First things first: there are just a few days left to save $10 on Bridgetown’s pre-sale passes. Four days, 150+ comics, just $50 bucks if you buy before Friday.
Now, meet Hari Kondabolu, a festival veteran. Kondabolu played last year’s Bridgetown and stunned the audience at Mt. Tabor. His style mixes serious politics, racial identity and just flat out weird, funny shit. And while I love a comic with something serious to share, some can be too forceful (hellooo David Cross). Kondabolu, however, stays clear of being overly preachy. As his website bio explains:
According to the Seattle Times, Hari Kondabolu is “a young man reaching for the hand-scalding torch of confrontational comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.” Like his comedic heroes, he wants to speak truth to power with confrontational and personal material. Unlike them, he does not want to die of a morphine overdose or set himself on fire.
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I love Hari! In addition to being a comedian, he has a masters in human rights from the London School of Economics. What?
Also, he’s a great guy. You should buy him a cookie when he comes to town.
Vegan soul food tends to be made and propagated by African Hebrew Israelites, who–say whatever you will about their tenets–tend to have strong roots in African-American culture and are (gasp) both African-American and vegan. Hard to believe, I know, since vegans are such an easy strawman and we wouldn’t want to complicate things with facts that mess up potshot stand-up. Easier to pretend it’s all a cruel trick pushed by white kids from Williamsburg.
Ridiculing vegans. Yeah, that’s some avant-garde shit right there.
S. Mirk is right. Hari is damn solid. And he helps to prove my hypothesis that, in comedy, East Indian is the new Jewish.
(Expect to see the subcontinent spawn a Mel Brooks analogue before too long, followed by years of successful Bollywood-to-Hollywood migrations, only to see all that good will dashed to bits following an oversaturation of web shorts designed in the style of HBO circa 1987 and starring whatever happens when Richard Lewis fucks a plate of curry.
I’m particularly looking forward to the Hindi Space Balls analogue — mostly because their “History of the World Pt 1” actually covers the entire history of the world.)