Agree to disagree? Seriously? Why can't one side just be wrong? I'm putting my money down on the shooting innocent black people being wrong, just for your information.
This is what I feel like on the inside.
Look at this DOPE ASS picture of me. It was taken during the same shoot as the cover of the SF Weekly. The photographer is Paul Trapani. If you leave him some comments maybe he'll take some more of me.
Me on The Cover of The SF Weekly
Laughter Against The Machine Monday, May 18, SF Punch Line
A Comedy Show For People Who Are STILL Pissed Off. W. Kamau Bell (SF Weekly's Best Comedian 2008 & Comedy Central's first comic to tell a Barack Obama joke) and Nato Green (of Iron Comic, Laughing Liberally Local 415, & The New Jew Revue ) --- two of the Bay Area's most deeply underground and thought-provoking comedians --- band together for the second edition of their comedy summit: Laughter Against The Machine. LATM is a stand-up comedy show which promises an evening filled with biting political & social commentary, that will attack all points along the spectrum from the rightest right to the leftest left. This is an evening of the comedians doing what they do best and are supposed to do, expressing their pointed opinions in hilariously awesome ways. Tonight's show also features special guest Hari Kondabolu.
Come. Sit down. Laugh. Go home.
ABOUT THE COMEDIANS
W. Kamau Bell has been called by The SF Weekly "very much in the mold of politically outspoken comedians like Dave Chappelle and Margaret Cho." Kamau was named Best Comedian 2008 by The SF Weekly. Also seen on Comedy Central's Premium Blend and performing his critically-acclaimed solo show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism In About An Hour. He was recently named number 77 on Comedy Central's 100 Obama Moments. http://www.wkamaubell.com/
Nato Green is in the tradition of great Jewish comedians like Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Joe Leiberman. Nato is the mastermind of Iron Comic, Laugh Out the Vote, Laughing Liberally Local 415, and the New Jew Revue. He's appeared in the Progressive Reading Series and SF Sketchfest 2008. http://www.natogreen.com/
Hari Kondabolu has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central's Live at Gotham and was featured in the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. His short film MANOJ, which he wrote, starred in, and co-produced was selected to play at the 2008 Just for Laughs Festival. The Seattle Times called him "a young man reaching for the hand-scalding torch of confrontational comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor." http://www.harithecomic.com/
Just found out that I got into FringeNYC
I just found out that me and my show have been accepted into The New York International Fringe Festival. YAY!!!
There are Fringe Theater Festivals all over the world (The biggest and First is in Edinburgh Scotland), but the NYC one is the biggest one in America. The pick through thousands of shows and pick like two hundred to perform for two weeks in August. I went last year with Jennifer Jajeh's show that I directed, "I Heart Hamas!: And Other Things That I'm Afraid to Tell You." And at the time I thought, "This festival is crazy. It's too much work. I don't know how these people do it. I should apply for next year."
I did. And I'll be there (with Melissa) later this year!
Here's more info on the festival FRINGNYC
Several shows have come out of the FringeNYC to do big things including Urinetown (3 Tonys) and 21 Dog Years by Mike Daisey.
And now it's Rocky 2 time for me again.
Don't know what that means? Go HERE!
Next edition of my Solo Performance Workshop begins Wed, May 13 @6:30pm
Solo Performance Workshop with W. Kamau Bell Started in 2005, this 8 session course is designed to develop 15-20 minute professional level solo theater pieces using a variety of writing and performance techniques. Each student will create a unique and personal performance piece that will culminate in a public theater performance at the end of the course. The class is recommended for performers of all disciplines, including actors, writers, comedians, spoken word artists, musicians and dancers. People of all levels of experience are welcome, from those who have never been on stage before to those preparing a piece for a professional production or audition. Members of the workshop have gone on to perform their shows all over the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and recently The New York Fringe Theater Festival. This edition will be co-taught by Martha Rynberg, director of The W. Kamau Bell Curve.
Wednesdays at 6:30PM - 9:30PM beginning May 13
LOCATION: Stage Werx Theatre 533 Sutter Street @ Powell Street, San Francisco, 94102
NEW Website!
Here it is. I'm sooooooooo happy to have a NEW website. The last one was focused on my show and this one is more properly focused on MEEEEEEEEEEE!
Look around. Tell me what you think, and stay in touch. I got a TON of new pictures taken. And I'll be uploading them soon.
