Damon Wayans delivered a brilliantly funny one-hour stand-up comedy show Saturday at Spotlight 29 Casino, touching on contemporary issues such as the Bill Cosby controversy, and conjuring classic characters from his films and his family’s ‘90s sketch comedy TV series, “In Living Color.”
But his audience also reinforced why he plans to retire after two dates in mid-December in Tempe, Arizona.
Wayans, 55, acknowledged making some insensitive remarks about the women who accused Cosby of rape in an interview earlier this year, but claimed “people are just hyper-sensitive” to the kind of jokes that generated big laughs for him in the 1990s. He said Cosby was a big influence on his comedy and it’s hard to let that go until Cosby has had his day in court.
He reminded the audience that Quaaludes were the drug of choice for many people in the 1970s and he personally didn’t want to cast a stone that could ricochet in his direction.
“If they can get him, they can get me,” Wayans said. “I did some freaky (bleep) back in the day. It’s got me calling up women: ‘Are we cool?’”
Then he talked about the injustices to Mike Tyson that are largely forgotten today and the injustices to Michael Jackson that are overwhelmed by allegations that he was a pedophile.
“Then there’s O.J. Simpson,” he said, pausing for effect. “OK, maybe not O.J. Simpson.”
Things went smoothly for the next 20 minutes. He trotted out some politically incorrect humor from his 1995 film, “Major Payne,” to check the pulse of the audience — it went over OK.
Then a woman started heckling him. After trying to ignore her, he asked a man she was with what she was upset about. Her companion said it was his comments about Michael Jackson.
“Is she Mrs. Jackson,” Wayans replied.
“No.”
“Then tell her to shut the (bleep) up. That joke was 20 minutes ago.”
But the woman didn’t quiet down. And less than an hour into the show, he asked the casino management for help because he said it wasn’t fair to audience to make him break character to address things being said in the audience. Security removed the woman and her companion.
Wayans couldn’t resume his very funny bit as the drunken homeless person, Anton Jackson, so he asked the audience what character they wanted him to do. Appropriately, he fulfilled a request to play Homey D. Clown.
After he uttered the classic line, “Homey don’t play that,” he ended his show early. As someone retiring from stand-up comedy, he doesn’t have to play that game any more.
Source: The Desert Sun
