Most ethnic groups get their own month to celebrate their culture. What do Arab-Americans get? “Orange alert,” jokes comedian Dean Obeidallah. An American born in New Jersey to a Palestinian father and Italian-American mother, Obeidallah turned to comedy to fight the suspicion and ignorance he encountered in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2003 he co-founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, which runs this week in Manhattan. Obeidallah spoke with TIME about bridging cultures, the fading “siege” against Arab-Americans and taking stand-up to the Middle East.
Peter the persian, the self proclaimed comedioligist is a blast. Born in Tehran “the Denver of the Middle East”, Peter spent most of his young life in Iran before moving the United States to persue his higher education. Having majored in Political Sciences and earned his JD, Peter is both a practacing lawyer and a professional comediologist in his current how town of Los Angeles and you can usually catch him as a regular at the Comedy Store.
Peter’s favourite comedy sets include a lot of satirical comedy which he delivers with mastery, I literally could not stop laughing the first time I watched this clip:
Maz Jobrani is a very intelligent comic. He likes to build up his jokes really well and delivers fierce punch-lines. Honestly, Maz seems to be an over-worked actor having a long list of roles on both big screen and small screen shows in different dramatic and comedic situations. Maz is born in Tehran, Iran and he grew up in California. After starting a degree path for a PhD in political sciences, Maz had an epiphany during a conversation with a 60 year old coworker (who never got to see his dreams come to fruition) and returned to his passions of theatre and acting.
Drawing material from oddities in both the political parties in the United States and in Iran (during the Bush / Ahmedinajad darama) Maz put together his best known material on both figures …
As with many other Middle Eastern American comedians, Maz is now working towards giving back to his community both in Iran and to the immigrant Iranian population wherever they reside, in this interview Maz talks about his work and his ambitions …
Excerpts from an in depth expose’ on the loveable Maz Jobrani in the OC Register:
No matter what roles he’s playing, he’s equally as happy to come out onto a stage as himself and do stand-up.
“With stand-up, 99 percent of the time it’s fantastic,” he says “When you’re on tour and it’s your audience coming to see you, there’s a lot of excitement and they get you, they understand you and they love you.”
Maz has a Degree in Political Sciences dropped out of the PHD program in Political Sciences to pursue his passion in comedy…
Putting his degree in political science to good use in his act, Jobrani loves to talk politics but now that George W. Bush is out of the White House, he’s finding it difficult to pull material off our new president.
“What’s funny is that Obama is so amazing in the way he debates and talks because he takes his time and it’s so nice to actually have a president who thinks before he speaks,” he says. “For comedy, it’s horrible. I’m looking for material and I can’t find any on this guy. But there are so many other things going on and the Iranian president supplies me with plenty of material.”
The article speaks the truth as well see the post election mess that is sadly going on in Iran today. I think there’s alot of credit to what the Axis of Evil is trying to do by bringing more laughs to a historically very turbulant region.
After breaking all box-office records at the Edinburgh Festival and then going on a forty date sell-out tour across the UK, this is Omid's greatest show, recorded live at The Long Palladium captured in all its glory.
