dan's jams - music reviews

Tired. I'm sorry, Lisa, but your album just wears me out. And it's what, 40 minutes? A slight rip-off for a full-priced comedy CD, since most performers consistently deliver 60 minutes of better material.

Take It Like A Man is essentially a fiery composite of every racial joke you've ever heard, funny or not, told from the point of view of a white woman who is racially hateful "just for the humor of it" and trying to save face by aligning herself with the butts of her jokes, like her professed penchant for black boyfriends without jobs and prison records. Far be it for me to say that anyone can't say what they want to and crack jokes about anyone, but it comes across coldly and flip so often that I couldn't help but feel like I'd picked this CD up off a White Power website or something. Don't get me wrong, some of the funniest humor going on at this point in time (2005) is racially, sexually, or politically scathing (Carlos Mencia, Dave Chapelle, South Park, Family Guy), but it's just not working for me coming out of the mouth of a white woman that only marginally tries to aleviate the discomfort in laughing at these jokes with half-hearted attempts of placation. If you can see past that, you may very well love this, but I can't, so I didn't.