Friday, October 07, 2005

Anne Roumanoff

We got the tickets quite some time ago. Anne Roumanoff coming to Asnières was just not something I could miss.

Anne Roumanoff is a stand-up comedian who Desney and I have watched for over 10 years now. Jessica's been watching her for the last couple of years on TV and she now has a TV program where she presents other stand-up comedians.

Jessica and I went for a quick dinner beforehand at the Japanese restaurant just across the street. Jessica loves Sushi. I don't know where she gets it from. We had a couple of huge plates of Sushi and Sashimi and I dared to order a beer. I had my first gulp with the expectation of a burning feeling down my entire throat and ready to ask for tea. To my great surprise it felt and tasted wonderful. So good in fact that I had another before the end of the meal. Sushi and a couple of cold Japanese beers (Kirin) another one of the simple pleasures of life. We spoke a bit about my medical news. She kept saying to look on the positive aspects (could be worse, there are people worse off elsewhere, best medical care in the world, still young, yadda yadda yadda). Sheer optimism... it's amazing how certain genes can jump a generation (Noni). We left just in time to make it to the performance. After getting back my credit card receipt I realised that dinner cost more than the show!

The show was great. It was basically a Best of Anne Roumanoff. She performed all of her classic sketches from the past 10 years or so. However she had modernised each one a bit and threw in a bit of improvisation and current information in each. It was a lot of fun and it felt great to laugh. It's generally impossible to translate jokes from one language to another... but... she had a few which I think might work:

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You know why the Americans were so sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

They had saved the invoices.

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Millions of French are willing to spend 0.50 € to vote for which member of Star Academy (TV reality show) they want to vote off. But only 20% of them will go and vote, for free, for their politicians.

We should have a President Academy. You vote by SMS (textos) and we eliminate one member of the cabinet / parliament / assembly per week.

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After the show I played tourist and got her to autograph her book which I proudly brought home. Jessica and I walked home and repeated jokes in the street. She remembered just as many as I did. It was great fun.

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