Next stop, Dane Cookville!
Then this happened: SF Chronicle pt. 2
Below you will see the ten comments written by people who read the Chronicle article and then felt compelled to put their two cents in. HOORAY FREEDOM OF SPEECH! Add Your Comment
historian_1066 11/5/2008 11:43:41 AM
Well, black entitlement is a big part of racism. When you talk about racism to African Americans , they go, 'That's not me, that's those other people, that's people in Oakland.' If I talk about black entitlement, that's a different thing, and in my life, (black entitlement) creates more racism than a couple of brothas in a Cadillac."
Recommend: (11)(4)[Report Abuse]
historian_1066 11/5/2008 12:06:32 PM
Comedian Southern Bell would like Bay Area residents to know something: Whoever wins the election, it's OK to call Barack Obama evil. "I've been doing some political shows lately, and I always make it clear that my opinion is that he's evil - not just that he's confused, or he's stupid, although he is that too," Southern Bell says.
Recommend: (4)(3)[Report Abuse]
parkinglotpimp 11/5/2008 12:14:16 PM
historian I'll go one further.. That beady eyed guy Bidden looks as evil as Obama. They look like some species you would see in one of the outer planets in Star War. Now, that's just my opinion! It looks like not to many people read this article. I didn't know what the hell the guy was talking about half the time. Maybe the interviewer could have asked more follow up questions so that the guy could had given more of a explanation for whatever he was talking about
Recommend: (4)(3)[Report Abuse] This comment was left by a user who has been blocked by an SFGate editor.
homer 11/5/2008 1:53:28 PM
Thanks for the recap--this is another comedian I don't have to waste my time or money seeing.
Recommend: (6)(2)[Report Abuse]
mchap 11/5/2008 3:15:49 PM
You said "Racism will not be over if Barack wins." Unfortunately, you are probably right. As long as there are people like yourself that have a vested interest in the perpetuation of racism we will probably never get past it. It would be really nice if we could all try, though.
Recommend: (3)(2)[Report Abuse]
fritz_youth 11/5/2008 3:21:39 PM
"which got him named best comedian in San Francisco by S.F. Weekly" - I must have missed that, it was probably squeezed somewhere between all the hooker ads. I'm betting if I replaced the word "white" with "black" and every derogatory term he uses for whites with a term equally derogatory for blacks I would sound like the Grand Dragon riling up his white robed minions but when this guy does it's his "attempt to take it to a collegiate level. " Darn, these new rules of racism are confusing!
Recommend: (8)(2)[Report Abuse]
Weej 11/5/2008 3:42:53 PM
Wow, this is going a long way toward ensuring that there is no joining together of anyone. What a sad sack this young fella is.
Recommend: (3)(1)[Report Abuse]
dedbones 11/5/2008 5:39:42 PM
Please Mr Bell. Racism is what we are trying to trash. Not much humor in the hard work. Please pick a different subject. Maybe how funny it is to eat eggs from a chicken that can't turn around.
Recommend: (0)(1)[Report Abuse]
panhandler 11/5/2008 5:46:51 PM
Oooh evil comedian! If you can laugh at racism or you can cry about it. I'd rather laugh and poke fun about it the way Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor did. This guy is not in their league but I think I will go check out his show.
How can you vote FOR Obama and FOR Prop 8?
I don't know if I buy all the arguments in the article below. (It's weird how things are usually in some way black people's fault. Isn't it?) I just know that it sucks that an the first black presidential election has to be couple with this. Isn't it pathetic that this issue is the only one that Obama and McCain totally agree on. COME ON, PRESIDENT (elect) OBAMA! The fact that gay marriage didn't pass is all our faults. I personally am committing to doing more. Exactly how... I don't know yet. But I do know that I WANT MY FRIENDS TO BE ABLE TO GET MARRIED SO THEY CAN GO THOUGH ALL THE WEDDING PLANNING STRESS THAT I'M GOING THROUGH!!!
Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008 Why Gay Marriage Was Defeated in California By John Cloud
Nov. 4 may have been a joyous day for liberals, but it wasn't a great day for lesbians and gays. Three big states — Arizona, California and Florida — voted to change their constitutions to define marriage as a heterosexuals-only institution. The losses cut deep on the gay side. Arizona had rejected just such a constitutional amendment only two years ago. It had been the first and only state to have rebuffed a constitutional ban on marriage equality. In Florida, where the law requires constitutional amendments to win by 60%, a marriage amendment passed with disturbing ease, 62.1% to 37.9%.
