racism has redoubled its efforts. First the co-discoverer of DNA said that Europeans are smarter than Africans. Then Dog The Bounty Hunter tried to break Michael Richards record for the most N words. Then an unknown golf commentator told a good old-fashioned lynching joke about her friend Tiger Woods. And recently its become trendy to say, I hate China! And somehow in the middle of all this, America might elect its first black president unless Fox News has something to say about it. (See Foxs coverage of Jeremiah Wright.) Well, W. Kamau Bell is mad as hell and he's not going smile politely anymore as his un-black friends go, "Sarah Silverman isnt racist. Shes ironic." "The W. Kamau Bell Curve" is one part diatribe, one part manifesto, and several parts funny. And now that "The Curve" has moved from monthly to weekly, it will change as quickly as the world around it does. It will be a fresh as the news it skewers. And as always...
BRING A FRIEND OF A DIFFERENT RACE & GET IN 2FOR1!
This past winter, The W. Kamau Bell Curve played to sold out houses at The Shelton Theater in San Francisco as well as the Jewish Community Center in Berkeley. And now it's back by popular demand and critical acclaim...
FROM THE PRESS "W. Kamau Bell plays against type and comes with not only the insights you wish you had spewed first but also the wit." --- Kimberly Chun, The SF Bay Guardian
"Smart, stylish, and very much in the mold of politically outspoken comedians like Dave Chappelle and Margaret Cho, Bell's pissed off about recent celebrity racism... Bell manages to make jokes out of the whole situation, while remaining completely furious." -- Hiya Swanhuyser, The SF Weekly
"W. Kamau Bell Curve could be this nations first Truth and Reconciliation Hearing on Race." -- Wanda Sabir, Wandas Picks.
I made the worst decision of my life on Friday...
Current mood: obsequious
I went to see the new Rambo movie... with my mom.
YIKES!
First of all, lemme 'splain.
I guess I got caught up in the hype. First of all there was this ridiculous trailer that appeared online a few months ago...
DISCLAIMER: Don't watch if you have weak stomach.
So, after being blown away by the "B" movie ridiculosity of this trailer I began to get on that "It's going to be soooooo bad, it'll be grrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!"
But then time passed, and my interest level waned, and then I started seeing these...
How come they made him look like Anthony Kiedis?
These posters are ALL OVER The Bay Area. And something about the idea that they (They being Stallone, I guess.) are trying to turn the biggest war mongering superhero of the 80's into a pretend graffiti campaign --- as if Rambo is a man of the people --- the idea of that struck me as sooooooooo funny that I thought, "I gotta see this."
And if you're going to see Rambo in the year 2008, you have to do it opening night.
I quickly put that aside when I realized that my mom and girlfriend. Melissa, would be in town (for my show and birthday), and I figured that there was NO WAY to convince them of that plan, birthday or not.
Well apparently, they REEEEEEEEALLY love me, because when my roommate Kevin strolled into my room Friday night and said he was going, both my mom and Melissa saw the lonely hound dog look in my eye and said... "OK, we'll go with you." (This was key because no other movie was playing at the same time that they wanted to see. DAMN YOU, MULTIPLEX! YOU PROMISED THAT WE WOULD HAVE MORE CHOICES THAN WE WOULD EVER NEED OR WANT! DAMN YOU!)
So we went to see Rambo.
Now, I know what you're thinking? "Rambo? Why is it just called Rambo? Isn't this like the 9th sequel?"
No. This is only the 3rd sequel. What you're doing is adding the number of Rocky movies (6) to the number of Rambo movies (4)... A common mistake.
And also this is the first one to be called simply Rambo --- Actually "Simply Rambo" would have been a good name too. --- Anyway, the first Rambo movie is actually titled "First Blood". It was based on a book about a American Vietnam War Veteran who when traveling through a small American town gets harassed by the local police and proceeds to... kill everybody.
Ok, not exactly Shakespeare... Actually, that IS eerily similar to many Shakespeare plots.
The book didn't have any sequels, but Hollywood always knows better. They didn't start calling these movies Rambo until the second one. And I guess this is an effort to go back to basics or something.
My review of the NEW Rambo... THANK GOD IT WAS ONLY 93 MINUTES!!!
I spent the bulk of that 93 minutes dividing my time among these activities...
