Image courtesy of azizisbored.tumblr.com
At the end of March, Jersey Shore Style went to catch comedian Aziz Ansari’s “Buried Alive” tour at the Count Basie Theatre. Can we just say how much we love the Count Basie Theatre? Not only is it a beautiful venue, it’s constantly bringing great talent of all types to Red Bank. If you haven’t been, we recommend checking out the event calendar and finding a performance to see.
But back to Aziz Ansari. If you don’t recognize the name, you may know the face from Parks and Recreation (he plays Tom Haverford) or Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Otis” music video. We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived at the theatre, but we ended up having a fantastic time.
Ansari announces at the beginning of the show that he recently turned 30, so like most young adults, there are a couple of things on his mind: children, marriage, and relationships. And by on his mind, Ansari means that he’s not interested in having children or getting married anytime soon. He cracks jokes about replying with “unsubscribe” to the endless baby photos, baby videos, and baby status updates from new parents. With a funny bit about the implicit, non romantic conditions in a proposal, Ansari explains why he thinks marriage is a weird institution.
The show really hits its stride when Ansari talks about relationships, specifically how people meet. He mentions his parents’ arranged marriage and asks the audience about their proposal stories. He talks about online dating and the weird, undeserved stigma around it, noting that unlike real life, online dating lets you remove nearly everything you don’t like from your dating pool and put down exactly what you want. Anzari’s example: a friend met his wife by plugging in “Jewish” and his zip code. Match made in algorithm heaven!
Another great part of the show is when Ansari talks about the types of people you find at bars. His bit about bros is seriously laugh out loud funny, featuring spot-on impressions with random aggressive behavior as well as alternate universe versions of bros (bros who do shots and then study, bros who do shots and then don’t bother anyone in the bar, etc).
One last highlight was Ansari going off-script at the beginning of the show and asking a front row audience member why he was texting before anything had happened. He ended up getting the guy’s phone and reading his hilariously boring texts about workouts and Carlton beer to the audience. Note to future Aziz Ansari tour attendees: do not text during his stand-up, especially if you’re in the front row.