Day: November 9, 2008

You don’t often see a comedy club audience wait outside in the brisk November air for more than an hour after midnight, for a show that doesn’t start until 1:15 a.m. and stretches through to 4:30 a.m., with few of the audience members leaving to go home to bed. Then again, when you have a chance to hear Dick Gregory and Paul Mooney speaking their minds, back to back, just days after the United States has elected its first African-American president in Barack Obama, well, exceptions can, will and should be made. It would be a night and early morning Sunday in which we, the assembled, were told how it was and how it is, an early testimonial that also happened to have plenty of jokes for those who turned out to Carolines for this special New York Comedy Festival double-header (you can also catch them at 10 p.m. tonight, Sunday). I hadn’t seen Gregory since the Aspen festival in 2002, when he received lifetime honors for his comedic work in support of free speech and the First Amendment. Now 76, Gregory has not lost a step. Still very witty, topical and able to dismiss a loud audience member with ease. Gregory took the stage to a standing ovation, and within minutes, was acknowledging an audience member at one of the front tables as 95-year-old Irwin Corey, aka "Professor"...