I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: March 3, 2018] Andy Borowitz

When we saw Darlingside at SOPAC, the director announced that New Yorker columnist Andy Borowitz would be performing in March.  It was just before Sarah’s mom’s birthday so that seemed like a fun present for her (and us).

I obviously know Borowitz from the Borowitz Report, but I didn’t know anything else about him.  We wondered if he voice would sound weird (it didn’t), we wondered if he would be awkward on stage (he wasn’t) and of course we wondered if he would be funny (he was).

He began the night with some general introductory material about himself and his life.  He made some good anti-Trump jokes and then explained that even though he was preaching to the choir, if he could encourage the choir to get other people to vote in the upcoming election then he had done his job.

He also had merch for sale, and 100% of Andy Borowitz’s profits from merchandise sales benefit The International Rescue Committee to aid refugees around the world.  The merch was simple and straightforward.  Shirts and hats in blue that stated: MAKE AMERICA NOT EMBARRASSING AGAIN.

For the second part of the show, he was seated in a chair opposite SOPAC governor Donna Coallier for a Q&A session.

I’m not sure why this format was chosen.  It’s not like the Q’s were much more than directions for Borowitz to say what he planned to say anyhow.  But it was an interesting way to break things up a bit.

The first question was something along the lines of “have your jokes ever been taken seriously as news.”  Obviously anyone who has seen one of the Borowitz Report passed along on social media knows the answer is yes.  But it gave him a chance to read three of his older pieces, each of which had been reported as serious news in other places.  China in particular seems to love using him as their news source.

I didn’t realize that he started the Borowitz Report in 2001!  It was funny then but it has really taken off with the current administration where he has a hard time keeping up with what’s true.  He said that in the past he used to make up crazy stories to pretend they were real, but since trump, he has basically been merely twisting reality a little bit–reality is so far gone it’s hard to believe anyway.  he also says that he writes most of his jokes in his bathrobe on his phone.  Fascinating.

My favorite part of the show was when he talked about his family.  He went to Harvard as did he is father.  He made a joke that as soon as someone tells you they went to Harvard, you think “what a dick.”  Any body else you give them a chance first, but not Harvard grads.  Well, he is here to bring back elitism–what’s the shame in being smart and educated?

But he did make fun of an incident from his childhood.  He said that the children in his school were constantly calling him “queer” (before it meant anything other than a generic 70s insult).  His father told him that “they were not constantly calling you queer because that would be ‘you’re a queer, you’re a queer, you’re a queer.’   They were doing it continually, which is ‘you’re a queer, [pause],  you’re a queer, [pause],  you’re a queer.”

Nothing like a good linguistic joke.

The end of the set had Borowitz asking if anyone had questions.

A few people did.  Most of the questions seemed to me somewhat challenging.  Not that they were opposed to Borowitz or anything like that but that they’re questions weren’t fluff pieces–they wanted real answers.  Are you playing any red states, what do you say about guns.  In other words, nothing that really added to the fun.

Even the final question which Borowitz set up as “I want this question to really sum up the evening , to make everyone leave the room feeling better and smarter about themselves and the world” or somehow thing. Needless to say the final question could not live up to that, but it was still pretty dull.

Nevertheless, Borowitz was able to turn every question into a laugh and the show was really enjoyable.