Stand-Up Comedian Review: Bill Maher, On stage at The Joint, Hard Rock Hotel,
Friday, May 4, 2007 @ 11:30 PM

By Rob Goald
rsgoald@comcast.net

“George W. Bush is the worst President ever”

“Bush is so pro-business he’d sell the Red Cross to Dracula”

“Conservatives believe that if a man puts something in another man it better be a bullet”.

“There’s this new hot trend now: putting playback devices in tombstones so you can still monopolize the conversation from the grave. You’re dead. Worms are eating you. Let someone else talk.”

“Any country that allows me to talk like I do is worth fighting for.”

Bill Maher has emerged as America’s pre-eminent sociopolitical comedian. He first came to fame as the host of the hit Comedy Central and ABC-TV program, Politically Incorrect, where his acerbic honesty regarding 9/11 caused Disney to cancel his show in a manner similar to the more recent Don Imus imbroglio. As he put it at the time “I was the first to be Dixie chicked”. But, he didn’t miss a beat, landing on his feet with a more popular and irreverent television show on HBO called Real Time with Bill Maher.

At The Joint, this past weekend, he brought a rawer, more sexually charged monologue to the stage. Maher, who lives in Los Angeles, kicked off his Vegas show by making fun of airline security in the post 9/11 environment. “I think we should have an airline called ‘Fly At Your Own Risk’ where everyone can pack a fucking gun and a sign in the cabin reads ‘Shit Happens’
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Then for most of the 70 minutes he’s on stage he attacks government policies and hypocrisies. He does it without any sanctimonious gestures but as a libertarian whose central tenet is that an individual human being is sovereign over his/her body, extending to life, liberty, and property.

Mr. Maher is witty and provocative- a sort of modern day Oscar Wilde. Beneath his exterior veneer is a clever man who sees through the bullshit of the world. His vitriol for W. Bush is endless as he lambasts every aspect of his Iraq policies and remarks that our president is a simpleton who finds the world too complicated to comprehend. He pokes fun at the administration’s position on “insurgents following us home” by adding “like Lassie”. He chides the president’s “stay the course” policy by saying that “even a homo knows when to pull out of a shit-hole”.

Maher has a smooth, confident, and persuasive style on the stage making you feel almost like you’re having a beer with a close friend who loves cracking you up with one zany bit to the next.

And he looks like a comedian with that wry grin, over sized head, trim body and a white shirt untucked so as to exude a sense of coolness.

Fans of Bill Maher will enjoy the intensity of his monologue peppered with a lot more obscenity than even on his HBO show and a chance to see him performing “live” in an intimate setting.

Bill Maher returns to The Joint the weekend of June 15&16.
I highly recommend him. (Tickets $42.50 & $54.50; The Joint-693-5066)