He took up stand up comedy after he quit drinking and needed something to take up his sudden surfeit of sober free time. Nearly thirty years on, Quinn remains a workhorse, and is sometimes called “the comedian’s comedian” (which some comics and fans consider a dubious designation, a backhanded compliment that’s synonymous with “too brilliant to ever make it big.”) (…)
The Colin Quinn of Tough Crowd, who relished talking about race and ethnicity, is the same one on the Broadway stage, if in exceedingly cleaned up form. He traces familiar Italian hand gestures back to ancient Rome, and explains the differences between the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs based on the particular drugs they used.
Quinn explains that the way Jews, Christians and Muslims pray reveals a lot about them, with Muslims crouched over as if “they know there’s gonna be an explosion.”
PS: they cut the muttered “punchline” to “I’m half Dominican, half Italian, what do you expect?” after which Quinn adds, “Not much, then…”
