On television, the sitcom title appears as BOB 💓 ABISHOLA. She's the actress who plays Abishola's co-worker, best friend and fellow African on the show that's set in Detroit. Gina Yashere is an actress, comedian and one of the sitcom's writers. I was taking an online stroll through Netflix and found a Gina Yashere stand-up comedy special. She had me laughing in the first 5 minutes of her 1 hour and 7-minute special.
She grew up in England, the daughter of Nigerian parents. She talks about her mother, about air travel, about a wave of looting in London and the Olympics in London. I don't know when this show was taped in San Francisco, before a packed and racially diverse audience that loved he infectious personality, but I'm guessing it was in 2012 when London hosted the Olympics and years before she was tapped to be a regular on the hit CBS sitcom, BOB 💓 ABISHOLA.
Her first bit, about stand-up comedy show producers booking talent on less than stellar airlines, made me laugh because it's so true. I'm not a stand-up comedian. However, I was hired to be a contributor on some TV specials and had to fly out of town for the assignments. One producer I worked for I shall not name. But I will tell you that he's the jovial weekday weatherman on a very popular network morning news show. It's on the network that gave us FRIENDS and SEINFELD. The weatherman has his own production company and did specials for FOOD NETWORK. I was a contributor in a few of those specials.
He always booked me an economy seat on U.S. Airways, an airline that was nicknamed "U.S. Scareways" by many flyers. Remember in THE WIZARD OF OZ when Dorothy was in her bedroom and her house went up in the tornado? That was a smoother ride than any one I ever had on U.S. Airways. When we'd arrived at our destination, a flight attendant would get on the speaker. Instead of saying "We've landed, please stay seated until we come to a full stop," she'd say "Hey! We're alive!"
Yashere's comedy is bright, brisk and often blue. She talks about Africa in the London Olympics, teen crime in London, visiting Las Vegas, her delight at seeing Hispanics in America, the rap music industry, her aging vagina, why she doesn't do drugs and why she's childless.
Yashere is an out gay talent today. She does not mention being gay in this special. The things that she does mention are very funny. I loved her take on the differences in racial behavior. They're not racist, as she stresses, they're observational. And she's right when focusing on the different behaviors of Black and White people.
I'll put it to you like this: I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, a short distance from Compton. After I graduated from a university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I worked in that city for 10 years before accepting a TV job offer to work in New York City.
In all those locations in all those years, I never once saw a Black person on Halloween who had dressed up his or her little dog to look like a chicken. That was something the other folks did. Here us a taste of comedian Gina Yashere on Netflix.
If you need something to tickle your spirits and one hour, go to Netflix and watch GINA YASHERE: LAUGHTING to AMERICA.
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