NYCF: Sarah Silverman
New York's Hammerstein Ballroom was packed to the gills for Sarah
Silverman's New York Comedy Festival show on Saturday night. Host Marc Cohen,
who plays Sarah's father on The Sarah Silverman Program, had his work cut out
for him warming the audience up. Many fans arrived late and Cohen spent much of
his time onstage asking girls where they had come in from. More than one
answered, "Outside."
Cohen has an old-timey Friars' Club-esque style, which
opener Brian Posehn remarked upon: "Some of Marc Cohen's jokes are celebrating
their bicentennial. Get it? They're really fucking old." After Cohen's set, he
introduced Steve Agee, who showed a Thanksgiving-themed video, followed by
Posehn, who joked about his love of metal music and the lack of sex scenes he's
asked to do.
there to see and after half an hour of openers, Sarah Silverman emerged to greet
a very excited crowd. Silverman performed a totally new set interspersed with
familiar musical numbers, many of which appeared in her film, Jesus is Magic.
These included the Porn Song (chorus: "Do you ever take drugs so that you can
have sex without crying?") and a song dedicated to her grandmother, in which she
tells her "You're gonna die soon. You're gonna die soon. It's not cold in here.
You're just dying." Sarah played guitar and besides being hilarious, girl can
sing.
offensive. And she certainly crossed boundaries at the show (a song about how
she wishes she could rape, jokes about Mexicans smelling bad, and a step-by-step
guide to making the word "pussy" sound as dirty as possible), but she also has
created a persona for herself which makes her jokes work: The pretty girl who's
too naive to know she's doing anything wrong and too adorable to be held
accountable for her actions. And she's done just as good a job of riding that to
success as Sarah Palin. Her writing was extremely tight and her timing
impeccable.
-Sachi Ezura
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