Standup Comedy at Newmark Theater

I've not been to that many live stand up comedy shows, so there's lots of basic stuff for me to observe at these events, plus I was performing liaison duty with AFSC, having been nudged to attend by Kelly on Facebook. Good meeting up with Marco.

Comedians, as they're called, feel out a crowd looking for limits, compare cities, sometimes out loud.

Portland has a reputation for anything goes, like Beirut, so the talent was eager to test our waters, yakking about Made in Oregon products, civil liberties and so on.

The crowd lapped it up.

We had lots of Iranian Americans in the audience, some of whom likely found some of this stuff somewhat shocking, what adult comedy tends to be a lot.

I should attend these gigs more often.

I'd enjoyed two of these comics before, via Glenn's PBS documentary.

Ahmed Ahmed seemed especially at ease this evening, comfortable doing playfully interactive improv with theater goers amidst plenty of tested material.

Probably those Russians in Dubai thought he was funny too, kind of an Evil Bert in some ways, a good match for Bad Barby.

So what's up with these psychology dolphins?

I tell ya, I get the weirdest emails.