Lizz Winstead who co-created The Daily Show and Laura Flanders who is a media powerhouse allowed me to share some screen time with them over on GRITtv. WHEW! It was like running with the bulls.
Everybody seemed to like me. I’m all newsy now!!! Watch out, Andy Rooney!!!
Are you in NYC? TWiB! is giving away 1 pair of tickets to see the critically acclaimed “W. Kamau Bell Curve” with none other than W. Kamau Bell (Comedy Central) as part of the solaNOVA Arts Festival TONIGHT.
“W. Kamau Bell is the most important guy doing comedy right now. Do yourself a favor and go see him. He’s got the most astute, hilarious and completely righteous material going and he’s going to be a legend in his own lifetime like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce. Think Bill Hicks but slightly taller.” — Margaret Cho
HOW TO WIN:
Follow @WeekInBlackness on Twitter and tweet “#TWiB! is the #TRUTH – http://twib.me” before 6pm and we will draw from all those tweets. The more you enter, the better your chances to win.
Gearing up for another broadcast of Radio Free Brooklyn tomorrow night! In addition to having some tasty music treats from the new black imagination, I’ll also have a live, in-studio interview with SF-based comedian W. Kamau Bell.
Kamau is currently in town doing a standup show called The Bell Curve: Ending Racism In About An Hour. Cool thing is, the show’s been extended into early June. So, tune in tomorrow night from 9-10, and then check out Kamau’s show or his comedy album, Face Full of Flour, now available on itunes and Amazon.
As a reminder, the schedule for WRFB goes like this:
7-8pm YankeeZulu
8-9pm The Flying Perfect Parlor with Christian John Wikane
9-10pm Boldaslove.us/Sounds from the New Black Imagination
10-11pm Shelley Nicole and her dope themed shows
Guests this month include:
Chris Hayes – Editor of The Nation and fill in for Rachel Maddow
Joe Randazzo – Editor of The Onion
W. Kamau Bell – “Will be a legend in his own lifetime like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce. Think Bill Hicks but slightly taller.” — Margaret Cho, comedian
Musical guest Anthony da Costa and Emilyn Brodsky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVkfECKlIo)
And big surprise guests!
And your hosts:
Allison Kilkenny – Writer for Huffington Post, The Nation, and True/Slant
Jamie Kilstein – The BBC, contributor to The Onion, famous in every country except America Read More…
7×7 Magazine — a publication that caters to the elite (umm… rich white folks — not that there is anything wrong with that… to quote Seinfeld) of San Francisco — names yours truly the Best Comedian of 2010. Next up, me and Gavin Newsom will be partying like it’s our birthdays.
I’m still in NYC, so somebody save me a few copies.
—
We need W. Kamau Bell to urge people to do educational, evolutionary things like “Make a Black Friend” and to call out the follies and frenzies of so-called post-racial America. The bravest and smartest SF comic and solo performer to tackle race, as well as a stealth educator and director, Bell will go down in history as the first comedian to tell an Obama joke (on the Comedy Channel, circa 2005), toasted by everyone from Time Out New York to Boots Riley of the Coup to Margaret Cho (who describes him as “the most important guy doing comedy right now. … Think Bill Hicks but slightly taller”). July 14, Punch Line Comedy Club, 444 Battery St., 415-397-7573, punchlinecomedyclub.com, wkamaubell.com
A new batch of complete WKB ridiculousness from AfroPunk.com…
We found a comedian who claims he can end racism in one hour. That’s right. W. Kamau Bell (pronounced KA-MAOW, like KA-POW) says that his one man stand up show can end that nasty little “r” word that we’ve all got mighty comfortable with. So, we decided to invite this San Francisco comedian to the Afro-punk scene to smack us around a little, get the race conversation stirred up a bit, and to make us a little more uncomfortable about what racism really is.
This is 3 years in a row that The SF Weekly has gotten it right!. Nato this year, Ali Wong last year, and some black dude the year before that. Extreme congratulations to Nato! Of course I have a steak in this one. Nato is the co-founder of Laughter Against The Machine. We’ll be kicking out the comedic jams this summer in Seattle and Portland. You’ve been warned.