1) Covering my mom's eyes. Not that she couldn't handle it, but I just felt bad being responsible for her taking this crap into her 70 year old system.
2) Trying to find some joy in a joyless movie. It's an action movie. Shouldn't somebody be having some fun?
3) Feeling sorry for the brown people in the film who had to be blown up and killed in ways that most special effects crews dream of. "Maybe we could have Rambo slice his stomach open, and then his intestines could fall out onto the ground?" This literally happened.
4) Wondering how come none of the Burmese bad guys in the movie actually got to have fully rounded out characters. They were just all EVIL. The leader of the bad guys, who had NO LINES, was even sooooooo evil that (HORROR OF ALL HORRORS!) he was gay... Or maybe the movie was just implying that he was a molester of young boys. I can't really be sure. I was too busy doing the next activity...
5) Pondering my life's choices and decisions. I'm 35 years old now (at least I was the day after the movie.) And it is time that I not waste time doing things like Rambo movies, when I could go see something equally violent but more thoughtful like "No Country For Old Men" OR "There Will Be Blood" or THIS GUY.
At some point at about around 5 minutes into this movie, I remembered, "Hey, wait a minute!.. I never liked the old Rambo movies. I was always a Schwartzenegger fan. When he ripped your arm off and beat you with it... it was supposed to be funny. Stallone wants you to take this stuff seriously. He says as much here in an article talking about making the movie...
"I was being accused, once again, of using the Third World as a Rambo victim. The Burmese are beautiful people. It's the military I am portraying as cruel,''
Well unfortunately Sly, it's hard to tell that you're on their side when you're the writer and director and you didn't give them one stinkin' line.
And now kids, we'll end with a reading from the Book of Hypocrisy. This is Stallone talking about his struggle to get the movie an "R" rating instead of an "NC-17" rating.
"This is full scale genocide. I want an 'R' and I want the violence in there because it is reality. It would be a whitewashing not to show what's over there,'' he told Associated Press "I think there is a story that needs to be told," Stallone said.
Yeah, Sly. There probably is a story about living in Burma that needs to be told. And it still does.
P.S. For the record the people in the 25% filled theater that I watched it with seemed to love it. One kid even cheered throughout.
P.P.S. Yes, they are already talking about a sequel. So, don't worry. We'll get to 9 sequels eventually.
P.P.P.S. If they do make another sequel, I hope they get Anthony Kiedis to play to play Rambo.
I’m on the cover of The SF BAY GUARDIAN!
Current mood: recumbent
Category: News and Politics
It's my birfday Saturday, so just in case you think I'm getting lazy in my old age...
SF BAY GUARDIAN Oops! They did it again W. Kamau Bell takes his swing at racism BY KIMBERLY CHUN Wednesday January 23, 2008
The best comedians always shear close to the bone with their truths, but believe it or not, few are necessarily a gut bust in conversation. Why is this a surprise? After all, the comic is on the interviewer's mic, not on the clock and on script. Yet W. Kamau Bell plays against type and comes with not only the insights you wish you had spewed first but also the wit, centered on the issues of race that he's been grappling with since childhood.
The rising incidence of racist cracks that reveal the persistent fissures in a country seemingly disinterested in identity politics — and those emerging from the 34-year-old San Franciscan's own milieu, the alternative comedy scene — has led Bell to sharpen his attack with The W. Kamau Bell Curve, which focuses on the ugly slurs spilling from Sarah Silverman, Michael Richards, and Rosie O'Donnell, as well as other, unexpected quarters. And the nastiness keeps coming — cue Golf Channel commentator Kelly Tilghman's recent remark that young players who want to defeat Tiger Woods would need to "lynch him in a back alley" — and spurring Bell to continue updating the show he first performed in October 2007.
According to Bell, racism is on the comeback trail with a crucial difference: "This time it's coming from liberals and creeping in through pop culture in some weird way. I call it political correctness acid reflux. People are just burping out racism." The comic rose to the occasion to make Bell Curve after reading a story about Southern blackface comic Shirley Q. Liquor in Rolling Stone. He was outraged by the fact that the article even questioned whether the Liquor act was racist, much as he was troubled by the things coming from his own field. "It's, like, wait a minute — this is my industry, and again, it's not coming from redneck comics or blue-collar comics. It's coming from alternative comics who are supposed to be liberal comics.
