Huffington Post recently ran a great interview with Kamau about our take on “political” comedy. Read it here.

In other HuffPo news, Nato has a new blog we hope you enjoy: “Fighting Cynicism Without and Within,” about how Occupy Wall Street achieved something historically unprecedented by getting Nato to shut up.

Dig it!

We can’t wait to finish the documentary and get it to you soon.

In the meantime, SF Sketchfest is presenting a special evening with Laughter Against the Machine on Thursday, February 2 at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco. In addition to stand-up, we’ll be showing the first clips from the forthcoming tour documentary that happened because of you, and there will be a Q&A moderated by writer Hiya Swanhuyser. Hope you can come. We released another rough cut video from the tour, of jokes by Nato about our visits to six Occupy Wall Street sites.

Also, we’ve been busy lately, collectively and singly.

Janine had the 3rd installment of her joint venture with Emily Heller: Girl Talk at the SF Punchline. The SF Weekly saluted Janine & Emily for their “commitment to boundary-pushing, brutally funny comedy that’s staunchly populist but could still send a grad student looking for her well-worn copy of Gender Trouble.”

Meanwhile, Kamau wrote a piece in Colorlines with the journalistically objective title, “5 Signs You’re Acting Like a White Guy (Or, How To Not Be Gene Marks)” about the white Forbes columnist who decided to hold forth on what he would do if he were poor and black. According to Marks, black poverty could be solved if only black kids had the good sense to realize they need good grades and to watch TED talks. Kamau’s response, while simultaneously funny and profound in the way we can rely on from Kamau, also offended some white guys who didn’t want to be lumped together with jerks. Or something.

Kamau also wrote about how Louis CK is in the rare position of being both the comedian the mainstream media is most interested in while comedians generally agree that he’s the MAN.

Finally, our 4th Annual New Year’s Eve shows at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco were sold out, fun, and raucous as usual. They were also attended by great press coverage by the likes of the SF Examiner, the Bay Citizen, and the East Bay Express. For example, the East Bay Express described “the consistently thought-provoking content and the performers’ keen ability to stay on top of pop culture.”

We do our best.

Well, the Occupy movement started pretty soon after LATM embarked on its nationwide tour and I’m not saying we started the whole thing, but some people are…okay, fine. No one’s saying we started Occupy. But we knew we couldn’t make a tour documentary about the state of our nation without jumping right into it.

The three of us have been visiting our own nearest occupies (what with being human beings who care about things offstage as well) but felt we needed to add an emergency stop given THE ADVENT OF THE REVOLUTION. So Nato and Kamau flew out to New York (where I’d been living for two months) so that the three of us could visit Zuccotti Park, talk to those occupying Wall Street, and put on a show for the people of Liberty Square.

Oh yeah and we pretty much had three days to figure it all out. Three days to figure out: flights, places to stay, time to talk to people on the ground, finding an available theater close to Zuccotti, letting people know said show would be happening, and figuring out what we’d say onstage. No big. Right?

After a couple days of frantic phone calls and theater visits, Kamau, Nato, Keri, and our filmmakers Mike and Evan arrived and we headed out to Zuccotti. We talked to a young artist, a former Wall Street employee, an out of work contractor, and the leaders of Occupy Judaism who called us sacred clowns and implied we were doing God’s work. (Hear that, abuela?! Estoy haciendo la obra de Dios!) We were exhausted but inspired. We hoofed it straight from the park to the theater (which we’d found and booked less that 48hrs before) without the slightest idea if anyone would show up. But New Yorkers stepped up and every seat in our little theater was filled with friends, strangers, and some of the people we’d talked to moments earlier. So thank you, New York. Thank you for coming to our show, for being the first spark in this growing movement, and for having a Halal food cart on every corner.

You had me at, Halal, New York. You had me at Halal. (Janine makes out with a plate of chicken over rice. Kamau and Nato awkwardly leave the room. Fade to black.)

He's passed way more laws than you ever will.

