Best Friend Sinbad

Remember when my sabbatical ended on the most glorious note? When I found my best friend? When Sinbad tweeted at me? Twice!

My best friend Sinbad came back around to the New York area for a friendship visit with me and 348 other people. On the rainiest night of Spring, Eddie and I drove up to Nyack as the sunset for a 9:30 PM show after thinking all day we’d be going to the 7:30 show and then printing out the tickets and realizing, hey, the show starts past my bedtime. Good thing we looked at the tickets before leaving, though.

Side note: when I was an undergrad in Oneonta, we would drive through Nyack to get there. There are apparently a South Nyack and a North Nyack, and the signs say (or used to say to my recollection) So Nyack and No Nyack, so we’d entertain ourselves by saying, Soooooo Nyack?  Nooooo Nyack! This was entertaining back then. Okay, who am I kidding? Still entertaining now. Also entertaining? Mooing at cows.

The Palisades Mall is like a small village, but we easily found the parking lot we needed to be in, which was pretty full. That meant walking in the rain, but it wasn’t too bad. A plus–the line for the club was inside, unlike the line we stood on for Wheel of Fortune or when we went to see Santa at the Montauk Lighthouse.

Waiting on line with Eddie is a bit of a challenge, especially when I’m wearing rainboots and not heels. We like each other, we really do, but since he’s almost a foot taller than I am, having a conversation in a noisy place poses a bit of a problem. I’ll say something to him;  he’ll stare off into space. I’ll nudge him and say, I said something to you. He’ll say, What? I’ll say, Nevermind I don’t remember. Then we stare in different directions again.

One thing I was trying to point out to him was a woman standing on line on the other side of the rope (the line was like a line from a theme park). Her shirt said: Nah. And then right under that it said: –Rosa Parks, 1955. I thought this was Hil. Air. Eee. Us. However, trying to point it out loud enough for Eddie to hear but not for the woman to know I was talking about her proved to be impossible. But it’s a funny shirt, right? Right.

We were let into the club at around 9:30 PM. So the show didn’t start then. We were seated at a table towards the front around people who were quiet and looking at their phones for the most part. We ordered food (do not get the pretzel at Levity Live if you’ve ever had an authentic NYC street pretzel–it’s just not okay) and drinks (an unsweetened iced tea because I’m wild). Then the host came out.

The host was not the club host. He was Sinbad’s host. I think his name was Devin, so let’s call him that. He made us laugh about being in Nyack but not ready for the city, and he was mispronouncing Nyack until someone in the crowd corrected him. At one point, he forgot part of his act and looked it up on his phone, which was actually pretty funny, and it worked out only because what he said afterwards was funny. Unfortunately, not exactly memorable, but I know we laughed. [SIDE NOTE: I just mis-typed laughed so badly that spell check thought I wanted to say lathered. Now that’s comedy.]

Here’s the difference between comics and long-standing career comics: Sinbad came out and the very first thing he said had the entire club howling. It was something as simple as feeling old and wanting to sit down. It was pure funny. Eddie and I were laughing loudly out loud. The cell phone couple across from us were offering up huge belly laughs. The entire room woke up with non-stop giggles and hoots and table-slapping.

Devin stayed on stage the whole show. He was like a backup singer for a musical act, chiming in every now and then, and answering questions when asked directly by Sinbad. For the most part, though, it was all Sinbad, doing his thing and interacting with the audience. So quick. So witty. So obviously thankful for being able to do that for a living.