"It's, like, 'Look, you know I like black people, so it's allegedly OK for me to use a joke with the word nigger in it' — even though there's no black people in the audience and you don't have any black friends!" he continues. "Like I say in the show, the most racist things that have ever happened to me have come from people who were friends of mine. I had a friend who once said to me, 'Kamau, I like you. You're black, but you're not black black.' What does that mean? I'm black but you still have your wallet?"
The only child of author Janet Cheatham Bell, Bell is all too familiar with that kind of chum, having moved from private to public to private school throughout his life. "A lot of times I would be the only black person in school," recalls Bell, who now teaches solo performance at the Shelton Theater and frequently opens for Dave Chappelle. "And when you're that person, either they forget you're black, so things happen and you're, like, [in a meek squeak] 'Wait a minute — don't forget I'm black, everybody,' or because you're black they unburden their, you know, 'Kamau, lemme tell you something about black people I've never been able to tell any other black person.' Oooh, please don't!"
Be glad, however, that Bell is telling us about it all.
SF Weekly gushes about MEEEEEEEEE! Next show THIS Thur. 11/15/07 @8pm
Current mood: mischievous
This is the best I have ever been described in print. I included the link below, and also I just cut an pasted it. Pretty cool. Pretty neat. Special thanks to Hiya!
Kamau
The Joke's on You, Dog By Hiya Swanhuyser "The W. Kamau Bell Curve" is the local comedian's new show, which is "designed to end racism … in about an hour." Smart, stylish, and very much in the mold of politically outspoken comedians like Dave Chappelle and Margaret Cho, Bell's pissed off about recent celebrity racism. Explaining the show, he notes that something retro is invading pop culture, and it's not '80s night at the disco: It's blatant 1950s style namecalling. We don't really have to recite the embarrassing litany of race-hate by famous white people, do we? Bell says the show is inspired by them and "the next dumbass, uninformed celebrity who says something incredibly and unapologetically racist." We hate to prove him right, but … it's Dog the Bounty Hunter, whose recent n-word laced phone conversation makes it clear he's about as egalitarian as Bull Connor. But Bell, who you may know from his apperances on Live 105 as half of the "Siskel & Negro" movie-reviewing combo, manages to make jokes out of the whole situation, while remaining completely furious. To facilitate ending racism, bring a friend of a different race to the show, and your friend gets in free. Funk/soul band Conjure opens.
The Liberty Bell By Hiya Swanhuyser Isn't it funny how some white guys think everyone else is complaining? You know, the guys who think racism doesn't exist anymore? (We're not talking about you, of course. You're very sensitive!) Dudes like that may not think comedian W. Kamau Bell's stand-up act is funny, but because Bell is a hip-looking, tall, handsome black man, they'll try to laugh anyway -- they want to be cool, too. Besides, it simply wouldn't do to be offended by his myriad "I hate whitey" jokes, now would it? Not for guys who go around telling people they complain too much. (Again, we're positive this is not you.) Bell is certainly funny, though: He's done stuff like, oh, let's see, open for Dave Chapelle, appear on Comedy Central, and co-host "Siskel & Negro," a comedy movie review show on Live 105. Sample joke: "I'm the product of a mixed marriage. That's right: My father is black, and my mother is BLACK!" Date/Time: Thu., July 19
Pretty neat, huh? --- I mean obviously other than the "myriad 'I hate whitey' jokes. I prefer to think of it as a plethora.
W. Kamau Bell co-headlines w/ The Tom Sway Band THIS Thursday, July 19th @ 8pm Shelton Theater on 533 Sutter Street (@ Powell) Four blocks up from The Powell BART station and conveniently located near The Sutter/Stockton Garage.
$10 @ brownpapertickets.com if you enter the password specialrates
OR when you get to the door say the secret code "I LOVE KAMAU!" for $10 tix.
Come by and witness how this all shakes out. And feel free to pass this on to your people.
For more information on this blog please refer to the link below. I would have embedded it but apparently I can't be incensed and computer literate at the same time. The link is to an article on a gay white man who is performing as a fat black woman IN BLACK FACE, and it is excerpted from no other than ROLLING MOTHER FUCKING STONE!
The following is a letter that I just sent off to Rolling Stone...
