Now that the election is over, California will soon have a brand-new governor, the same old senator, and people will still have to get their recreational marijuana as they always did...with phony prescriptions. In other words, there will be plenty to laugh about, when the Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour (MMCT) returns to the Punch Line Comedy Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 30, and Rooster T Feathers Comedy Club in Sunnyvale on December 29.
"It's not surprising that so many people who love weed forgot to show up at the polls to vote for Proposition 19," said comedienne Dhaya Lakshminarayanan. "I think they are still planning to vote."
Straight from sold-out performances in Hollywood and Atlanta, MMCT features the Bay Area's own Samson Koletkar, the world's only Indian Jewish comedian; Joe Nguyen, the world's only Vietnamese Jewish comedian; and Dhaya Lakshminarayanan, who is perhaps not just the world's funniest Indian Hindu woman, but the smartest. Their names may be hard to pronounce, but their razor-sharp observations about everything from politics to pop culture are universally understood.
"We touch on a lot of sensitive issues-race, immigration, religion-but our goal is not to offend people; it's to make them think," said Koletkar, the show's creator. "We have fun, without resorting to profanity or vulgarity. We'll leave that to Jerry Brown."
Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Koletkar brings an immigrant's perspective to life in America. With a Masters degree in Computer Software, he moved to San Francisco to work as an IT consultant, before making the switch to comedy. Winner of the 2010 Asian American Theater Company's Tight Ten Comedy Competition, Koletkar has entertained audiences in India, Canada and throughout the U.S. with his thought-provoking satire and witty observations. He produces and hosts Comedy off Broadway Oakland, a popular weekly show in Oakland, California, and has also toured with Pundits with Punchlines, Make Chai Not War, and Slumdog Comedy Tour.
Unlike Koletkar, his comedy colleagues were born in the United States. But having been raised by South Asian parents in the Bible belt, and now living as former Southerners in San Francisco, they might as well be immigrants.
"I didn't really have any Vietnamese friends in Atlanta, and Jews were confused about me, because Nguyen isn't a Jewish name," Nguyen said. "Occasionally I would get made fun of for being Asian and/or Jewish, but it was school, where everyone finds something about other people to make fun of, so it wasn't too bad."
Lakshminarayanan, meanwhile, is a mathematics genius and double-MIT grad; a self-described nerd who takes an intellectual approach to comedy. The former host of the acclaimed "High School Quiz Show" on WGBH in Boston, she has toured nationally as one of "Five Funny Females." She is glad to be back on home turf, in liberal and open-minded San Francisco."
"I love taking shots at Republicans, but in San Francisco that's too easy," she laughed. "Instead, I make fun of people with no sense of humor- liberals."
Koletkar agrees that Bay Area audiences are among his favorite, when it comes to sharing his uniquely cerebral insights from a Jewish-Indian-immigrant-computer geek's point of view.
"But let's keep things in perspective," he says. "The Bay Area has its own share of presumptuous people. For example, whenever I ask audiences if they know who the first Jew was, invariably someone in the Bay Area yells out, ‘Jesus.' In other cities, people have said ‘Abraham,' which is correct. But in ultra-liberal San Francisco, they prefer Jesus. Imagine that."
The Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour will take place on November 30 at 8:00 p.m., at Punch Line
Comedy Club, 444 Battery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111. Admission is $15. For ticket information, visit www.tour.Mahatma-Moses.com or call 415-397-7573.
On December 29, the Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour will take place at Rooster T Feathers
Comedy Club, 157 W. El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087. Showtime 8:00 p.m. Admission $15. For ticket information, call 408-736-0921.
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