Whew! The tour is finally over! Well, it’s at least half over. We were in five cities in nine days. Seven if you count Nogales twice, since it is both in Mexico AND Arizona. We closed with one of the best shows of the trip in Madison, Wisconsin, where we got a crowd who was definitely, LATM friendly. We spent the day at Fighting Bob Fest, watching speeches by a variety of people from the left push their brand of liberal politics in our faces and then rub our noses in it. Flippin’ socialists! Fighting Bob Fest is basically like Liberalpalooza. It was in a basketball arena filled with progressives, angry about the state of America… but in a good way. Thom Hartmann, Greg Palast, Bernie Saunders, and others. AND BECAUSE NATO AND JANINE HAD TO GET COFFEE WE JUST MISSED CORNEL WEST!!! (No hard feelings at all, of course.)

Now because Fighting Bob Fest is in Wisconsin, it was overwhelmingly white, but because it was a day of progressive team building, it felt like a Tea Party rally minus the fear of others.

As usual, we started off the day with a loose plan: Go to Fighting Bob Fest; pass out flyers for our show that night, & shoot interviews with whoever we could get. Well we managed to finish the day with an overstuffed hard drive of interviews and random interactions. According to Mike and Evan, the filmmakers, they are going to have to buy new hard drives because we are taking up (and talking up) so much space. The only interview we had scheduled was with Peter Rickman, a community and labor organizer from Wisconsin’s AFL-CIO. but while we were walking around the arena, I heard someone shout, “Kamau!” I looked and it was John Hershberger, my number one Facebook friend. John had generously donated to our Kickstarter and we got a few minutes on film with him talking about everything that is going on with the unions in Wisconsin. After we finished and he had walked away I heard him call back to us, “You need to interview him.” And he pointed at a man who I soon found out is the longest serving state legislator in the country, Fred Risser. State Senator Risser very kindly talked to us. And he didn’t seem to be phased by the fact that in the middle of the interview, Nato taped me out, so he could take over with his stentorian tones and aggressive intellect. The best part was when Nato told St. Senator Risser that we learned in Arizona that many of it’s problems are the fault of retirees relocating there from the midwest, State Senator Risser exclaimed, “Hey! Don’t blame Arizona on us!” Thank you for entertaining our questions, Mr. Risser.

That night we did our show at The Bartell Theatre in Madison, and we got OUR crowd. A bunch of liberals and progressives with a senses of humor, who didn’t always agree with us, but didn’t mind us pushing them or us steering them down alleged comedic alleys with dead ends. Afterward we took the advice of Eide Alwan from the mosque in Dearborn and we passed the hat for donations to help us get this crazy documentary finished and the audience politely filled our hat… uh… basket.

Later we went out for some Wisconsin sausage and beer, and gorged ourselves. It is amazing how well it feels like this first week went, and we all anxious and excited to do the second leg of the tour in November. But we are also in desperate need for time to recover. See you all again soon.

After visiting the only Arab-American Museum in the US, the biggest mosque in the US, chatting with an Arab-American comedian/comedy promoter over delicious shawermas at Arabica Bistro and desserts from the Shatila Bakery so good that we wanted to gay marry them, we learned an important lesson. It might come as a shock to a lot of Americans, because you don’t hear this a whole lot in our public discourse, but nevertheless, here it is: Arabs are just like everybody else.

Like a splash of cold water, so I’ll give you a minute to let it sink in, with this muckracking expose:

Welcome back.

Oblivious imperious Americans tend to gloss over the reality that Arabs and Muslims are two overlapping but distinct and highly diverse groups. Arabs only make up 20% of Muslims, while 10% of Arabs are Christians. Also, Arabs have been in America pretty much as long as it’s been America, and done stuff in every part of American life. There are Arabs who are awesome and Arabs who are jerks for reasons that have nothing to do with their Arabness. For example, on the one hand you have corporate scumbag and right-wing Congressman Darrel Issa, and on the other hand you have Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House Press Corps.