Dear Rolling Stone,
How dare you write an article that debates the pros and cons of someone as clearly as asinine and banal as Shirley Q. Liquor. Where did your backbone go Rolling Stone? As a more than ten year subscriber to this magazine, I was horrified. And whether or not you find people who like Shirley Q. Liquor does not change the fact that Shirley Q. Liquor is reheated racism served up in the new millennium. There is no difference between this and Al Jolson in blackface, or Amos and Andy on radio. I'm absolutely sure that the tenor of the article would have been different if Knipp's character was not black but instead Jewish. And unfortunately, this just the latest in a disturbing and yet frequently increasing trend. Racism has made a comeback in America. Except this time it isn't the rednecks or hicks or bigots. it's our friends(?) the liberals.
From Sarah Silverman, to Michael Richards, to Don Imus, to Shirley Q. Liquor the last two years have been awash in people who are allegedly liberal using stereotypic portrayals of black people (and other minority groups --- Looking at you Rosie O'Donnell) in allegedly ironic and humorous ways. Well, I'm here to tell you that irony is in the eye of the beholder. I personally do not see it in ANY of these cases.
How dare Knipp (and anyone else for that matter --- RuPaul) say that he can't understand anyone being offended by this character. It is not the job of the of the perpetrator to decide who is injured by their actions. It is the job of those who are affected by the actions. People can be free to be offended by anyone and anything that they want. Freedom of speech works both directions.
And for the record, just because there is a history of something (in this case the minstrel show) that history in no way guarantees that it is a tradition worthy of being continued. For more information on this, see the Ku Klux Klan. Lots of things that we used to do we don't deem appropriate anymore. White people also used to play all the major black roles in movies. Should we bring that back, too?
And as for Knipp, himself, when you combine his lack of understanding of the issues at hand with his inability to explain or justify the character that HE created, you immediately realize how majorly fucked up he is. To say he has no respect for or comprehension of America's racial history is an understatement... kinda like saying an amoeba struggles with the finer points of the automatic transmission.
Honestly, the most upsetting part of all this is that Knipp was an unknown and in no way a threat to black people on a national a scale (Thanks to the effective boycotts in Los Angeles and New York.) UNTIL NOW. Rolling Stone has irresponsibly taken him from relative obscurity and foisted him on the backs of black people. Is Shirley Q. Liquor "The Most Dangerous Comic in America"? If she is, it's only because Rolling Stone is making her that way.
W. Kamau Bell, San Francisco, CA
P.S. Please let me know how I go about canceling my subscription. It's my own way of making my own voice heard.
---
Whew. I'd like to say I feel better after writing that but in all honesty, I'm really getting tired of all this shit, AND I'm not feeling all that funny about it anymore. My lawyer has advised me to excise the line that was perviously here due to the fact that it could be confused as a threat. Ahhh America... Freedom of speech as long as you watch what you say. MAN, I wish I was a REAL revolutionary right about now.
So now Def Jam CEO and Orignal Buddhist Gangsta, Russell Simmons, has jumped on the acceptable language bandwagon. Now although the media is trying to make it seem like Simmons is advocating the banning of the words 'ho', 'bitch' and, 'nigger' completely, from what I can tell he is only saying that these words shouldn't be on the radio. I have no problem with that. And if I thought about it, there would probably be many things that I would like banned from radio like any bands whose names sounds like a bad accident... Panic At The Disco, Arcade Fire, Fall Out Boy, Ashlee Simpson. Thankfully my iPod has made thoughts of radio unnecessary.
All praises due to Steve Jobs.
But anyway, I'm gonna go on record (or whatever the Internet records rambling rants on) as saying I am actually fine with the absolute banning of the word that is ultimately at the center of all these problems.
'NIGGER'
Let's not be coy. 'Ho' and 'bitch' and any other slur of your choice is nowhere near as offensive in the wrong context... (Or is it the right context?) Not even the word 'cunt' is as offensive as the word 'nigger'..
Interestingly enough, my computer is telling me that 'cunt' is not a word.
Apparently... it's just an ex-girlfriend who lives in downtown Oakland.
HI-OOOOOOOOO!
Cue the Johnny Carson theme music.
Trust me. If a male comic calls an unruly female audience member a 'cunt' laughter will ensue, but if a white comic calls an unruly black audience member a 'nigger', the room suddenly turns into a Kramer-torium.
