Wright On, Brother

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More About

• Steven Wright
• Steve-O
• Grand Canyon National Park
• Porta-Potty
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

The best way to describe Steven Wright’s brand of comedy is to imagine Steve-O of MTV’s Wild Boyz being pushed over the Grand Canyon inside a flaming Porta Potty while a blind, one-armed midget with epilepsy tattoos his forehead. Now if you can picture the complete opposite of that, it would be Wright. His comedy is as far from Steve-O school of idiocy as Bill Maher is from Bill O’Reilly (that’s pretty damn far). Unfortunately, in a comedy landscape where cheap laughs are considered the soup du jour, where fart sounds and nut shots get more yuks than clever, sardonic wit, comedians with Wright’s genius are in short supply. He doesn’t bash watermelons with clubs, slip into profanity-laced tirades, or crawl around the stage like a coked-up jackass. Instead Wright just serves up brilliant one-liners like this: "Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect." And he does it with such a deadpan, monotone delivery, you wonder how he keeps a straight face. @body:Ironically, after more than a quarter-century in the industry, numerous movie and television credits, and an Academy Award (1987, best short film), Wright is probably best known from e-mail forwards of ironic jokes – jokes often incorrectly attributed to the comic. But nothing can match the real thing, and you can catch Wright at 8 p.m. Tuesday as he drops by the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale). Tickets cost $19.50 to $34.50. Call 954-462-0222, or visit www.browardcenter.org.
Tue., Jan. 31