Eide Alawan, the Interfaith Outreach Coordinator at the Islamic Center of America patiently explained about all the programs of the mosque, the Muslim community of Dearborn, and the interactions between the congregants and other groups. He said something that blew our minds, and if he had said it in a comedy club, it would be too edgy for Doug Stanhope. He told us that 9/11 was good for Muslims because it got Americans interested in understanding and engaging with Muslims in a way they never had before. He said it like he meant it. Then said it again later, like he really wanted it to sink into our thick heads. Still sinking. We would only have been a little surprised if he had followed it up with, “Did I stutter, motherfucker?” Mainly because he was so sweet.

Then we had our worst show of the week. Not only had we never performed in the Detroit metro area, didn’t know anyone, and had no idea where to do a show or how to promote it, but then we made the colossal mistake of picking the cheapest theater, which was a 400-seater cleverly hidden in the woods on a community college campus where no one would ever find it. We forgot the famous dictum of Mao Tse-Tung (or maybe Sun Tzu), applied equally to guerrilla warfare and comedy: “With small forces, fight in enclosed spaces.”

What would have been an adequate show in a tiny black box theater instead became the “all is lost” plot point of our epic quest. To paraphrase Nietzsche and Mort Sahl, we joked into the abyss and the abyss joked back.

It turns out that Arabs are like people also in that their suburbs are not hip and happening centers of nocturnal entertainment. Our bad. Fortunately, our new Arab friends in Dearborn and Detroit activists like Invincible were gracious enough to offer to help do Laughter Against the Machine justice when we come back. We’re not done with you, Detroit metropolitan area.

We left Arizona after 3 hours of sleep (and some insanity getting to the airport), landed in Chicago, then immediately drove downtown to join UNITE HERE hotel workers for their strike against the Hyatt. Nato and Kamau were able to speak with some Hyatt employees during the picket about their cause. You can learn more about the UNITE HERE’s fight at hotelworkersrising.org. Seeing hundreds of workers united to make their voices heard was an exhilarating experience and a wonderful kick-off to our much-too-short time in Chi-Town.

We MUST give a HUGE thanks to Jason, co-owner Chicago-based indie bookstore The Book Table (booktable.net) who drove us all over town in style. Seriously, check out my seat in his sweet ride

Riding in style

We were exhausted after striking with hotel workers, riding in style, check out Jason’s bookstore, meeting his adorable puppy, and eating enormous diner food. And our theater set included the coziest couch and bed. Right where we’d be performing. (Pro: naptime before the show. Con: TORTURE while onstage.)

We were all tempted to give in to our exhaustion but the audience at the Greenhouse Theater was on fire and kept us going. (Plus, Kamau’s mom was in the audience and I don’t think any of us would ever want to let that woman down because she’s a BAMF*.) We ended up having a great show and going out for celebratory drinks afterwards. Yeah. Our audience was so awesome we wanted to hang despite running on fumes.

Thank you, Chicago. You are wonderful.

*BAMF = Bad A$$ Mutha Futha

For more details check out presente.org and puenteaz.org.

We’ve gotten some great footage for the documentary and we’ve rubbed shoulders with some incredible CultureStrike people including Dream Hampton, Roberto Lovato, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Rinku Sen, Jeff Chang, and even the legendary Maxine Hong Kingston. Special note: she doesn’t seem to enjoy having her shoulders rubbed. At least not by me.

Here’s our first bit of footage, featuring two typically arrogant Americans.

It has been an incredible trip overall and we feel truly honored to have been a part of it. We are even thinking about starting JokeStrike. All the knowledge is bubbling and fomenting in our brian pans and I’m sure the people of Chicago are in for some half baked observations that may only make it to funny by the time we get to Madison.

We are now on a plane to Chicago for our show tonight. We had three less than three hours of sleep and are all a little bit punchy. Before we went to sleep we called a cab to pick us up at 4:30am. And this morning at 4:30am it was no where to be seen. We called them back and the dispatcher told us, just because we make a reservation doesn’t mean a cab will show up. He said, “I can’t force them.” Which has led to a new slogan for Tucson tourism…

Tucson: Come for the oppressive policies towards undocumented workers and general level of racism toward all Latinos, and stay for the fact that you can’t get a fucking cab.