And then there was California. Gay strategists working for marriage equality in this election cycle had focused most of their attention on that state. Losing there dims hopes that shimmered brightly just a few weeks ago — hopes that in an Obama America, straight people would be willing to let gay people have the basic right to equality in their personal relationships. It appears not.
The California vote was close but not razor-thin: as of 10 a.m. P.T., with 96.4% of precincts reporting, gays had lost 52.2% to 47.8%. Obama did not suffer the much-discussed "Bradley effect" this year, but it appears that gay people were afflicted by some version of it. As of late October, a Field Poll found that the pro-gay side was winning 49% to 44%, with 7% undecided. But gays could not quite make it to 49% on Election Day, meaning a few people may have been unwilling to tell pollsters that they intended to vote against equal marriage rights.
Gays are used to losing these constitutional amendment battles — as I said, Arizona was the only exception — but gay activists cannot claim they didn't have the money to wage the California fight. According to an analysis of the most recent reports from the California secretary of state, the pro-equality side raised an astonishing $43.6 million, compared with just $29.8 million for those who succeeded in keeping gays from marrying. The money the gay side raised is surprising for two reasons: first, the cash-Hoover known as the Obama campaign was sucking down millions of dollars a day from the nation's liberals. Many gays expected it to be difficult to raise money to fight Proposition 8 and its plan to outlaw same-sex marriage from Democrats eager to give to Obama and to the outside 527 groups supporting him. As recently as August, one of the nation's top gay political givers told me that he expected the gay side to raise no more than $25 million.
But a series of high-profile Hollywood donations, as well as a frantic, nationwide push for gays to get out their checkbooks, turned out to be quite successful in the short term. East Coast gays had been lulled into inaction by the Oct. 10 Connecticut Supreme Court decision granting gay couples the right to marry — a decision that hadn't required gays to write a single check. But gay people in Los Angeles and San Francisco cajoled and shamed their Eastern friends into opening their wallets. Thousands of California gay couples got married in the past few weeks, and I didn't see a single invitation to a gay ceremony that didn't include a plea to donate to the pro-equality campaign in lieu of buying wedding gifts.
Still, even though gays were fighting to preserve a basic right, it was the anti-equality side in California that seemed to have the most fervor. A symbolic low point for the gay side came on Oct. 13, when the Sacramento Bee ran a remarkable story about Rick and Pam Patterson, a Mormon couple of modest means — he drives a 10-year-old Honda Civic, she raises their five boys — who had withdrawn $50,000 from their savings account and given it to the pro-8 campaign. "It was a decision we made very prayerfully," Pam Patterson, 48, told the Bee's Jennifer Garza. "Was it an easy decision? No. But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children."
You could argue that marriage equality has little to do with children, but Patterson seemed to speak to Californians' inchoate phobias about gays and kids. On the Friday before the Bee story appeared, a group of San Francisco first-graders was taken to city hall to see their lesbian teacher marry her partner. Apparently the field trip was a parent's idea — not the teacher's — but the optics of the event were terrible for the gay side. It seemed like so much indoctrination.
That news came around the same time the pro-amendment forces were running a devastating ad showing a self-satisfied San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom shouting wild-eyed at a rally that same-sex marriage was inevitable "whether you like it or not." The announcer then said darkly, "It's no longer about tolerance. Acceptance of gay marriage is now mandatory." Many fence sitters were turned off by Newsom's arrogance; blogger Andrew Sullivan attributed mid-October polls against the gay side to the "Newsom effect."
Gays came back in some polls, but they couldn't pull out a win. Part of the reason is that Obama inspired unprecedented numbers of African Americans to vote. Polls show that black voters are more likely to attend church than whites and less likely to be comfortable with equality for gay people. According to CNN, African Americans voted against marriage equality by a wide margin, 69% to 31%. High turnout of African Americans in Florida probably help explain that state's lopsided vote to ban same-sex weddings.
Gays did win some victories yesterday. A new openly gay member of Congress, Jared Polis of Colorado, will go to the House in January. And thanks in part to the Cabinet, the group of [a {e}]lite gay political donors I wrote about recently, Democrats took the New York senate. The entire New York legislature is now in Democratic hands, and New York's governor, David Paterson, is one of the nation's most eloquent pro-marriage-equality representatives. He is also, by the way, African American. Perhaps he can help bridge the gap between gays and blacks that widened on Nov. 4.
