From The Seattle Weekly...
Sun., Feb. 6, 8 p.m., 2011 Get your tickets HERE! Bring a Friend of a Different Race & Get in 2for1.
Back in 2005, a little-known San Francisco comic made a crack about a little-known Illinois senator, also black. Said W. Kamau Bell, “There will never be a black president named Barack Obama. Because that is too black.” Then the unthinkable happened: Obama actually became president, and Bell focused his comedy into a stand-alone show, The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour. He's been performing and refining the act for years, adapting topics of his ire from George Bush to Michele Bachmann. And while he comes as the subject of race from a Bay Area liberal's perspective, his jokes also range from Star Trek to kung fu movies to Macbeth. (“As a society,” says this Chicago-raised utopian, “let's be the The Matrix part one, not The Matrix II and III.”) And, like the president, Bell has stripped the anger from his smart, genial demeanor—he's like the funniest dude in your Ph.D. program. Though he's a young guy, fluent in blogging, twitter, and Facebook, he's also a bit of a throwback—skipping over the incendiary taunts of Pryor and Murphy back to the early humor of Cosby (before sweaters and sitcoms). Also note the ticket price: two-for-one if “you bring a friend from a different race.” It's a great chance to save some money and meet someone not in your usual online dating profile. BRIAN MILLER
...
"Chicago-raised utopoian"
"the funniest dude in your Ph.D. program"
"the early humor of Cosby (before sweaters & sitcoms)"
Yup, that's pretty much how I've always described myself.
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.