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I recently went to an extremely engaging event called the Sultans of Satire stand-up comedy show with chock full of witty comics of Middle Eastern descent. This hilarious show is every second Thursday of the month at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, which is owned by Jamie Masada who is of Iranian descent. The show started in 2005 and is in it's 17th edition. This event is sponsored by the Levantine Cultural Center and was created by Jordan Elgrably, one of the founders and the artistic director of the center.
There was a strong lineup of diverse comics of Middle Eastern descent. Mike Batayeh, a Jordanian-American (Sleeper Cell, Life) called Glendale 'the home of the fighting uni brows'. Noel Elgrably, a stand-up comic who is also Jordan's younger brother, is Sephardic Jewish and calls likens it to being a mix of 'Arab, Latino, and Jewish,' which he cleverly coined as 'the trifecta of minorities.' The wacky Iraqi came on stage with a full on accent that was part of his schtick. His funniest bit was 'I have to leave Iraq because of the violence, guns, murder, rape, so I moved to Detroit...but I'm moving back. It's much safer there.'
Elham Jazab, Max Amini, and Peter the Persian were the three Iranian-Americans in this show. Jazab, the one female comic got a lot of belly laughs from the audience during her humorous set. The biggest laugher was this joke, 'Persian girls don't like sex. We like to look sexy. We don't like to put out. We like to put on...Gucci, Pucci, hair spray, hair extension, lip liner, lip gloss, body spray.'
Funny guy Max Amini ('Heroes, Mind of Mencia') told the crowd, which was echoing with laughter, 'I grew up in a Middle Eastern household where the whole house has Persian rugs everywhere. Even the computer mouse.' So there are rugs everywhere, but you can't walk on it.'
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Peter the Persian was the final comic of Middle Eastern descent on stage who calls himself a comediologist due to his many spot-on impressions of different nationalities. Peter's hilarious bit ended with a clever riff on the British. 'Do you know why Persians detest the English? Because the English got away with bloody murder because of their accent. Because no matter what they say, no matter how evil, disgusting, degenerate, it sounds dignified with an English accent. For example, 'I crapped so large that I shall require a Cesarean section for relief.' They're very clever the English. They come into your town, they come up to your king, and they say 'hello, would you like to be part of the English commonwealth? You'll be common and we'll have all your wealth.'
Club headliner Jokoy, who is of Filipino descent, made a surprise appearance at the club. His funny routine was about fatherhood as he has a two and a half year old son. 'Girls are smarter. This is how I know. My son can't even talk. My friend's daughter came over who was about the same age and said 'Mommy can I have a san dwich (heavily pronouncing the d in sandwich)? I didn't know sandwich had a d?'
The crowd mainly consisted of Iranians, Arabs, and Israelis as well as a handful of Americans all laughing in unison. Other prominent Iranian-American comics like Maz Jobrani, Ara Basil, K-Von, Eslam Shams, and Shahram Tahmahsebi have graced the Sultan's stage. Actor, writer, producer, director, and TV host Fariborz Davoodian (from the films 'The Ten', 'America So Beautiful,'and the critically acclaimed '99 Cent Family' touring show) has served as the host.
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The Levantine Cultural Center was founded in the summer of 2001 and the goal of this organization is to promote a positive peaceful dialogue between the various cultures of the Middle East through artistic expression. In addition to the Sultans of Satire event, they have had concerts, lectures, film screenings, and author events.
When asked how the Levantine Cultural Center and specifically how the Sultans event came to fruition, Jordan Elgrably had much to say. 'In the spring of 2001 I had just come off producing a large international conference at UCLA on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the time I was co-directing an organization called Open Tent Middle East Coalition. Things got very heated at that conference, as you can imagine, and I had grown weary with the Arab/Muslim-Israeli/Jewish dialogues and the bickering. I started thinking that most of us had a lot more in common than one particular conflict or another...'
'In addition to suggesting to some of my friends and colleagues that we should go off in the direction of arts and culture, and create Levantine Cultural Center, which we began to do that June, I approached Mitzy Shore at the Comedy Store about hosting a regular Middle Eastern comedy night. She declined, yet not long afterward I noticed the Comedy Store had a regular weekly show called Arabian Knights. For a while I avoided comedy and focused Levantine programming on literature, music, film and art—but I had always felt that satire and humor were an important way to express criticism about the culture. We had invited select comedians, like Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader, to occasionally perform comedy at our multidisciplinary events, but toward the end of 2005 we launched the Sultans show as a sort of test. The reactions to it were so positive that we decided to continue the show each month.'
'It was always important to us that the show feature both male and female comics, and that it be as diverse as the Middle East, reflecting the region's true range of cultures, religions and ethnicities; we also wanted comedians to strive to a higher level of comedy, because we have a sort of progressive sensibility when it comes to politics—none of these comedians, thus-far, is a Republican (not that they don't also have plenty of barbs reserved for the Dems). They have a great forum to rant and rave! But their first concern is getting the laughs. Because let's face it: there's not much that's funny about the way the Israelis kick the crap out of the Palestinians, or how the Palestinians kill each other; Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, must be the long-lost sibling of George Bush, because those two guys look like monkeys cut from the same mold, and they act like it as well.'
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For more info on the Levantine Cultural Center, go to www.levantinecenter.org.
Photo 1: Group photo of the Sultans of Satire.
First Row: Peter the Persian, Mike Batayeh, and Ara Basil
Second Row: Max Amini, the Wacky Iraqi, Elham Jazab, and Noel Elgrably.
Photo 2: Comedienne Elham Jazab making the crowd laugh hysterically.
Photo 3: Comic Peter the Persian's hilarious riff on the British
Photo 4: Comic Max Amini's comedy wit in action.
Photo Credit: Leyla Nejad of BBC Persian
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