Saturday, February 9, 2008

Comedian Ahmed Ahmed On Tour With Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show

In 2005, comedian Ahmed Ahmed joined 3 other comics from Los Angeles' Comedy Store on tour in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show. They sped through 30 shows in 30 days through the heartland from Dallas to Atlanta to Louisville to Chicago. Ouch.

Fast forward to today - they filmed Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show and turned it into a sort of documentary cum concert movie, though not quite like Eddie Murphy Raw.

It's not all fun and laughter. Don't forget that comedy's roots lie in tragedy. The soft-spoken Ahmed Ahmed riffs on being Arabic after 9/11 and describes getting arrested at an airport just because he's there. The Egyptian-born comic does a hilarious routine on his problems with airport security and having the same name as a wanted terrorist, frankly admits that he capitalizes on his ethnicity. Exploitation of this material requires courage and the breaking of unspoken taboos. In between his stand-up routines, he said, "Fifteen minutes of validation is what we look forward to in our lives."

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