So, if it is truly for the betterment of society, then I am all for the ending of the 'N' word. (Say it out loud. It sounds cool... "ending of the 'N' word.)
I am all for getting rid of "nigger' in every scenario (music, television, comedy, conversations with my mom). Yup, I'm all for the elimination of that word in every way.
Except one...
Nigger please!
Or as it is normally spoken, "Nigga please!"
As far as I'm concerned that is the most hilarious expression in the English language. Just say it to yourself right now... Come on. Do it.... You have permission.
NIgga please.
Nigga pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!
NIGGA PUHLEEEEEEEEEEEASE!
Ain't it fun?
It just rolls of the tongue. I swear to you that there's no idiomatic phrase that expresses incredulity as effectively.
Not "What did you say?" or "Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder?" or "What you talking about, WIllis?"
Not even "Nigger what?" (or as pronounced "Nigga whuuuuuuuuut?) I think it doesn't work as well because it is a question, not a call to action like "Nigga please."
I'm even okay with people of all ethnicities using it. It could be kinda like a meeting ground for all of society. Let's face it. Both black and white people (and yellow and brown people want to say 'nigger'. (You know, I've never heard a native American say 'nigger'. Maybe they feel like they have enough problems.) If all these people want to say 'nigger', let's just contextualize it a little. 'Nigga please' is like giving training wheels to the word 'nigger'. It helps us all keep our balance a little bit when we drop an 'n bomb'.
I think I first fell in love with 'nigga please' when I was 13 years old and rented (or had my stepmom rent...) the movie, "The Last Dragon" or as it is properly billed, "Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon" which is not to be confused with "Berry Gordy's..." umm... Berry Gordy's nothing else actually, as I believe it was the only movie that was produced by his record company, Motown. Okay, probably 'The Wiz', too.
Anyway, BG'sLD is a CLASSIC! It is the perfect storm: a combination Blaxploitation and Bruceploitation (That would be Bruce Lee exploitation for the novices. Wikipedia it.) It wasn't a hit... probably because it came out ten years too late to be relevant to either genre. And that's not it's only problem. Since it was produced by Motown, it has a soundtrack filled with Motown artists. Unfortunately since this was the mid eighties, instead of getting The Jackson 5, The Temptations, and Stevie Wonder, we get treated to De Barge, Some white woman who they clearly thought would be a blond Pat Benetar, and Stevie Wonder... ummm... 80's Stevie Wonder... and not even something as middle of Stevie's road as "I Just Called to Say I Love You." It's some song where the chorus is... "I have an upset stomach from a broken heart, a tear stained pillow from my crying eyes, and a migraine headache that just won't go awaaaaaaaaaaaaaay..."
But on the upside, it co-stars Vanity. Yup, THAT Vanity. You may remember her in such other movies as 'Action Jackson' with Carl Weathers and "Oops, I Shoulda Done Purple Rain' with Apollonia.
In one of the movie's MANY classic moments, the villain, Sho'Nuff (the shogun of Harlem) challenges the hero, Bruce Leroy (That's right I said, "Bruce Leroy.") to a fight. And during the run up, Sho'Nuff says, "I'm tired of hearing tales of the WATAAH, legendary Bruce Leroy, catching bullets with his teeth. Catching BULLETS with his TEETH?!!! (Wait for it...) NIGGA PLEASE!"
Cut to a 13 year old Kamau literally hitting the floor... Okay, I don't know if I hit the floor, but I instantly knew that I had just heard one of the funniest things that I would EVER hear. But unfortunately since at the time I was living in Mobile, AL with my conservative father and stepmom and going to a nearly all white catholic school, there was little chance of 'nigga please' becoming a part of my regular lexicon.
Unrelated aside (Skip it if you wanna.)
The ultimately most sad part about this movie is that as AWESOME as the actor who played Bruce Leroy was. (He was credited with the one name, Taimak... It was the 80's after all.) He never really appeared in much again. Years later, I was watching an episode of 'A Different World' (as all middle class black kids were forced to do) and I realized suddenly, "HEY! I know who that date rapist is! It's Bruce Leroy!!! Run Whitley. RUN!!! He can catch bullets with his teeth!"
