AMMAN COMEDY FESTIVAL: SLOWLY BUT SURELY

Last night I attended the final show of this years Amman Stand-Up Comedy Festival. In a city where typical weekend entertainment is family trips to the mall, a comedy festival with big name headliners like Omid Djalili, Gabriel Iglesias, Dean Obeidallah, and Dean Edwards is reason to celebrate. Generally speaking, the show was very funny. If there was any doubt about whether Arabs can laugh at themselves, it was put to rest last night. At least two of the comics noted the abundance of bald but otherwise overly hairy men in the audience, and one suggested Arabs do an eyebrow comb over. The one aspect of the show I was disappointed by was that many of the comics seemed to trip over the same Middle Eastern stereotypes in an attempt at easy laughs from the audience. No one really took the opportunity to dig deeper into the culture with any kind of raw comedic insight. Being an insider to a culture gives you a certain privilege to push boundaries, and I feel like those boundaries were only slightly nudged last night. Having said that, this is Jordan, and I'm sure the comics were holding back in their acts (I'm just not convinced it was necessary). On a final note, somebody please tell comic Sherry Davis that catch phrases and actions (she jiggles her body after jokes) are not funny. I thought after Ricky Gervais mocked catch phrases with such vehemence on Extras that no one would have the balls to keep using that cheap little trick.