SFist Reviews- The W. Kamau Bell Gets a Haircut Show
SFist made it to the W. Kamau Bell Gets a Haircut Show last Thursday and have to admit that we were a little put off about the false advertising. While we did see cut hair, we did not see an actual hair cut. Instead, that took place off stage during the last hour of the show. Sheesh.
What we did see was several comedians, an impressionist, a magician, some slam poetry, cartoon projections, songs about the penis, and ladies knitting. Yes, ladies knitting, although they were part of the audience, not performing. In other words, it was a veritable calvacade of comedy, one that lasted over three and a half-hours and kept SFist up way past our bedtime.
As for the comedy itself, things got off to a bang with jokes about anal sex. That pretty much set the tone. From there on in, we heard jokes about religion, drugs, race, shooting the President (any President), and sex. In other words, it was about as blue as it comes and we mean state as much as style. And in a time when an ex-heart surgeon declares on C-Span that after watching a thirty-second video, he can determine that a vegetable is not a vegetable, it’s good to hear offensively funny things that are meant to be offensively funny.
We thought long and hard about how to recap the whole evening and since we’re not feeling very creative tonight, we’re just going to list the performers and give you the play-by-play as it were.
Sherri Sirof- told lots of jokes about being a new mother in kind of a style that was both bubbly and deadpan. Funny women are always hot, even when telling jokes about breast feeding.
Geoff Trenchard- Geoff did kind of a slam poetry thing, kind of a spoken-word thing about Sticking it to the Man while working at Kinko's. He then followed that up with a poem inside a poem about teaching inner city kids poetry. Both were great.
John Hoogasian- You know those performers who get up there and just kind of be all weird and twitchy and you keep on waiting for them to start performing? Then, about halfway through, you realize the twitch is the schtick and that’s pretty much it? That was John. Make this what you will, but considering all the "edgy" material performed, John did the edgiest thing one could possibly do in these times- lit up a cigarette and smoked it.
Zoe- Yep, Zoe is an 11 year old poet, part Lisa Simpson, part Amber Dempsey. We’re not sure what it means that an 11-year-old is reciting poetry about alcoholic dads, body image issues, and big butts but she sure was precocious and cute. She knew it too.
Keith Knight- So you might be asking, what can a cartoonist do at a comedy show? Show his cartoons, that’s what. Considering we love his cartoons, that’s good enough for us.
Chris Carney- Carney did a few card tricks and a few psychic stunts. It was the second best magical performance we saw all week, coming in a close second to Gob accidentally slicing off Buster’s fake hand on "Arrested Development."
Mark Silverman- Sang songs about religion, his penis, and shooting the President. One can’t go wrong about songs mocking religion, the penis, and the President.
Rob Cantrell- We got the feeling Rob was trying to be one of those crazed, freakish, Bobcat Goldwaithe type comedians. The problem was that Rob comes off as kind of a down-to-earth, normal guy. Which made it all the better in a weird sort of way. It was like he was being "ironically" crazed, freakish, and Bobcat Goldwaithe-like and it came out all askew and off-beat. Somehow it worked as we thought he was the best comedian of the night, primarily because the line "this is how we roll" is always funny.
Colin Mahan- Colin was a half-way decent impressionist but a not so good comedian. We would say he went on too long but we have a feeling it was only because Kamau was busy getting his dreads cut and there was nobody else to go on stage. So, in other words, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Kevin Avery- Frankly, we missed Kevin’s bit as we had to go to the bathroom. We did see him do a pretty good C-3PO impression. Star Wars jokes are always good.
Dwayne Kennedy- We weren’t sure whether Dwayne was playing the sardonically drunk role because that’s his act or whether he was feeling drunk and sardonic. We also are never quite sure whether we’re supposed to be into black comedians telling racism jokes in front of a white audience. Either way, he was pretty good too, especially as he spent large portions of his performance busting on the two women for knitting during the whole performance.