Comic Wyatt Cenac Teases Somerville

SOMERVILLESCOUT.COM--Wyatt Cenac, the stand-up comedian, traveled from Brooklyn—“the Somerville of New York City,” he teased—for his show at Johnny D’s Uptown Restaurant & Music Club (17 Holland St.) last Friday night. His smile grew with the jab and the audience could only laugh bashfully at the inside joke.

If you’ve seen The Daily Show with John Stewart in the last three years or so, chances are good you’ve witnessed the dry, race-flavored segments of correspondent and writer Cenac. He’s been on the show since 2008 after being passed up by Saturday Night Live when they went with Fred Armisen’s Barack Obama impression rather than his.

Immediately Cenac came out and reminded the audience of his hatred for Massachusetts’ sports teams, most especially the Red Sox. Given his heritage, he couldn’t help but take a couple swipes at the faltering team. Dressed in plain neutral colors and with an afro reaching for the ceiling, Cenac had a calm presence. He looked out from half-closed, uncaring eyes and scanned the crowd effortlessly. His delivery was cordial, even while joking about the Klu Klux Klan and their early monikers.

Cenac is highly aware of the world and culture he lives in and dissects it intelligently. He expressed disappointment that Kim Kardashian, on the merits of a sex tape alone, was now forever locked in the Zeitgeist. What’s the point of Twitter, he argued, when he can get a group of people together, charge them ridiculous amounts of money and read Twitter posts to them aloud? One example: I want to open a racist bakery and name it Cake Cake Cake. Tunneling inward, he discussed disillusionment with the nightclubs of the world. They were pointless, he argued. You’re charged an entry fee even if you won’t be dancing and before long the place becomes atrociously uncomfortable when all the ladies seem to leave at once.

He is not a simple one-dimensional comic ready to hand out one-liners. He stews in the moment and leads his audience into a trap of absurdity. At one point he sounded more like a columnist in Time magazine than a comedian when he philosophized on the potential backfire of over-sharing on the Internet, something everybody does, but him. He predicted political attack ads in the very-near future would only consist of the secret nude online photos of candidates and nothing more. When Cenac brought up the election he found a sweet spot when the room screamed for President Obama and only a couple hands clapped for Mitt Romney. He held frustration and befuddlement that the election was so close and used the alarming contrasts between the two men to his comedic advantage.

Jermaine Fowler, also from Brooklyn, broke the crowd in early hitting them hard with race and slave jokes. The laughter quivered at first but roared by the end for the up-and-coming comic, who relied mostly on personal tales growing up on the streets. Both comics took pleasure in pushing the boundaries for what was a mostly (probably) white audience. Indeed, much of the humor came from the discomfort of the crowd squirming in their seats, but still, it was nice to be recognized.

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