W. Kamau Bell’s solo comedy show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in about an Hour*, now in its third or so run at The Shelton Theatre in San Francisco is pioneering work.  Bell, a standup comedian who got his start in Chicago, the improv capital of the States, developed his conversational, yet sharp, poignant style at Cobb’s Comedy Club and The Punch Line.  But rather than tell you a bit about the show, which you can see in SF, Oakland, or Berkeley, I’m going to tell you a bit about Kamau, who you might also see in SF, Oakland, or Berkeley.

I met Kamau in 1998 around the time that he moved to San Francisco.  There used to be something like an “internship” at Cobb’s, back when Cobb’s was located in The Cannery in the Fisherman’s Wharf district.  Every six months or so, an up and coming comic was chosen to host one of the three weekday showcases as well as host the weekend show once a month, which added up to a lot of stage time one of the two best clubs in the city.  Kamau had gotten the prized “internship” just as Cobb’s was getting ready to move to Columbus and Lombard.

On of my favorite bits of his back then was about the omnipresence of African Americans in popular culture.  It went like this:

“What’s happened to black people in the media?  In the 60’s we had Martin Luther King, Jr. we had Sammy Davis, Jr.,  We used to be everywhere!  You couldn’t swing a nightstick without hitting a black person upside the head.  In the 70’s…”

Some time around 2005, Kamau became a sort of mentor in my standup work.  We’d meet every week and work on bits, listen to great comics and talk about different realms of skill and how the greats did what they did.  What we had in common was that we both approached standup with a desire to speak a more complex truth than is sometimes found in standup, which is hard, because funny is usually simple and short.

With Kamau climbing the ranks of San Francisco standup along with fellow comedians like Dan Rothenberg, Joe Klocek, and Dan Gabriel (and many others), he moved from opening, to featuring, to the honored position of headlining at The Punch Line about two years ago.  His first headlining shows were especially packed and full of heat–Kamau, like Robert Mac before him, had gotten a really short hair cut, and almost immediately started headlining.  Coincidence?  You be the judge.  When Dave Chapelle came back from his trip in Africa, he was doing a lot of sets at The Punch Line, and Kamau performed with him frequently.  Kamau also appeared on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend and recorded his first standup album One Night Only around that time.

So, along the way, Kamau and Kevin Avery had been doing the movie reviews on the Live 105 Morning Show, putting out a podcast (”Siskel & Negro“), working on a screenplay (Kevin) and an internet cartoon (Kamau) and Kamau directed by Bruce Pachtman’s show “Don’t Make Me Look Too Psychotic.”  One thing led to another, and Kamau started teaching The Solo Performance Workshop for people who want to develop a one-person-show or monologue.  Kamau just won Best Comedian 2008 in the SF Weekly, and I’m hoping he takes his show on the road especially because he’s got a plethora of opinions and insights about Obama that make it a perfect time to showcase this work.

What I have always admired about Kamau’s work is that he articulates the questions of race in a genuine way that’s not clichéd.  Especially in The Bell Curve, Kamau thinks he expresses more anger about race than he actually does; on stage he is affable, engaging, and charming.  Kamau’s move from standup into the solo show is a courageous step.  Not only does he re-write his show each week according to what’s in the news, he also continues to develop both the standup and the theatrical elements of the show.  I look forward to seeing future iterations as they unfold.

The W. Kamau Bell Curve in the East Bay:
Pro Arts, 550 Second Street, Oakland
August 2, 3, 9, 10
Buy tickets here

* Directed by Martha Rynberg, The W. Kamau Bell Curve is a co-production of Bruce Pachtman Productions AND Lisa Marie Rollins’ Third Root Production

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Most people remember George Carlin for flaunting the unspeakable Seven Dirty Words on live television. Sure, he pushed the envelope and paved the way for comics like Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy. Yeah, he was Saturday Night Live’s first guest host in 1975. Of course he was a prolific life-long comedian who put out 25 albums.But what I’m loving today about Carlin is something else.

I was listening to Carlin’s interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and I thought I heard Deepak Chopra talking. Having just returned from traveling for a few months in India, I felt the reverberations of Indian philosophy in his words. He told Terry about his philosophy of molecular connection to all things.

(I’m paraphrasing here) Terry Gross: “Is there anything you do turn to to help provide a sense of meaning… or where you fit in or what are you doing here?”

George Carlin: “Some time ago I figured out with the help of some reading that I can’t recall now that, if it’s true that we’re all from the center of a star, everything atom in each of us from the center of a star, then we’re all from the same thing, and even a coke machine or a cigarette butt on the street in Buffalo are made out of atoms that came from a star. They’ve all been recycled thousands of times as have you and I. So, if that is true, and I am everywhere in the universe, in an extended sense, and therefore, it’s only me out here, so what is there to be afraid of? What is there that needs solace-seeking? Nothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of, because it’s all us. So, I just have that as a backdrop, and I don’t have to go to it or think of it consciously. I’ve kind of accepted the idea that I’m perfectly safe and that life, nature, have waves and troughs, ups and downs, left and right, black and white, night and day, fall and winter, positive and negative. Everything has an opposite. If I have a bad time, I’ll have a good time coming. If it’s a good time, I’m prepared to have a bad time to sort of pay for it. So, nothing really upsets me.”

Terry Gross: “…It’s kind of like a mix of narcissism and mysticism.”

George Carlin: “The trouble is, we’ve been separated from being that universe by being born we’ve been given a name and an identity and being individuated and separated from the oneness, and that’s what religion exploits…”

I saw Carlin for the first time on HBO’s Comic Relief. When all the other eight year old girls were devouring Ramona Quimby, Age 8 books I was voraciously taking in Comic Relief over and over again, laughing at jokes I didn’t yet understand.

I loved the sketches Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Billy Crystal did. There was a parade of comedians… Gary Shandling, Tony Danza (who told a street joke about the farmer and his favorite three-legged pig.) Sid Caesar did some physical comedy.

And then there was Carlin’s routine on Stuff. With his five minutes, he packed in more jokes than most comics at clubs today. This quintessential rant on our attachment to the physical stuff that makes us feel at Home was truly brilliant.

He talked a mile a minute, he nailed every neurosis, and hit every emotional note with masterful facial punctuation. It somehow spoke to my inner cranky old guy in mid-life crisis. My parents are sort of packrats and junk-recycling artists, and whenever we traveled, it seemed we’d take enough extra stuff to set up an entire household on vacation.

This was the first time someone had taken my childhood thoughts and feelings about my parents junk-collecting and how out of control I felt, and encapsulated them into short bursts of hilarious insight in that inimitable comedian way of “saying what we’re all thinking.”

Listening to him gave me that sense of connectedness and oneness that Carlin talks about with Terry. And, along with Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, George Carlin was one of the first deeply imprinted artistic influences that made me say, “That’s what I want to do.”

FYI: And in case you missed it, here’s Carlin talking about death on YouTube.

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