Comedy, On the Rocks

Comedian/actress Sasheer Zamata has a sketch in which she’s walking down a New York City street when a male stranger comes up to her, asks to walk her home (she says no and keeps walking). He then pulls out his junk and says “Hey Miss, this is for you!” Hilarity ensues as Zamata tries to see the interaction from the exposed man’s perspective, and even praises his polite directness.

“It was like a date with a lot of stuff missing out the middle,” says Zamata. “It was short and sweet. Everyone was honest with their feelings. It was probably the best date I’ve ever had actually.”

As hysterical as it is, the sketch addresses the more serious issue of society not openly talking about and taking proper action against sexual harassment. It’s something Zamata discussed over the phone last week while answering questions about her upcoming Sacramento stand-up show, her dream-come-true career as a Saturday Night Live cast member and coming up with new material.

“Everyone probably has some sort of uncomfortable sexual, weird moment with a guy, which sucks,” she says. “It’s shitty to think it’s just inevitable that something terrible like that will come across your path in life. I do like talking about that on and off stage so people know they’re not the only one and it’s not your fault, that it’s more common than we think.”

Zamata says she admired the Columbia University student who carried her mattress around campus after she was assaulted, forcing people to have that conversation.

“Even in my neighborhood now—I live in Brooklyn, and it’s a safe part of Brooklyn—I have gotten followed walking home and my guy friends are like, ‘No, how is that possible?’ but it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s possible,” she adds. “So if the conversation includes men more, maybe they can check each other on that like, ‘Hey man, maybe don’t be an asshole to this girl or don’t push her too hard at the party.’”

Zamata says she talks about what’s going on in the news with friends and coworkers when figuring out the best execution for serious topics.

“Some things are better as a sketch or a joke or a short film and I just write everything down and think about what I want to say, and sometimes I just get on stage and talk about it,” she says. “Lately, because a lot of the news has been intense, it’s more talk and not necessarily jokes, but I work out how I feel about the situation and people in the audience are with me, they get it.”

It’s not easy to address racial issues or tragedies, or conversations society has been avoiding, but Zamata says she sees it as a comedian’s job to shine a light on these things in society, reflect on them and be a mirror.

“That’s what I try to do and it’s been getting a good response,” she says.

If you’re getting worried Zamata’s shows on July 11, 2015, at the Comedy Spot are going to be Debbie Downers, they won’t. The improv extraordinaire has been working on new material that most fans have not yet seen, unless they’ve caught her in late-night action around NYC.

The shows are part of her first major cross-country tour, Whiskey on the Rocks. And yes, that is her drink of choice for those of you who’ll be attending or catching up with Zamata at a bar after the show.

The 29-year-old has had a whirlwind year-and-a-half after joining the cast of SNL, and has won over viewers with her on-point impressions of Michelle Obama, Rihanna and other prominent black women in society, who, for the last eight years, were mostly being played by SNL male cast members, if played at all.

“We have a lot of black people on the show who want to shake things up and want to talk about things that may be uncomfortable, but we want to talk about it so we try to put it into the most digestible package,” Zamata says. “It’s hard because we aren’t like this new punk show just starting out; we are a show with a long tradition and have to appeal to our longtime fans.”

Zamata is free to perform as she pleases in her own live shows, but has realized that since starting her new job, audience members sometimes expect to “see SNL” at her performances.

“Older people would be like, I was a fan since the 1970s and I was really hoping you would do Michelle Obama,” she laughs.

Her love of performing started at a young age, and not in improv but in show choir (she notes that ever since the SNL team found out she could sing, she has had regular singing sketches on the show). It wasn’t until middle school that a volleyball coach with a love for ComedySportz introduced Zamata to competitive short-form improv by taking the team to a show at the end of a season.

“The first time I went I thought, what is this magical thing, and I was so enamored,” Zamata says. She forced her parents to take her to more of the shows and in high school, she joined an improv team for a week before realizing it conflicted with her show choir schedule.

“So I’d just watch Whose Line Is It Anyway all the time and was still an improv fan,” she says.

After graduating from University of Virginia with a drama degree, Zamata moved to New York and joined the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), whose ranks include hundreds of famous comedians and improv artists like Amy Poehler, Matt Besser and Ian Roberts.