Nato Green is a hard-working man in show business. (We can’t really say the hardest-working man in show business, in a town so packed with hard-working men in show business.) His Iron Comic series blends improv-style audience participation with traditional stand-up, his work at the Progressive Reading Series kept the writers doubled over, and his Laughing Liberally Local 415 and the New Jew Revue are legendary. He’s also a blogger for the Huffington Post, where he recently contributed an Onion-style fiction about a group calling the Tea Party “not conservative enough.” The takeaway quote comes from a woman too afraid of Jews to give her name: “I voted for Sarah Palin, but I don’t believe a woman’s place is to kill a moose. We should leave that to the menfolk.” But it is for a single night’s work that we honor Green at the moment: Laughter Against the Machine. The show returns this summer, with Green’s cohort of W. Kamau Bell, Hari Kondabolu, and, hopefully, Janine Brito, too, reprising the funniest comedy show we’ve ever seen. The funniest. In a town packed with funny shows.
This came out of a conversation Allison, Jamie Kilstein, and myself had on Citizen Radio today. I’ll let you know when it runs, but read this NOW. Also, I’m performing on Citizen Radio Live on May 24 in NYC.
The mother and father of Aiyana Jones gather for a candle light vigil for seven-year-old daughter Aiyana Jones.
Aiyana Jones is the 7-year-old girl who was recently killed during a raid on her home. Allegedly, the police launched a flashbang grenade through the window of the apartment where Jones was sleeping, and the device set Jones on fire. Her grandmother, quite understandably, got into an altercation with the armed men who stormed into their home, and during the struggle, the police claim an officer’s gun discharged accidentally, killing Jones.
This official narrative is being disputed by the family’s attorney, who claims video footage shows the police fired into the home at least once after lobbing the grenade through a window – before grandma and the officer ever had their interaction.
This terrible tragedy follows an incident that received considerably more (especially on-line) media attention — a Missouri SWAT raid.
First, a disclaimer: I don’t write this as a way to cast blame. After all, I covered the Missouri incident extensively. The Missouri raid is something that should attract a significant amount of media coverage. And there are several important differences between the story that might explain why one incident went viral, while the other remains in danger of being buried by the Next Big Thing to come along.
Unlike Detroit, the Missouri raid was videotaped, forever capturing the terrible drama of the event, while Jones’s last, awful moments will only be memorialized in the testimony of cops and her family. Additionally, the Missouri raid demonstrated the overzealous, destructive police response to the unwinnable War on Drugs, which 40 years after its implementation, has cost over $1 trillion, failed to meet any of its goals, while “drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.” Most Americans believe the War on Drugs is failing, so video proof of the militaristic behavior of the police during drug raids reinforces widely held, negative views about drug criminalization. Simply: people like to watch what they already know. Read More…
Ummm… So… yeah… I am nominated for a couple of awards by RooftopComedy.com. One is a nomination for a viewer’s choice award for my bit about weed saving the economy (I’ll be harassing you to vote for this starting May 19.) and the other nomination is for…
“The Roofie: Nominated by Rooftop staff and selected by t…he academy. The Roofie award goes to the one comedian who stands out as an innovative performer and writer, with a unique voice and an overwhelming commitment to the stand-up comedy stage.”
Cool! I’m up against some real competition, and I wasn’t expecting or even looking for — or even had this on my radar — so in my case, it TRULY IS an honor just to be nominated. No Bullshit.
Here’s the link to the post, but I also excerpted my two categories below… Read More…
Kamau's fantastic new album, Face Full of Flour, is now available!
Get it.
You're lookin' at archives for May, 2010.
Dude, you're still using IE6? WTF? Seriously, get with the times. Either upgrade to IE7 (or 8), or switch to something that doesn't suck, like Firefox.
Click anywhere to continue browsing with your current browser, but be aware things may not look or work properly.
