Moshe Kasher opens his new live show by saying, “If you get offended by any of the things
that I say tonight, that’s like totally okay, you’re a big lady and you can
make that decision. But please don’t come up to me after the show and tell me
about how offended you were.” That, of course, gives me high expectations,
for I love it when comedians don’t hold back. He says, “I think it’s important for us to set down those kind of ground rules
early in the show so that if at any point tonight you do become offended, we’ve
now established that that’s just you being a bitch.”
His performance is really funny, but not at all
offensive. His material on religion is great, particularly how heaven doesn’t
sound all that appealing. “You get to
hang out with your family forever. Oh, that sounds great. You remember the last
time you spent the afternoon with your mom? Yeah, you remember that moment when
you were like, ‘I’ve gotta get out of here now!’ That’s when forever begins.”
A frightening thought, eh?
He tells anecdotes about some of his other experiences
doing stand-up, including once when a guy shouted out, “Next!” That leads to a great comparison of Jews and leprechauns. I
love his rapid-fire delivery. And I dig his bit about gay cruising parks. “By the way, the fact that there are gay
people born into Alabama is all the proof you will ever need that homosexuality
is not a choice.”
He talks about how homosexuality was once considered a
psychological disorder, and then conjectures about how great the world would be
if the things we now consider disorders come to be accepted as a normal part of
the human spectrum: “How cool would
schizophrenic pride weekend be?”
There’s an odd moment at the end of his performance when
someone in the audience shouts out to him that he looks like a clown, a French
clown. Very quickly it becomes apparent that this person is part of the act. It
turns into an odd mime bit, which is a strange way to end the show, as it’s the
least funny bit of the performance. (The other guy, by the way, is Brent
Weinbach.)
Live In Oakland
was recorded at The New Parish, in Oakland, California. The two-disc set
includes the performance on both CD and DVD.
The DVD is just over an hour. The CD is a bit shorter, at approximately
fifty-one minutes. What is missing from the CD is that last bit, which makes
sense, as it’s a visual joke.
Live In Oakland was released on July 16, 2013 on New Wave Dynamics.
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