The woke Jewish comedy album you’ve been waiting for is here.

Nato Green is a comedian from San Francisco, and The Whiteness Album is his second release. His first album, from 2012, deals with a a lot of similar, political material, but if you can still remember that far back, you’ll know it was a very, very different time.

And what sort of politics is that? Well, The Whiteness Album tackles gentrification, white supremacy, class revolutions, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, homelessness, immigration, Donald Trump, climate change, Nazi punching, and splitting chores with one’s spouse. If this sounds like a lot to tackle in less than an hour, you hardly notice when listening to the album. Green is non-threatening, even soothing at times. His talent is operating within the world of “punch-up” comedy, attacking those in power with teeth, but never letting vitriol get in the way of a good punchline. What could be preachy is instead a smart, but not alienating outlet for frustration with the world today.

And what’s really notable about Green’s comedy is his relationship to his Jewishness. Many Jewish comedians today only invoke their identity as self-deprecation, and punchlines about anti-Semitism are usually in the past tense. Green is here to remind us that Jews are still a marginalized group, but manages to do so with nuance.

For example, Green settles the matter once and for all: Are Jews white? He gives arguments for and against, and ultimately sums up: “Too white for the police, not white enough for the Klan.”

Jewishness comes up organically throughout Green’s comedy, because it’s part of his way of interacting in the world that’s both familiar and refreshing to hear articulated. He even laments that the left claims to advocate for oppressed groups, but that Jews are often an afterthought at best.

“They sort of work their way down the list,” says Green. “They sort of get to the bottom and say, ‘Stand up for the oppression of people with nut allergies! And people who are bad at parallel parking! And Jews, I guess.'”

Is this an album to play for a conservative relative to convince them that Black Lives Matter isn’t a racist concept? Perhaps not, but it’s likely a great album to play when you get home from a protest outside Trump Tower.

So if you want a comedy album that mentions Andrea Dworkin, the candombe dances of Uruguay, and polyamory without seeming completely pretentious, The Whiteness Album is for you. And yes, it’s on Spotify. Check it out.

Photo courtesy Nato Green

The post ‘The Whiteness Album’ Is Funny, Smart, and Very Political appeared first on Jewcy.

Amy Schumer has announced that her next standup special will premiere on Netflix on March 7 (this reporter’s birthday, if you must know). This news is easy to miss, since it comes on the heels of a zillion other things she’s done lately.

Yes, Amy Schumer is many things, but idle is not one of them. Schumer had a roller coaster of 2016 (didn’t we all, Amy). She had a world tour. She faced controversy. She continued her TV show. It can be hard to keep track of what she’s even up to these days. So, we took some highlights of her 2016 (Seriously, we can’t possibly cover everything), and upcoming few months, so that we can easily see what’s been good for the actor, and what were her missteps.

Here we go:

Bad: In January, allegations of plagiarism surface against Schumer.

Good: In March, Schumer leaves a $1000 tip for her bartender when she sees Hamilton on Broadway.

Good: Schumer got to see Hamilton on Broadway.

Bad: In August, Schumer remains silent for an uncomfortably long time when one of her show’s writers makes some really offensive jokes on Twitter.

Good: The same month, Schumer’s memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo comes out.

Bad: In October Schumer makes a Lemonade parody video, which many find offensive in its approach to the album’s social justice themes.  Her Medium post in response is a non-apology, which does not help matters.

Good: In November, Schumer celebrates one year with her boyfriend, Ben Hanisch. Is it gross to call him “dreamy?”

Good: In December, Schumer buys back the farm her family once owned and then lost when her family took a hit financially when she was a child.

(Probably) Good: Schumer is going to attend the Women’s March protesting the presidential inauguration next week.

(Maybe) Good: Schumer’s Netflix special, filmed in November 2016, debuts in March.

YOU DECIDE: Schumer’s film Snatched, co-starring Goldie Hawn, comes out in May.

We leave you with the trailer for Snatched, so that you may draw your own conclusions about the film you have not yet seen:

The post A Year in the Life of Amy Schumer appeared first on Jewcy.

I can’t believe it’s already been five months since I took on Jewcy.  More than that, I can’t believe I’ve only written about Stephen Sondheim twice.

But it’s about time we celebrate Jewcy‘s nerdy return in person: We’re having a party.

