I can’t say I wasn’t warned. The security wands at the Lobero were certainly a clue. And I’d heard inklings of Rob Schneider’s MAGA leanings beforehand.
Plus, the first two people I spotted in the theater on Thursday night were a woman wearing a “F*#$ Gavin” t-shirt with a guy that was wearing one that said “Freedom.”
Then there was the opening voiceover from the comedian himself: “Those of you still in your political echo chambers may want to take this time to pretend you forgot something in your Tesla,” said Schneider, adding a few swear words for emphasis.
Doesn’t he know that Teslas are canceled?
But comedy is no place for censorship, and I was determined to keep an open mind as a pretty good cover band dove into “Sultans of Swing” and Schneider ran onto the stage to sing with them, looking like a short and shinier member of the Blues Brothers in his old-timey hat and suit.
First he came for the immigrants, with jokes about Mexican guys calling ICE to get their mother-in-laws deported and Schneider himself calling ICE in Santa Barbara after a waiter messed up his order.
Trans kids were the next targets, then it was California laws about single use straws and lots of jokes about California in general, and why he moved his family away from here. Then he talked about taking away women’s rights to vote. “Not the small things, you can have the school board … and you can still have Dancing with the Stars,” he joked.
And lots of people in the audience — dare I say most of them, and it was about 50 percent women — thought this was funny. Not so much.
He also made jokes about the WNBA and Rosie O’Donnell and a bunch of other low hanging fruit that is certainly a fair target in comedy as long as you’re somewhat clever or at least slightly fresh and original.
Fresh and original? Not so much.
Between segments, Schneider and the band performed a fairly random and unrelated-to-anything-whatsoever set of cover songs (Elvis Presley, Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson, Tom Jones) and for the first time ever, I wished that a comedian would sing MORE and talk less.
To be fair, he did have a couple of good stories about encounters with Paul McCartney and Robert De Niro (including a spot-on impression) that reminded me that he had once been part of Saturday Night Live (a k a comedy’s lucky sperm club) and has made a pretty good career in Hollywood doing some very funny cameos in films like The Waterboy, Big Daddy, 50 First Dates, Home Alone 2, Click, 50 First Dates, and more.
A little Rob Scheider goes a long way. As Schneider himself pointed out, if we’ve learned anything from social media, it’s that almost anyone can be funny for 59 seconds. But it’s a lot tougher to be funny for an entire evening of stand-up, as I painfully learned from Rob Schneider’s Rescue Husband show.
