“So Mizzou won for the first time…ever…ever,” comedy legend Bill Cosby said as he kicked off his sold-out show at the Fox Theatre yesterday afternoon (Sunday, Oct. 24) afternoon. “You know there are going to be some old people saying, ‘well Mizzou won, so I guess I can go on ‘head and leave here.’ Well I want to stick around for a while.”
He had captured guests’ hearts and tickled their funny bone by paying attention to local current events, and never let go as he proceeded to keep them in stitches from start to finish of his nearly two hour set that included new material mixed with the family brand of classic bits that made him a star.
Husband and wife woes from Adam and Eve to his own marriage were the primary topic of his show – that felt more like a conversation from a wise elder than an orchestrated attempt to elicit laughter.
“I’m certain there were some pages missing from the bible,” Cosby said. “What? God didn’t write the bible…he wasn’t the writer, the editor or the publisher.”
But he goes through the story with what he believes to be true.
“God was a single parent,” Cosby said.
And in Cosby’s set – as in life – after love and marriage come children.
“You know what the curse that God placed on Adam and Eve for what they did in the garden – for eating that apple,” Cosby said. “Children…that’s right – I said it – children are a curse.”
With his disclaimer came a host of stories from his days as a parent that had guests not only laughing, but standing up to holler out in agreement.
“All of you newlyweds who don’t have children and you say ‘I won’t treat my kids that way…yes you will,” Cosby said. “When you have the first child, you’ll say I don’t want the baby to be around germs or to eat preservatives and to be natural and this and that. Let me tell you something, by the third child, you’ll feed it anything.”
Family spats, loveless quarrels and words of wisdom that everyone could relate to as went through his family from the birth of his own children, his grandchildren and facing an empty nest with someone full of maternal instinct.
He even managed to veer into a few moments of his own childhood and experiences in the course of t he show.
The only misstep in Cosby’s set was when he realized he was short on time and stopped in the middle of a story about his Godzilla obsessed grandson to make way for his preferred ending – the story of man and wife when they are left home alone.
“You might as well face it, you are your wife’s oldest child, so when the rest of them leave…well….”
Hilarious stories of being physically violated (having his foot pumiced and nose hairs tweezed in his sleep) for the sake of his wife’s motherly angst rounded out the show.
“How could you not see these,” Cosby said his wife told him while dangling five nostril strands in front of him. “Face it; everything about you will bother her.”
