On Saturday, red-hot comedian Aziz Ansari filled the sold-out State Theatre in Minneapolis with a show he dubbed the "Dangerously Delicious Tour."
He should have called it the "Short and Sweet Tour."
While nonstop funny, Ansari's set clocked in at about 55 minutes -- as brief a performance as you're likely to see at a big-theater show.
Buzzing with energy as the night began, the crowd of 2,100-plus gave Ansari a rousing greeting. Dapper in a gray-and-black suit, he hit the stage to the booming sound of Kanye West's new song "Power."
Over the past year, the 27-year-old has given his fans a lot to be excited about. After wrapping the second season of NBC's "Parks and Recreation," he hosted the MTV Movie Awards on June 6. His growing list of film credits include 2009's Judd Apatow film "Funny People," in which he played an obnoxious, sex-obsessed comedian named Randy (or as Ansari says, "Raaaaaaaandy!"). He parlayed the role into a series of Internet-only shorts that have generated a cult following for the character.
Ansari's humor is steeped in the language of his young audience. On Saturday, he barrelled through well-oiled bits about Twitter, texting and Wikipedia. Sex was a big topic, too, which he expounded on at length, often with methodical precision. The beauty in Ansari's humor is his conversationalist style. Instead of one-joke punch lines, he guided the audience through a sustained high. Thus, his long bit about shooting porn in the back of a donut shop would take an entire review to dissect.
The same goes for his thoughts on race. Unlike Chris Rock, whose racial observations can feel like blunt objects in his stand-up, Ansari likes to investigate the minutiae of racism. Instead of delving into his experience of growing up in South Carolina, Ansari chose to point out what he called "terribly ineffective racism." Case in point: when a racist uses a slur so obscure it takes some explaining.
"What'd you say?" Ansari said. "Spell it for me!"
