Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday December 1, 2006

A ‘shtick’ in time for South Bay comedy fans

by dan pine
staff writer

Cory Kahaney remembers the precise moment she discovered the art of stand-up comedy. She was 5 when her parents snuck her into Buddy Hackett’s show at Grossinger’s, the famous Borscht Belt resort.

Hackett was gloriously crude and rude, and Kahaney’s parents had to hide their daughter under the table. But little Cory was hooked, and today Kahaney is one of the top female stand-up comics on the circuit.

She will co-headline this year’s edition of Chopshticks, held annually for South Bay Jews looking for comic action (and MSG-flavored wok-fried food) on Christmas Eve. The event is sponsored by the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center.

“The great thing about Jewish audiences,” she says, “is they’re all about the mechanics of a joke. There’s no gender bias. They would as easily see a Jewish woman as a man, because they just care about laughing. But they require you to do your smarter jokes..”

Dan Naturman co-headlines Chopshticks with Kahaney, and like her, he is an alumnus of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” Also, he has thought about the link between Jews and humor, as has she.

“It’s who I am,” he says. “[Jewishness] figures into my comedy on an unconscious level. I tend to be more self-deprecating, which is inherent in the Jewish mindset of being the outsider. Though I’m not quite as neurotic as Larry David and Richard Lewis .”

And thank God for that.

Naturman had been on track for a career in law, but as a young man the Connecticut native found himself ditching all-night study groups to slip into Manhattan comedy clubs for open mic sessions. “I had a catch phrase,” he says of his early days in comedy. “It was ‘I never learn.’ I tried to tie it to every joke, but it was confining, so I abandoned that. Eventually you find what gets the most laughs.”

For Kahaney, that often turned out to be stories of parenting her daughter Ariel, now of college age. “She’s a walking joke book,” says the comic. “She recently asked me if I was alive at the time of the Beatles. Everything out of her mouth is usable. The new one is so adorable and sweet, but he’s not paying off at all.”

She’s referring to her 2-year old son, a mid-life surprise for the twice-married Kahaney. Though motherhood has put a few limitations on her mobility, she works constantly. She not only appears regularly at the New York clubs, she is “the go-to gal” for Jewish fundraising events.

Adding to her Jewish credentials, albeit tangentially, her lawyer husband has been a principal prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, and was instrumental in investigating the infamous John Demjanjuk, a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible.

“I married the only Jewish lawyer with a conscience,” she jokes. “I told him I wanted to sue Macys because of an accident I had there. ‘But you love Macys,’ he said to me. I then said, ‘That’s where I plan to spend all the money I make in the lawsuit.’”

Lawsuits and stand-up comics have been in the headlines lately, thanks to the Michael “Kramer” Richards’ racial rant on stage. Naturman has opinions, though he limits them to the topic of heckler management.

“We all know what it’s like to snap on stage,” he says. “(Richards) just took it to another level. A lot of things I read say it’s the comic’s job to handle hecklers, but I say the audience should at least be respectful. Every comic can snap. Nobody’s immune.”

Fortunately for Kahaney, she’s used to getting a lot of love from her fans, especially since she decided to celebrate her Jewish identity in her comedy.

“I had a manager once ask me for a Jew-free set,” she recalls, “and I really worked on it. I did the homogenous secular thing, but by then I was so tired of hiding all the aspects of growing up Jewish in America, I thought, ‘Why turn my back on the one thing that embraces me and feeds me?’ My life got exponentially better: People cared about getting me a ride home, there was always ice water in the green room.”

But as Naturman is quick to point out, the life of a stand-up comedian is such that the ice water in the green room can easily segue to icy silence from the crowd.

“People don’t get the insecurity,” he says of his profession. “The truth is not a one of us is secure. We’re all hanging by a thread.”

“Chopshticks: a Tradition of Comedy and Food” takes place 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 24, at Ming’s Restaurant, 1700 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto. Tickets: $65. Info: (650) 852-3512.

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.