Maybe it’s a little wordy, but I think it gets the message across.

Also the wifi and cellphone service sucks.

Thanks for your support!

Kamau

Today’s presentations have spanned the gamut from sad to hella sad. We learned a lot about the policy context of immigration. Apparently Arizona is a big ill-conceived social experiment in which people fleeing immiseration and desperate poverty in Latin America and grumpy-pants white Midwestern retirees are forced to live together in a chunk of dessert with no actual economy but intolerable heat. What could go wrong?

We went to the federal courthouse in Tucson and got to watch Operation Streamline. Every day, our government rushes about seventy undocumented immigrants through something that vaguely resembles a court proceeding in about two hours. We saw a group consisting entirely of indigenous-looking men in shackled hand-and-feet who had just been picked up trying to cross the border. Their punishment was to go to a for-profit detention facility in the US for up to six months before being deported. To repeat: the punishment for trying to come to the US illegally is to be kept in the US. This is an appropriate occasion to use the word “retarded” in a precise, literal sense. As in, “the US immigration system is fucking retarded.”

Getting to see in person this process was upsetting for all of us. It led immediately to some grief-eating of chocolate, Full Throttle, and fiber bars. We were upset by what we saw, and our heads immediately exploded witnessing firsthand the sheer irrationality of this system.

It probably goes without saying, but we’re the only comedians down here. It’s cool to hang out with a community of artists, and weird to be the only ones whose artistic vehicle to express our experiences is to make strangers laugh. We’re considering quitting comedy to join a guerrilla army. Hopefully the jokes will come soon.

Today we trekked from sunny Phoenix to equally sunny Tucson and boy are my dogs tired! (I like to imagine that I have a pack of tiny puppies that accompany us on the trip when I say that phrase but, unfortunately, my “puppy pack” idea was nixed during the budget meeting. Oh yeah! BTW, thanks, Kickstarter supporters!)

We’re still riding on a high from a great first show in Phoenix and now we’re excited about the amazing folks we’re meeting at the 2011 CultureStrike Delegation. We’ve already talked to many artists and organizers here at our hotel and there will be many more insightful, poignant, AND hilarious conversations to come. (Also, potential swimsuit footage. Feel free to take that as a warning or enticement.)

I had a wonderful conversation with undocumented, queer artivist Julio Salgado about art, it’s role in activism, and multiple identities. 

AND THERE WAS CHOCOLATE CAKE.

Alas, my sugar high has crashed and Kamau’s telling me that it’s my bedtime, so gnight!

Then the three of us sat down with the S and M Podcast which is the local comedy scene’s version of WTF with Marc Maron. And despite the fact that Nato and Kamau needed naps after that, we went straight to the show at Space 55, and it was great. It really felt very similar to the Bay Area shows. Kevin Gassman who interviewed Kamau on KWSS radio earlier this week was in the audience. Also Jeff Chang from CultureStrike was there, as was Steve MArek and Jaime Sanderson from the S and M podcast. We will be doing lots of stuff with CultureStrike in the next couple days, including taking a trip across the border to Mexico. That will be Kamau’s first trip.

We ended the evening eating a taco truck with Carlos, his wife, Janine’s girlfriend, her girlfriend’s friends and family, Jeff, Keri (our manager), Evan (our lone camera person). The truck had a sticker on it that basically certified it a safe place for all people to eat, documented and otherwise. Pretty intense stuff. And very delicious food. More soon. I’m about to pass out. Long day.

Oh yeah… Happy September 11th Day. Seriously, have a happy one. It won’t be easy.

Follow these people on Twitter

@puenteAZ
@zentronix (Jeff Chang)
@CaptPiggles (Steve Marek of The S and M Podcast)
@Kevingassman
@space55