Tu B’Av is upon us, from the evening of August 18th to August 19th. If it doesn’t ring a bell, it’s the Jewish romance holiday, when single women would wear white and go out into the vineyards of Jerusalem to dance and attract a spouse.

That’s not what we’re doing. But if you’re in the Brooklyn area, come join us Thursday, August 18th, from 8-10 p.m. as we explore what it is to be Jewish and in love. A group of talented storytellers and comedians will share their tales of love lost, found, and everything in between.

(Get it? Short performances in bites? Love bites? Also, sometimes love is awful? Also a “love bite” is slang for a hickey? Thanks, we’re real proud of that one over here.)

Feel free to wear white as is holiday custom. Or wear black. You do you.

This event is for everyone, regardless of relationship status, not another awful Jewish singles’ event (but if you do find someone, Jewcy is totally taking credit).

Admission is FREE, with a 2-drink minimum.

The venue is Halyards bar, 406 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11215.

If you have any questions at all, please email Gabriela@Jewcy.com.

You can find the event on Facebook HERE.

Image credit: Wikimedia

The post Jewcy Relaunch Event: Loves Bites! appeared first on Jewcy.

Joan Rivers died yesterday at the age of 81, and the outpouring of internet-grief was at once sincere, grandiose, cheeky, mean, and a little ironic—just as the great comedienne would have wanted it, I suspect. I’m not going to opine here about her talent and legacy, because y’all know about that already. Instead, I’m going to leave you with two terrific clips from the beginning and end of her career. Bookends, if you will. (Bonus: they both contain allusions to necrophilia!)

The first is from a 1967 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, in which she laments dating double standards vis-à-vis men and women. It’s hyperbolic, of course, but it’s hilarious and truthful, and just as timely today as it was 47 years ago.

“A girl, you’re 30-years-old, you’re not married, you’re an old maid. A man, he’s 90-years-old, he’s not married, he’s a catch… It kills me! ‘We have an extra man.’ ‘Bring him along, being him along.’ ‘He’s 98.’ ‘Bring him, bring him.’ ‘He’s dead.’ ‘Bring him! We’ll prop him, just bring him. We’ll say he’s quiet.'”

The second is from her 2011 cameo in season two of Louis C.K.’s exquisite TV series, in which she plays… herself, naturally. To set the scene: Louis has just finished a crappy, humiliating gig in Atlantic City, and he’s feeling a little sorry for himself. (Hard knock life of a stand-up comic, etc.) Enter Joan: Survivor! Tigress! Dispenser of Wisdom! Lifelong Servant to the Goddess of Comedy! In a short heartfelt speech, she schools the nebbish Louis about why they keeping doing what they do—to audiences tiny and illustrious.

“Listen, I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn’t get better. You get better… I’ve gone up, I’ve gone down, I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke. But you do it, and you do it because… because we love it more than anything else. That’s why you’re doing it. You want a real job honey, there are a million things you can do. But what we do is not a job. It sounds so stupid. What we do is a calling, my dear. We make people happy.”

If you want to see an example of perfectly executed comic timing, stick around for the look she gives Louis at 1:23. Genius.

http://youtu.be/BnAIX7fWsdU

(Image: YouTube)

The post These Two Clips Show Joan Rivers’ Timeless Comic Genius appeared first on Jewcy.

On Tuesday night, Joan Rivers, clad in a silver sequined jacket, took the stage at New York City’s West Bank Cafe. Shining like a disco ball, she warned us she was a little drunk. She had just performed for a group of Jews, and “Uchhh,” she whined. The crowd cheered in the name of inebriation, or something.

Rivers is a legend. If the warm reception of the audience, visibly elated to be in her presence, is any indication, her “Queen of Comedy” crown is still intact. Her facial expressions—scrunched up, eyes rolled, tongue out—were a hit. Her jokes, laced with racism, classism, and ageism, invoked that uncomfortable, nervous laughter—and even some outright roars. Among today’s crop of clever comedians, a “Mexicans are so ugly…” joke would likely be considered lazy and stupid. But Rivers had the woman sitting in front of me laughing through seriously pursed lips.

