While sexually objectifying comedians is politically incorrect and just wrong, it should be known that Sammy J has a pair of legs on him that make women who like skinny pale boys go weak at the knees.
Anyway, enough about the preferences of certain reviewers, you can perve at Sammy’s, gulp, pins in the video segments that delighted the audience during his Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) effort, “Cyclone”.
The show, which featured singing, fingering, keyboard playing, jokes, Delta Goodrem’s toilet habits and more, was the funny guy’s means of distracting us from our inevitable deaths due to a big storm he learnt about from a bloke with a stupid beard.
For reasons only he can explain, Sammy ends up making out with the fellow, although not in a “gay” way.
Alas for Sammy, by the time I attended his performance I’d heard that word used in an “I’m not, but I might be, but I’m not, but I’ll mention it again and again” fashion so many times at the Festival I was contemplating writing a piece about sexual identity and male comics.
Luckily for him, he’s so charming and talented, as well as being aware of Kinsey’s theory of the continuum, that he’s not in trouble, but the next humorist who says it is going to get outed in that article.
The concept of impending doom gave Sammy the opportunity to sing a side-splitting song about Y2K (“I’m late but I’m angry”), as well as enjoy amusing banter over the telephone with a newsreader.
Given that Sammy was trying to create an atmosphere of togetherness in the face of impending doom, he interacted with the audience a lot.
Indeed, I later dreamt he came to my workplace and got a group of public servants to wear sombreros.
The real interplay included giving a Hulk Hogan headband to anyone who laughed loudest at the cruder material (see reference to fingering), asking everyone to say their names, chatting up the girl in the front row and nearly getting us to give him a Nazi salute.
It’s a testament to the blonde boy’s abilities as a performer that nobody objected to being included in the fun.
Last year, Sammy won the Best Newcomer award at MICF, and in 2007 he more than beats the curse of the difficult second album with “Cyclone”.
This reviewer went home with an “I survived” sticker and a big smile on her dial.
“Cyclone” will be playing at MICF until the 29th of April. Check the MICF website for booking details