Since I already mentioned the word mature, I might as well let y’all know that for the second Saturday in two weeks, a grown woman of a certain age in bite-sized heels brought my heart to a state of bliss. Last week it was Auntie Anita Baker. And this week it was “The Mother of Black Hollywood” herself, Kinloch’s own Jenifer Lewis. Listen, I’ve sat through entire urban comedy revues with half of twenty folks on the bill and not had the belly laughter Ms. Lewis served up all by herself Saturday afternoon at the Loretto-Hilton. Imagine having a family reunion where you rent out a theatre and let your famous, and famously funny, cousin act a plum fool for a few hours. It was seriously like a Kinloch community day up on Webster’s campus. And she would gloriously go from raw emotion, to reading folks for filth in a matter of seconds. She probably traumatized some folks into getting their lives together with respect to punctuality and cell phone etiquette. Can you imagine showing up causally late to a show and the star says out of nowhere, “Now what time did your ticket say?” I’ve decided that she needs to do a full-fledged comedy tour when she releases the sequel to “The Mother of Black Hollywood.” Because there are people who can fill arenas but can’t have folks hollering like Ms. Jenifer did. Especially when she was having a tender moment about her daughter and then told everybody that she made sure she fixed her teeth when she took Charmaine in as a little girl. “Show everybody the pretty teeth I bought you,” Lewis said. Charmaine, and everybody else up in there couldn’t do a thing but holler and shake our heads.