Unrelated aside over
So, if I'm gonna adbocate the use of 'nigga please'. I should provide a tutorial to help you know how to drop in conversations most effectively.
Correct Use of 'Nigga please!"
1) "I think The Golden State Warriors have a legitimate shot to win a championship this year."
"Nigga please!"
2) "Hey man, could I hold like $20 until payday?"
"Dude, you already owe me $40! Nigga please!"
Incorrect Use of 'Nigga please!'
1) "Reverend Al Sharpton, could you pass the salt."
"No."
"Nigga pleeeeeeeeeease."
So there it is. Let's al just agree to only say the word 'nigger' if it is followed by the word 'please'..
Got it? Good.
Alright, so now that I've solved THAT whole problem, I'll move onto putting the section of the expressway in Oakland back in place.
Currently
listening
:
Rage Against the Machine
By
Rage Against the Machine
Release date: 10 November, 1992
It MUST BE Black History Month, cuz I'm in the newspaper.
Current mood: chipper
Thanks to Reyhan for writing it. (Sorry I couldn't get you into Chappelle.) Is this exactly how I feel about these subjects? Of course not. AM I glad that I'm in the paper and it has nothing to do with Gavin Newsome OR Fajitagate OR "Local comedian killed... not in the good way"? Yes, I am. Anyway, as Stan Lee says... 'Nuff said. Here it is.
BLACK HISTORY MONTH For W. Kamau Bell, the stand-up stage is the place to talk about race
Reyhan Harmanci, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, February 22, 2007
San Francisco comic W. Kamau Bell works jokes into conversation with ease, but he doesn't kid about why he loves stand-up.
"It's a singular experience. You have to stay engaged every second. If you tune out for a second, you miss what's happening. It's a very strange thing to watch, and then be a part of." But, he says, "when it's done by the best people, it's a form of beauty."
Raised in Chicago, Bell briefly attended the University of Pennsylvania before dropping out and honing his chops at Chicago's storied Second City. He moved to the Bay Area in 1997 to ply his craft.
For him, the stand-up stage is one of the few spaces where Americans openly talk about race. His comic heroes are a mixed bag -- he says he's been informed by both the genial Bill Cosby and the confrontational Eddie Murphy schools of racial comedy, as well as by the misanthropic great Bill Hicks and contemporaries like Dave Chappelle and Robert Hawkings.
Bell is not hurting for work: He's creating an animation project called "Hair-Trigger N -- ," performs on Live 105 as half of "Siskel and Negro" with comic Kevin Avery, opens for big-name comics like Chappelle, drops in regularly at local clubs and tours nationally.
Q: What got you into stand-up?
A: One of my earliest childhood memories was seeing Jerry Seinfeld on "The Tonight Show." I thought: What a great thing, to be onstage, to have everyone looking at me -- keep in mind, I'm an only child.
Q: I read the blog post you wrote about Sarah Silverman, which called her out as someone who used race in an irresponsible way in her routine. What prompted that?
A: Well, first of all, I would never say that a comic didn't have a right to say whatever he or she wanted to say. My whole thing about Sarah Silverman had more to do with the media's take on her rather than who she is. Around the time her movie came out, Rolling Stone invoked the names of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor when they wrote about her -- but she's nothing like them. She's a dirty joke teller. She's not trying to break taboos or remake the form.
Q: Does your audience ever get offended by your jokes?
A: There are some people who find my act to be extreme, but I think that's a really thin reading. I'm not easy on white people or black people. More than I've heard from people who are offended by my act, people say racist things to me. Stand-up has made me much more racist.
Q: How so?
A: It educates you to what's really going on in the country. I had one woman come up to me ... and tell me that I reminded her of the monkey in the Rugrats cartoon. As if that was a compliment! ... People say all kinds of crazy stuff to you after shows because they don't understand the difference between the performer and the person.
Q: How do you feel about Black History Month?
A: I can understand why they're talking about it in, say, elementary school, but, at this point, I'm like, Why wait until this month? It really only exists to me as the punch line to a joke.
E-mail Reyhan Harmanci at rharmanci@sfchronicle.com.
Currently
listening
:
Nice [Explicit Cover]
By
Rollins Band
Release date: 21 August, 2001
I'm done with the black guy handshake.
