by Spoiler alert! No, not really. Despite Joan Rivers prevailing the last time Donald Trump played the celebrity bored game of Apprentice, this TV competition is not kind to stand-up comedians, and after Carol Leifer was first to get the boot, Sinbad was second to get shown the door last night on the NBC television network.
Here is his exit interview.
Some people may have said, Sinbad? Who? What? Didn't he draw the short straw from Jingle All the Way, not being governor of California and all? Where U Been? Well, Sinbad has spent most of his nights — ever since way back to his first big break on the original Star Search — touring as a stand-up. I knew that. You may have known that if you're here. Maybe you forgot? That can happen when a comedian isn't on a recent TV show, which is how a guy like Sinbad winds up on Celebrity Apprentice to begin with.
But back to Where U Been, because his DVD came out last month and debuted on Comedy Central as his first stand-up special in forever. This clip from the DVD — which didn't air on Comedy Central — probably explains why he wasn't built for Celebrity Apprentice, since he says he has been fired or quit every non-comedian job he has had! Roll it.
As for the rest of the special? Let's see what my notes say.
Pauly Shore put out a movie pretending he had died. Sinbad had to deal with it for real. Or for Internet reals, which is almost real. So he opens joking about rumors he had died, with people going on Twitter about it, while he decides to play the drums, because that's what Prince told him to do, and he has a band playing classic Prince songs such as "Let's Go Crazy." But not all of it. "I'm sorry. That's all the money I got." Where U Been? Where I been? I been working. This from the guy who says in promos for Celebrity Apprentice that he's one of the greatest stand-ups, and now he jokes about getting killed on Wikipedia.
I'm not sure what to make of this special, as you can see. There's a bit about how Obama, as a half-black president from Kansas and Hawaii, isn't like what a future black president from Cleveland, Detroit or Los Angeles would act. Um, OK. Not exactly groundbreaking material. He also deals with a late-coming arrival to the front row with typical professional club/theater comic chops, but about a half-hour into the deal, he's taking requests from the ladies in his audience for relationship advice? What the what? Before this becomes too drawn-out and played-out, however, he goes back into his scripted material, about being 53, married, remarried — "I know your crazy. I can deal with your crazy" — and having kids. Bill Cosby gave a public plug to Sinbad recently, and I can see how Sinbad's appeal is like looking at an energetic, PG-13 version of the Cos. As in, A Different World, but the same world. Sinbad's idea of taking back the house from his kids, for instance, is to have sex naked in the house, and let them see you do it. Once is all it takes. He's actually an interesting bridge between Cosby's view of parenting, and Louis CK's view of parenting, usually told from the perspective of the kid as well as the parent. He cannot wait for you to become a parent, so you know what he feels, such as being happy when his kid's sports team loses so he can start sleeping again.
Sinbad always has known how to entertain a large audience. That's how he's always been, and where you've always been able to find him. Now, where u been?
