The other time I went to Sacramento was something I will remember all my life, as will the others who were with me. It was the Russell Peters show. Russell is quite an icon among today’s youth, especially Indian youth and it was no exception with me and the others. To get an opportunity to see him live in action would be a dream come true. He is quite easily the most popular stand-up comedian today. It helps that his main target audience are Indians and Chinese and so being popular among Indians and Chinese is like being popular among more than half the world.
You need to be broad minded to take his jokes in the right sense. Some people consider him racist, but the other way of looking at it is he is talks about what people brand “racism” as such a normal thing in life that it doesn’t become taboo anymore. Agreed…he does go overboard sometimes, but his general philosophies are so outrageously simple that you sometimes wonder if everyone in the world was like him, there would be no practices like racism. I have totally loved most of his jokes and his points of view and tolerated the very few I found offensive but I would like to assert that I hated the stuff he was babbling about physically-challenged people in his latest show “Red brown and white”. He went totally overboard there. Anyway… I wanted to make that point somehow, hence the deviation.
We were all really excited that he was coming to Sacramento for a show and got tickets at once. We all felt it would be a great experience if we could meet him and MS took the initiative of mailing Russell’s manager on the website that we were a bunch of loyal Russell fans, who had come all the way from India to get an opportunity to meet him and if it were possible to say a hi to him before the show. He got an instant reply, asking him for our details and asking us to come half an hour in advance to meet Russell. We were really surprised at how easy that was.
So we were really excited when it was D-day. It was almost all of the Blue flamez this time. Almost. Except AZ, who couldn’t make it (because he had to save to buy shoes? :D). [This gives me the opportunity to make an important point. All the 9 of us “Blue flamez” have never been at the same place at the same time. Ever. Due to one reason or the other, someone does not make it. Guys… pity we couldn’t do anything about it in India too, so it’s going to remain this way for quite some time I guess].
So it was JB, JD, MS, Varun, Dwarak, Mahesh, Sahithi and I who made it there finally. We arrived well on time and entered the place. It was actually a comedy club. And a very historic one where famous comedians like Chris Rock had made their first few shows. It was more of a restaurant-club place, where there were tables all around what looked to be a small stage. It wouldn’t accommodate more than 200 people at a time. The smaller the audience, the greater the probability of each one of us to be royally raped by Russell’s jokes on us. So we were even more excited.
Then Russell walked in coolly, dressed in casuals, his walk evident of his self-confidence. He went backstage and soon we were called by a few volunteers backstage. That was the moment we were waiting for. We walked into the room where he was perched on a table and on seeing the 8 of us enter the room, he smiled sarcastically and said “Wow… I see a bunch of malnutritioned people. You must be from…. India”. Hmm… I looked around and noticed MS especially and Varun didn’t exactly look malnutritioned but didn’t make the point. We talked with him for a minute or two and told him we are huge fans and have watched most of his shows. He was as friendly as a person who had known us all our lives. He then signed autographs for us with our names on it, and as he wrote each name, he found some way to make fun of it. I introduced myself as AJ (syllable), as I would to Americans who would find it easier to pronounce and he asked me “you must have an Indian name. Is it Ajay by any chance? :D “. He split up Jagadish's name as Jug-dish and said he was quite a dish. He showed mock surprise that a boy’s name started with Jeya when JB introduced himself. After all this, we took a priceless picture with him, arm in arm. I was totally overwhelmed to be standing with Russell Peter’s hands over my shoulder. Finally, it was time for the show to begin and we left to sit at our tables but I couldn’t resist telling him “We had a fun-tastic time” with a typical Indian accent (will make sense to those who have watched his “Red brown and white” show) and he seemed quite overwhelmed for the first time and smiled.
The show began and what a show it was too. I went with very high expectations. That it was going to be really funny. But I was wrong. It was much more than that. It was totally hilarious. Two hours of continuous laughter. There wasn’t a dull moment. My throat and mouth was hoarse after having laughed that much at a stretch. I thought all stand up comedians always have a theme and a line of proceeding and they would deviate and improvise to make it look instantaneous. I expected it to be a show where he would crack some of his popular jokes like “Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad” and the stuff about how funny Indian names were etc, and had even refreshed my memory with the popular ones by watching this videos before the show so that I would be able to catch the joke in advance, but I was off cue. It was totally totally instantaneous. Not one joke was from his previous shows.
He started off pretty lamely by coming on stage and looking around and saying “Oh man. I just dunno where to start. I seem to have exhausted all my jokes in my previous shows. I have no clue what I am going to be speaking in the next couple of hours. So if I am without any ideas for most of the show, do excuse me”. After a minute of silent babbling he started off with “Hmm…why don’t I start off with that Indian guy sitting there with a turban?”, pointing to a sardar in the audience. From there he went table to table in random order and made sure everyone present that night was embarrassed in some way or the other. There is no way that the jokes could have been made up before the show as it was all improvised reactionary humor. And it was so good that there was never a dull moment.
His imitations of the Indian accent got the biggest applause though, as he sounded so funny doing it. He embarrassed a lot of people that night including a waitress in a low top who was serving a guy at the table something saying “Hey you….guy over there to whom the well-endowed blonde waitress is bending to give you a good view…tip her generously else she might not accompany you home tonight”. I didn’t know who turned redder…the guy at the table or the waitress. There were many such jokes through the night which kept the audience hooked. It is so amazing how this guy could talk instantaneous nonsense for two hours and it still seemed hilarious.
We wanted the show to go on forever but alas… all things come to an end…and so did this after a couple of hours of entertainment. We waved him goodbye and thanked him for having made our day and a lot more days ahead and took a taxi back to Davis.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