Current mood: nauseated
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
Im done with the black guy handshake. Thats right. Im done. FINISHED. Im too old for the rigamarole. It used to be easy. Or at least I used to know what to expect when other dudes (black, white, brown, yellow, red --- Did I get everybody? Although I dont actually think Ive ever done the black guy handshake with a Native American dude.) I used to know what was going on when dudes stuck their hands out. But now, I dont know anymore. There are so many permutations and possibilities. Some dudes are running audibles from the line of scrimmage. I never know where Im gonna end up during the handshake, and frankly I never got that good at it in the first place. There are usually two problems that arrive, and they are both surrounding the same area --- length of handshake.
The length of the handshake can totally vary from person to person and you have to rely on subtle non verbal cues to know how long your partner wants to go. WAY more complicated than sex. But sometimes (in the way that dudes can be) you arent given those clues and you end up getting --- for lack of a better word --- hand raped. Sometimes the handshake goes shorter than you anticipated (Make your own jokes here, ladies.) and you end up with your hand limply hanging out there like its got some kind of low grade palsy. Or the handshake goes longer than you thought, and you try to pull away, ending up in the middle of the weakest tug of war of all time.
Then things got really complicated with the advent of the fist bump. At first glance it sounded like a really low impact alternative to the complications of the black guy handshake, but unfortunately there is a huge problem. You have to go one direction or the other. By that I mean two people have to either shake hands OR fist bump, but since everyone is different (Damn you free will!), a good percentage of the time one person ends up sticking their hand out for the shake and the other person sticks there hand out for the bump, which makes person A look like Mr. 1950. I like to shake hands, hula hoop, and hate communists!
The best this can possibly work out is the very creepy fist bump to finger tips. --- YUCKY! --- But even worse than that is when both people realize that the other person is doing the OTHER thing and each tries to capitulate. Now, at the exact same time both people flip to the other persons style. Then there is a moment of amused confusion, and they flip AGAIN. This can go on and on and on and on and on. One time in Berkeley, I saw this happen between two students for an hour and half. From a distance it looked like Roshambo v. 1.0. --- Rock/Paper No Scissors.
But all this chazzerei (Look it up. Its Yiddish. Thanks, Bruce.) is ultimately not why I am giving up the black guy handshake. It is because of an incident that happened to me in LA while helping out with The Ghetto Gourmet. The party that they had thrown was winding down, and this dude (WHITE!) and his girlfriend (DRUNK!) were leaving. We all found ourselves in an elevator together. (Damn you elevators! What we gained in efficiency of travel, we more than lost in awkward social interactions.) So this dud(e) sticks his hand out, saying it was nice to meet me. This was my first indicator of something wrong, because up until that moment, we hadnt met. But I take his hand anyway, because at heart Im a uniter not a divider. And this dude proceeds to give me the most awkward black guy handshake of all time. Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, Im not saying that it had anything to do with the fact that he was white. Many white guys do perfectly fine black guy handshakes, but this white guy had pink hair. And Im gonna go ahead and say that the percentages of genuine black guy handshakes from white guys with pink hair are EXTREMELY low. But this shake was all wrong. His grip was limp, his form was clumsy, and he paused between steps like he was concentrating. It was as if he learned the black guy handshake the same way Daniel-san learned Karate BEFORE he met Mr. Miyagi (RIP Pat Morita) from a book.
The handshake went on so long and so pathetically that I actually thought to myself, How long does this have to go before it can officially be considered a violation of my civil rights? How long before I can call amnesty international? - Is this what theyre doing to the detainees in Gitmo?
When it finally ended, I relaxed. Then I suddenly looked to my left and saw his girlfriend with her hand extended. I took her hand pumped it up and down and let it go. Thats when she screwed her face up and said, How come I didnt get And she flopped her hand in midair like a dead fish. I assumed this was to approximate the black guy handshake. I replied, Because I didnt shake his hand like that. He shook MY hand like that. She studied me for a moment and said, Well, I want THAAAAAAT! I looked her square in the eye and said, Well then I suggest you shake HIS hand, because Im retired from the black guy handshake.
You may wonder, Kamau, how are you going to greet your brothers and sisters (black, white, brown, yellow, and hopefully red). Well from here on out, you can call me Mr. 1950. Ill see you at the sock hop.
Currently
watching
:
Equilibrium Release date: 13 May, 2003
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