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.
Best Comedian - 2010
Nato Green
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.