“I started doing improv because I liked improv,” Zamata says about her switch from choir and musical theater. “It was the same with sketch and stand-up. I barreled into it and figured I’d stop when it stopped being fun but it has never stopped being fun.”

When Zamata joined UCB in 2009, she was the only black female. Since then, several more have joined the group and even more women are in leading roles in comedy than Zamata ever remembers.

“I think it’s all about representation; seeing someone on stage or on screen who looks like you is a huge help,” she says. “Donald Glover was performing here [at UCB] and even though I’m not a guy, he was someone I could relate to and that was a huge help for me. It helps to have a relation to someone that you’re watching. If all you see is one kind of person, it may seem hard to get into it.”

Zamata says she noticed during UCB’s annual Del Close Marathon—a three-day improv event in NYC—that improv students of color were taking pictures of her and saying they couldn’t wait to show their friends and families that people who look like them are doing this work too.

“I feel proud that I was able to be at UCB for so long and now there are more people who look like me there,” she says, but adds that comedy, and especially improv with its expensive classes, can still be hard to reach for many young people because of socioeconomic issues or because they don’t have the exposure in their schools or towns.

“But I think it is changing and the more exposure UCB and the form has to people the more diverse it’ll become,” she says. “This is a good time for women in comedy and I feel excited to be in the mix of it.”

To get Sasheer Zamata that whiskey at Comedy Spot on July 11, go to Saccomedyspot.com/sasheer-zamata for tickets. She has two shows: 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. and tickets are only $20.

The Lazarus Effect

Rated PG-13 {2 out of 5 stars}

The Lazarus Effect follows mad scientist couple Zoe McConnell (Olivia Wilde) and Frank Walton (Mark Duplass) as they try to find the secret to reincarnation at fictional university St. Paternus in Berkley, Calif. With the help of their science team, Clay (American Horror Story’s Evan Peters) and Niko (writer, comedian and rapper Donald Glover), and their documentarian, Eva (Sarah Bolger), Zoe and Frank perform and record their experiments on animals. They move from experimenting on pigs to dogs, sort of like Pet Sematary. Of course Zoe and Frank prove successful in their experiment and all hell breaks loose, because everyone knows that you cannot bring any living thing back from the dead without repercussions.

All seems innocent enough with the zombie animals, but soon the experiment becomes a true matter of life and death for the whole team as they are forced to make the difficult decision to perform their mad scientist stuff on one of their own members. Matters of faith and scientific morality are thrown out the window and Frank, Zoe, Niko, Clay and Eva must ask the question, “Who are we really helping?”

In true horror movie fashion, there are flashes of Hell, demonic faces, burning dolls and creepy little children; but the question I continued to ask myself was, “What does it all mean?” Now, I am the horror movie buff. I have seen everything from Killer Mermaids (it really exists, by the way, and you can watch it on Netflix…you’re welcome) to The Shining, a horror movie classic. Clearly, I give all horror films a chance and the writers of this movie definitely had an idea, but I just don’t believe that it was executed properly. The film seemed to be all over the place, trying very hard to be deep and meaningful and not living up to the hype. We are shown that Olivia Wilde’s character, Zoe, has a sinister past and that somehow syncs up with the experiment and her Catholic faith (which is mentioned repeatedly), but I never quite figured out the connection. For me, the film just became flashes of darkness and black pupils in a science lab accompanied by screaming and peculiar deaths.

The Lazarus Effect was exceptionally short (only an hour and 23 minutes to be exact) and the ending left the possibility open for a sequel or perhaps even a trilogy (Blumhouse Productions is known for their horror trilogies). This had me thinking that maybe that’s why there were so many plot holes, because they will be filled in later on down the line in subsequent movies. But all the holes left me confused and a little bored. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t see the sequel if there ever is one. Obviously I would because you know, Killer Mermaids…but I probably wouldn’t pay to see it in the theaters. I’ll just wait for Netflix and watch it in the confines of my bed with sweatpants, hair tied, chillin’ with no makeup on…and of course popcorn because all movie watching should be accompanied with popcorn.

