Audio By Carbonatix
With 3 days left in our spring campaign, we have a new $10,000 goal!
New Times members have already contributed more than $7,500 - can you help us hit our new goal and keep New Times free and in print every week? If New Times matters to you, please take action and contribute today.
One way a person can be funnier than a tree is by not being born — living and dying in the same exact place. Take for example stand-up comedians Nema Williams and Ed Blaze. Williams was born in Japan and grew up in Nepal and California. Blaze is from Tanzania but has lived in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Both men will be in Miami Beach Saturday night, when they will hopefully not be whacked in the shins with a hatchet and then milled into toothpicks before their performances at the Colony Theatre (1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach).
Though being a tree does have many advantages (sloths want to hang out with you, you get winters off), the rarity of attacks on you and your family by logging companies is one way that being a person does offer a leg up in this world. But if you’re expecting a night of confusion from “Nepalese guys dance like this but Japanese guys dance like this” jokes, fear not: Williams draws on his time in East Oakland for his explorations of the differences between black guy dancing and white guy dancing. It is that kind of transgressive upending of racial stereotypes that has earned him seven slots on BET’s Comic View. Ed Blaze, on the other hand, grew up speaking Swahili as his first language. He also speaks English. How many bilingual trees can you think of? Sure, there are the ones that get pulped and turned into Spanish-English dictionaries. But all people have to do these days is pirate a copy of Rosetta Stone. Advantage: sentience.
Nema Williams and Ed Blaze perform two shows together this Saturday, at 8:30 and 10 p.m. Tickets cost $29.50 including fees via ticketmaster.com.
Sat., July 6, 8:30 p.m., 2013
