Anyone who’s grown tired of watching videos of famous dead comedians should google Sinbad, the performer many people forgot was still alive. They’ll find a genuinely talented comic (if funny in a different way than you thought when you were 7) with a unique knack for skewering human nature while keeping the jokes clean.
Sinbad (legal name: David Adkins), who performs this Saturday at the Rio Theatre, was most famous in the ’90s for his work in family flicks like First Kid, House Guest and Jingle All the Way—plus for a few outrageous outfits dating back to the 1980s.
He isn’t exactly swimming in praise in the new century. Comedy Central named Sinbad the 78th funniest comedian of all time in 2004—right in between Paul Reiser of Mad About You sitcom fame and the some guy named Dom Irerra from Pennsylvania. The dismal ranking probably wasn’t Sinbad’s proudest publicity moment, but it wasn’t his lowest either. That may have come in 2006 when Maxim—citing his questionable fashion sense, oversized earrings and what the editors termed “his shitty jokes”—named him the all-time worst.
To be fair, the Christian comic, who hosted the 2008 family-oriented DVD special Thou Shalt Laugh 3, isn’t exactly courting the Maxim crowd. He doesn’t swear in his routines. And much of his material focuses on family issues with an added edge—like getting your 23-year-old to move out of the house by walking around naked—although he covers a wide range of topics.
“I talk about everything that everyone else talks about. I just don’t curse,” Sinbad tells Santa Cruz Weekly. “It’s got the same bite. I talk about every subject under the sun. I just found a way to do it where you can bring the whole family.”
In addition to stand-up comedy, weird outfits and movie success, there was a time when Sinbad was famous in part just for being Sinbad. Americans couldn’t turn on their TV without seeing his perpetual grin. Sinbad was on The Cosby Show, a Cosby Show spinoff, and twice appeared on Bill Nye The Science Guy. He was in an infomercial for the Tae Bo fitness workout and in commercials for Polaroid cameras.
There’s a typical explanation for why performers like Sinbad fall into disfavor: they changed, we tell ourselves. It happens to all our favorites—Green Day, the cast of Saturday Night Live, Bob Dylan. (Hardcore Dylan fans love going on the defensive to pretend their favorite former folk singer’s new music is just as good these days, just different.)
With Sinbad that’s not the case. Sinbad didn’t change. We did. In 2012, Sinbad’s straightforward, curse-free jokes about family and relationships seem even further from the edge than they used to be. We’ve adapted to forms of comedy that are more shocking (Sarah Silverman, Sasha Baron Cohen)—or super awkward (Flight of the Conchords, Zak Galifianakis).
Sinbad’s audiences even stand a slim chance of learning something. The comedian provides the most entertaining relationship or dating advice in town. He’s told women to seek out a man with only one tooth. “You can get him a few teeth,” Sinbad joked in the 2010 comedy special Where U Been? “Other women don’t see what you see.”
The 55-year-old offers advice for single men too. In the same special he shared that older men should ignore young gold diggers and instead chase down “women that know the signs of stroke.” He personally likes a woman who keeps his medicine in her purse.
In addition to his comedy specials and a rigorous touring schedule, Sinbad recently had a two-week stint on 2010’s Celebrity Apprentice: Season 3 and hosted a short-lived reality show about his family life on the Women’s Entertainment channel.
The touring comedian needs the work, given his alleged financial troubles. In late 2009 a number of sources, including the Associated Press, reported that he owed almost 10 million dollars in income taxes. Sinbad says those claims were exaggerated.
“At the end of the day, if you can keep a fan base and stay true to who you are, that’s the only thing that’s important to me,” Sinbad says. “In this career, you’ll be hot, but you can’t be hot forever, so you’re always waiting for that day. The thing is to never become cold. Just stay lukewarm. As long as you can stay lukewarm, there’s one more run.”
Sinbad
Saturday at 8pm
Rio Theatre
Tickets $37 general/$48 gold circle at www.riotheatre.com