Another black guy was in the Chronicle yesterday TOO!
Comedian W. Kamau Bell would like Bay Area residents to know something: Whoever wins the election, it's OK to call John McCain evil. "I've been doing some political shows lately, and I always make it clear that my opinion is that he's evil - not just that he's confused, or he's senile, although he is that too," Bell says.
Well, then. Bell, 35, has been watching presidential politics very closely in preparation for another run of his hit one-man show, "The W. Kamau Bell Curve," which begins this weekend. As with last season's performances in Oakland and San Francisco - which got him named best comedian in San Francisco by S.F. Weekly - Bell will continue to make race central to the show.
In his act, Bell straddles the line between stand-up comedy and scripted solo show. "Don't get me wrong, I want it to be funny," says Bell. "I think that at stand-up clubs, though - and I'm as guilty of this as anybody - discussions of race stay on a junior high level. This show is my attempt to take it to a collegiate level. "
The Chronicle sat down with Bell, who recently became engaged, to get a preview of this fall's performances and find out what he thinks politics can tell us about race relations. On what's new in his new show: "Much of the new material are things that I won't be able to start writing until (after the election). There's going to be a lot of new stuff. I myself can't wait to see it. ... Also, I'm really sharpening the attack of the show. A lot of people have been surprised that I haven't focused on one thing, done the whole 'I was born in 1973 ...' monologue, but this isn't like your traditional solo show. The fun thing for me is to comment on things that are happening as they are happening."
On talking to Bay Area audiences about racism: "Well, white privilege is a big part of racism. When you talk about racism to liberals, they go, 'That's not me, that's those other people, that's people in Texas.' If I talk about white privilege, that's a different thing, and in my life, (white privilege) creates more racism than a couple of dudes in a pickup truck."
On not being the new Spalding Gray: "A few years ago I saw a show in New York by Reno called 'Rebel Without a Pause.' It felt like she was just up there talking to us, mostly about 9/11, but there were a lot of jokes, which I recognized from stand-up. I had never seen anyone do it like that. Usually, in a solo show, someone would disappear into themselves or play a thousand characters, which is great, but I don't have that skill or interest. Also, doing shows like this makes my stand-up better."
On his own inner racist: "I really am trying to make the show more personal and put my own racism out there. I want to get away from the show being this guy on high, standing on a soapbox, yelling at everyone else, so I've been cataloging my own racism. Like, for instance, I really get mad when I see black people on the street tap-dancing for money. I get really Texas about it, even if they're doing it well and especially if they have a crowd around them and especially when black people are break-dancing. I mean, 25 years later? This is our best way?" On Sarah Palin going "rogue": "It's a sign of the sinister nature of the pairing of those two, Sarah Palin and John McCain. The sinister, calculated and cynical pairing. ... He could have picked someone who he was friends with, and who would have stood by him. They're like a couple of James Bond villains." On rednecks and avowed racists supporting Obama: "I don't know what the numbers will say, but I totally believe it's true. I think there are people who know that their self-interest is to vote for this thing that is Barack Obama and they are going to just say (sighs), "Guess I'm going to vote for the n-." And I think it's a sign of how totally f- up this country is. Barack's winning is like turning over a log and finding all these things under the log. It's like turning on a light and finding all these roaches. Racism will not be over if Barack wins."
The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Opens 8 p.m. Fri. and runs weekends through Dec. 13. Go to Web site for schedule. Tickets: $25, with a two-for-one deal if you come with a person of a different race. Climate Theater, 285 Ninth St., San Francisco. (415) 290-4456. www.wkamaubell.com.
For a look at last year's show, go to sfgate.com/ZFGX.
E-mail Reyhan Harmanci at rharmanci@sfchronicle.com.
Racists for Obama
Article on Politico My "favorite quote" from the article is...
“If you go to a white neighborhood in the suburbs and ask them, ‘How would you feel about a large black man kicking your door in,’ they would say, ‘That doesn’t sound good to me,’” said Democratic political consultant Paul Begala. “But if you say, 'Your house is on fire, and the firefighter happens to be black,' it’s a different situation.”
In summary... we're doomed.