Though, it was nice to see one of my favorite comedians and rappers, Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) in a film, and I will continue to pay for anything he blesses his pretty little face with. My advice to those who were rooting for this movie is to wait for it to come to Netflix or Redbox and don’t waste the $11.25. The movie just never really got to the point and there were no particularly startling parts. So, I give the writers a hand for trying but you win some and you lose some. Instead, I suggest watching the obvious inspiration for this film, Pet Sematary, and see how a true horror classic is done.

Childish Gambino, Danny Brown

Ace of Spades, Sacramento – Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Childish Gambino’s Camp Gambino Tour sold out Ace of Spades months in advance. The line to get in stretched the length of the R Street block and wrapped down 14th, halfway to S Street. Inside it was a patient wait through one opener to see a young Hollywood actor from NBC’s Community, Donald Glover, take the stage as a rapper.

There’s no use hiding it. The opener was Detroit’s Danny Brown. A recent signee to Fool’s Gold Records and the artist I anointed as Rapper of the Year 2011 in another publication. As for Childish Gambino’s debut record Camp… I gave it a few listens in November and deemed it overrated. Glover’s Camp record is not as painful as Brian Austin Green’s One Stop Carnival album in the ‘90s, but if he’s serious about rapping over acting he’ll live in the shadow of Drake. But what the hell do I know? Danny Brown had a few pockets of fans in the first row shouting his gratuitous lines from his XXX album back at him. Childish Gambino had wall-to-wall admirers reciting every word to a song that shares its title with a TV show, canceled after 12 episodes.

It was his show for the taking and it’s easy to revel in the limelight with such positivity electrifying Ace of Spades. No songs faltered or lulled the set. It was hit, hit, hit for Gambino and even the time lapse for an encore seemed insignificant. He was impressive, but I did not leave converted.

My struggle with Glover/Gambino does not stem from questioning his talent as a performer or even as a songwriter. He’s a clever rhyme writer, interspersing wit culled from his stand-up like, “I sound weird, like nigga with a hard R” and references to Invader Zim. His balance between nerding out and sneaking in sentiment testifies to his mass appeal. He tours with a talented backing band, half of which look as though they toured with Travis McCoy, while the others possibly play violin behind Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. His stage presence is not the issue, and the giant screen displaying lyrics, forest landscapes and scenes from the streets of New York City were not the issue. It lies in not knowing how to perceive his craft.

The name Childish Gambino was conceived through the use of a Wu-Tang name generator, making it difficult to assess it as genuine or satire. The campy name paired with Glover’s notoriety as a stand-up comedian, his far superior talent in my opinion, and presence on a sit-com, lean towards the notion he’s a parody. So why weren’t we all laughing? Why was everyone singing along in earnest?

There were opportunities to laugh–plenty of them. Danny Brown exposed himself as an avid participant in cunnilingus by performing “I Will” and wagging his oblong tongue between his missing front teeth. He earned a few laughs beyond the front row by letting his followers deliver punch lines from “Monopoly” like, “Stank pussy smelling like Cool Ranch Doritos.” Childish Gambino is not short on humor either. He and Brown are contemporaries in rap humor as both love bragging about their sexual virility and their haters’ lack thereof. Guess which line is Danny Brown’s and which Childish Gambino’s is:

“I fuck bad bitches to Stacy Lattisaw, while y’all niggas got blue balls like an Avatar.”

“My dick is like an accent mark, it’s all about the over Es.”

The first quote is Brown on “Adderall Admiral.” The second is Gambino on “Bonfire.” Did you get it correct? I could split fine hairs like this for paragraphs and end up with an even part resembling the top of Crispin Glover’s head, but what’s the use? Danny Brown doesn’t have a television presence, which is still more powerful and influential than being critically lauded on the Internet.

Glover’s an act worth the price of admission. Place him in the recent crest of celebrities like Zooey Deschanel and Scarlett Johansson, who’ve earned successful recording careers. The trend could be gruesome and transparent, were the named figures less talented. It’s undeniable that their recording triumphs are assisted by their TV and film notoriety. Glover is privileged, but his closing statement on “Bonfire” (“Man why does every black actor gotta rap some?/ I don’t know, all I know is I’m the best one.”) hints that he’s aware. It could be worse. The actor/artists could cover Celine Dion instead of Tom Waits, perform alongside Sugar Ray instead of M. Ward, and bring Mac Miller on tour instead of Danny Brown. They should always be commended for their fine taste.