As her set went on, we got the Rivers List: She hates the old, the young, the homeless, the blind, the Rihanna, and Princess Diana. But it’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t mean what she says—the show’s proceeds were all going to charity. A salad of pointed insults and self–deprecation has always been her act. It’s just Rivers, working her signature style—one that is loved, and tolerated, because she’s been doing it so well for so long with no signs of stopping.

“I think we’ve all laughed at things we didn’t think we’d laugh at,” she told the crowd.

She’s right. She may be off-color and her jokes uncomfortable, but while whispers of, “Oh, she’s so bad” could be heard throughout the room during her set, the crowd is always on her side.

Previous: Happy 79th Birthday, Joan Rivers
Five highlights from the New York Times interview with Joan Rivers

(Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for New York Women In Communications)

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If Krusty the Klown had grown up in in Kent, England and studied Classics at Oxford, he might have become Andy Zaltzman. A politically conscious Jewish comedian whose most distinctive features are his wild fringe of orange hair and an obsession with puns, Zaltzman is one half of The Bugle, a comedy podcast that he created with fellow Brit John Oliver in 2007. Bearing the tagline “Audio Newspaper for a Visual World,” The Bugle is not only hilarious, it’s also a perfect antidote to the dull pablum of corporate television news. With weekly episodes running as long as 45 minutes, The Bugle is lively, weird, and fantastically droll. Often it feels like a more freewheeling, smarter version of The Daily Show, for which John Oliver is a writer and a featured correspondent.

Oliver’s profile in the United States has surged over the last couple years; besides his Daily Show work, he’s hosted standup specials for Comedy Central and appeared regularly on Community and in The Smurfs movie. Oliver’s busy schedule—and his home being in New York—makes it all the more impressive that he has stuck with Zaltzman, who continues to grind out a living doing standup, earning occasional TV credits, and writing a blog for ESPNcricinfo, a cricket website owned by ESPN.

But besides showing loyalty to an old friend, perhaps Oliver simply understands that Zaltzman is a brilliant comedian, one who distinguishes himself by his ability to mix low-brow, groaning humor with scabrous political satire. It also doesn’t hurt that despite the transatlantic divide between the hosts, the show remains incredibly popular, with listeners in 145-odd countries and, in 2011, an average of two million downloads per month.

Although The Bugle takes on world news—Oliver and Zaltzman take particular delight in going after the bloated pageantry of dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un—it’s often at its best when skewering Anglo-American pieties. During the Olympics, Zaltzman filed near daily “micro-Bugles,” which formed a kind of alternative history to the host country’s displays of Queen-and-country empire-lite pride (“A grand effort all round by London. Just 346 years after it burned to the ground, this city has truly bounced back”)

But the pair are as well versed in American politics as those of their native England, and their episode on the LIBOR banking scandal is essential listening for its explanatory value alone. Zaltzman published a book of satire early in the 2008 financial crisis, called Does Anything Eat Bankers? which fielded financial questions from dogs and used a parable of Jesus feeding the hungry with fish fingers to explain the concept of credit. The comedian’s politics are of the left but he’s contemptuous towards any sort of party politics. He’s said that officials have been engaged in “elongated game of economic pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey” and called the US presidential election a “multi-billion-dollar squawking contest.”

But Zaltzman is a far more entertaining figure on radio (he also appears on the BBC Radio show “Tonight With Rory Bremmer”), where he’s better served by his relentless streams of cheap puns (five solid minutes is his record) and his swift back-and-forth with Oliver. The two bring out the best in one another—when together, Oliver moderates his Daily Show persona’s short temper, which has always mistaken loudness for cleverness; and Zaltzman can lean on a partner who gets his policy references and shares his gleefully self-hating attitude towards all things British.

The Bugle recently marked its two hundredth episode—“one of the greatest moments in the history of human civilization,” Zaltzman called it—and it seems unlikely to slow down. The show has survived being dropped by its former sponsor, the Times of London, and may start a membership program to recoup costs. For now it remains a highlight in what is an increasingly crowded world of comedy podcasts, radio sketch shows, and interview programs like Marc Maron’s WTF. A whole constellation of audio comedy has emerged in recent years, drawing as much on the tradition of old stage shows as on the latest sitcoms. Few of them, however, can make jokes about tax policy funny; Andy Zaltzman somehow manages.

(Art by Margarita Korol)

The post Culture Kvetch: Andy Zaltzman, Radio Comic for an Internet World appeared first on Jewcy.