Jews and Power

Tonight I went to what I would have liked to be a fun comedy night at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. I was unpleasantly surprised.

As I was puzzling over The Onion's weekly Sudoku, pressing it up against a brick wall, I was discreetly eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Every single conversation was unmistakably Jewish. I could hear it in the tone of voice, the subject matter, and most importantly, I was standing in a line for a comedy show called "Jews and Power". Soon after I was finished with the Sudoku, we were let inside the tiny theater. And I don't mean Schubert theater small. I mean fifty person max small. At this point I noticed that I was the youngest one there by at least thirty years. I hoped that the acts were tailored to this audience. After we got settled down, the show started with a man taking off his jumpsuit to reveal a Wonder Woman leotard as he performed an eccentric dance. An amusing scene to begin with, and he told great stand up comedy jokes after the dance. After this, there was a group called Good Jewish Girls Gone Bad, which was completely about sex jokes and unfunny songs. If they were anywhere near the right target audience, they still wouldn't have gotten any laughs. There was a Curb Your Enthusiasm spoof about Purim, and there were absolutely no good jokes. Purim was a common theme in this show. There were also two animated shorts about Isaac and Egyptian slavery. It reminded me of Home Movies from Adult Swim. It wasn't very funny. Around this time, a reporter who was writing about the show left the premises. It was a pretty good idea to leave. There was another Purim act that slightly dealt with politics, but not enough to really laugh at. After a few more "Eh" acts, the last stand up routine was pretty good. He had a bit of a prologue about Passover and it went pretty well. He then sang a song that somehow jumbled all of Judaism and Jesus into one holiday. It got great laughs and was a true success compared to everything else. We left this show and hoped to never go to such awkwardly bad theater again. At least we can tell the story.