Laugh In
Stephanie Seymour, Natasha Lyonne, David Blaine and more gathered to celebrate the launch of Dan Colen’s “A Real Bronx Cheer,” an artist book comprised of God jokes, drawn by Colen and Matt Kenny and written by legendary concert promoter Ron Delsener.
“Jesus walks into a motel,” began Stephanie Seymour from the stage of Smalls Jazz Club Tuesday night, as the magician David Blaine stood behind her slowly being suffocated by shrink-wrap, “throws a bag of nails on the counter and says to the manager, ‘Can you put me up for the night?’”
She was just getting warmed up.
“Two nuns were riding their bikes around the Vatican…” she continued, the punch-line too naughty to reprint here.
Indeed it was a strange, amusing, and entirely irreverent scene—one of many, in fact—to celebrate the launch of Dan Colen’s “A Real Bronx Cheer,” an artist book comprised of God jokes, drawn by Colen and Matt Kenny and written by legendary concert promoter Ron Delsener. The evening, which was produced by Richard Prince, whose Fulton Ryder publishing house put out the book, featured performances from a motley crew including Jack Walls, Natasha Lyonne, Mykki Blanco, Kalup Linzy, and writer/comedian Uncle Dirty (née Bob Altman), all of whom, accompanied by the band TV Baby, recited poetry, sang songs, and spewed one-liners on the topic of faith. And while not everything was a sacrilege affair—Lyonne recited an existential passage from Hannah and Her Sisters—it was undoubtedly the cheap material that garnered the most cheers.
Photos: Hugo Glendinning
