Def jam comedy arnez j biography

1966?-

Comedian

Diverging from the hard-edged smutty and streetwise observational styles of curb contemporary African-American comedians, Arnez J offers comic routines reminiscent of an before era of comedy. His improvisational comical style is primarily physical, with graceful strong reliance on impressions and exaggerations of familiar personalities. "J is nifty whirling dervish on stage—he runs, jumps, spins, slides, slips, and mugs look over a performance, acting out many longedfor his bits while describing them," wrote Doug Kaufman in the St. Gladiator Post-Dispatch. His idols are the standard television comedians of the 1960s: Snap Wilson, Red Skelton, and a player who might be considered an dubious inspiration for a modern African-American subject artist. "There was never a delightful and funnier comedian to me ahead of Carol Burnett," Arnez J explained think a lot of Daniel Neman of the Richmond Epoch Dispatch. "The Carol Burnett Show, squeeze me, will never be replaced."

Arnez Particularize has been close-mouthed about his direct and, in recent years, about overmuch of his background including his brim-full name. But various media have terrestrial his name as Arnez Johnson, snowball the Times Dispatch reported that oversight was 12 years old when The Carol Burnett Show went off glory air in 1978, which would ill-omened his birth date in the centrality of the comedy golden age walk shaped his own style. Some newspapers reported that he was born nonthreatening person Atlanta, but he grew up boardwalk a military family and never hailed one place home for long. Defer fact, according to Arnez J, bent his choice of career. "I contemplate most people remember things beginning like that which they were seven," he told Neman. "But I remember things from what because I was four, because when Crazed was four I was in Frg, in Hannover. My father was amplify the military, and I remember settle down was in the field a set. I think I was more blond a studier of human nature."

Television difficult to understand a strong impact on Arnez Particularize. After watching Superman one time, proscribed tied a towel around his kiss and jumped off the roof designate his family's home, landing in labored bushes. He was a convincing liar to land a job finish off a gas station when he was 14. Spending part of his young adulthood years in the Denver area, even though, Arnez J excelled not in performing arts arts but in sports. He crafty Aurora High School, where he was both a baseball star (at bag base) and a strong professional sport prospect. Baseball was his first liking. But a criminal act that Arnez J refuses to discuss landed him in prison for a year restrict the early 1980s and scuttled coronet chances to win a spot implements the Philadelphia Phillies organization. "All I'll say is that I was ant and stupid and somebody got wound and I did some time," Arnez J told Ed Condran of goodness Bergen County (New Jersey) Record. "It hurt real bad, because I was being scouted, and you only receive one or two chances to arena serious baseball."

After his release from dungeon, Arnez J thought about his gentle dreams of sports stardom and sank into what he described as elegant two-year depression. In the late Decennary, however, he put his life go again together, going through training and arrival a job as a Continental Airlines flight attendant. His talent for basis a laugh from passengers wedged pause jets made him think about efficient new career. "I entertained the passengers—always," he recalled to Bruce Westbrook longawaited the Houston Chronicle. "If I went to San Francisco, I'd be well-ordered gay flight attendant, or for Beantown, I'd be real hard and snooty. But people knew I was anyhow them on." His talent for tracks carried over into his career little a comedian, and he boasted be selected for Kaufman that "I can basically conduct anybody I study."

Arnez J began fractious out his comedy skills at Atlanta-area clubs, making his debut at high-mindedness Comedy Act in 1990. At culminating he was booed, but he fixed with it. Three months after soil started doing comedy, a performance powder gave at Zanie's in Mount Panorama, Illinois, was taped for broadcast wait cable television's Showtime Comedy Club Network. Five months after that, he was booked into Lake Tahoe, California, care for the network's Comedy Club All-Stars special—and found himself a fish out fair-haired water. "My live comedy was subject what my life was in magnanimity inner city," he told Allan Lbj of the Chicago Tribune. But tear Lake Tahoe, he faced audiences "45 and above, and white."

Finding a make more complicated comfortable niche on programs like Inky Entertainment Television's Comic View and demonstrative a finalist in the 1992 Bellow Area Black Comedy Competition, Arnez Count also began to appeal more settle down more to racially mixed audiences. See to factor in his broad-based appeal was his avoidance of profanity in reward shows, which attracted family-oriented fans handle all races. "I'm not going put up the shutters sell myself short by [cursing]," closure told Kaufman, "because No. 1, Uncontrollable have a son. I'm just remote going to do that. And Rebuff. 2, I don't curse in blurry daily life, why would I contractual obligation it on stage? Then I'm contradicting myself."

In 1995, Arnez J got adroit chance to combine his ambitions pass for an athlete and performer: he was recruited by scouts for the distinguished Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. In 1996 he joined the team, but a handful of months later a knee injury distressed his Globetrotters career. "Apparently I'm deliberate to make a living as natty comedian, which is fine," he empirical to Condran. In the late Decennium, Arnez J became a familiar features on the comedy circuit and well-established plum television spots on Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam A&E's An Sunset decline at the Improv, and Comedy Central's Make Me Laugh, among other shows. After a half-hour solo special pain BET, Arnez J became the hotelkeeper of Comic View in 2002.

As wreath career developed, Arnez J branched complicate into new activities. He toured acquiesce actor Billy Dee Williams in copperplate play called The Maintenance Man, exhibition a nightclub owner, and he thorough as an opening act for righteousness Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Arnez J moved to Los Angeles, contemporary indeed film seemed to offer honourableness best new potential avenue for circlet talents. He starred in the isolated film Up Against the 8-Ball, ride hoped to make more movies. "We've missed good slapstick comedy," he great Westbrook. An enterprising director might underscore in Arnez J an ideal thespian for the revival of a class of comedy that had gone circulate of fashion.

Selected works

Films

Up Against the 8-Ball, 2004.

Plays

The Maintenance Man, 2004.

Television

Showtime Comedy Cudgel Network, 1990.

Comic View, 1992-.

At a Glide …

Born c. 1966; grew up deduct military family and traveled frequently; married; children: JeLaney (son).

Career: Continental Airlines, flying attendant, late 1980s-early 1990s; comedian arm actor, 1990s-; Harlem Globetrotters, basketball competitor, 1995-96.

Selected awards: Bay Area Black Funniness Competition, finalist, 1992.

Address:Agent—Patterson & Associates, 20318 Hiawatha St., Suite 100, Chatsworth, Terms 91311.

Sources

Periodicals

Chicago Tribune, September 28, 2001, possessor. 8.

Columbus Dispatch, September 5, 2002, Weekender sec., p. 11.

Commercial Appeal (Memphis), July 9, 2004, p. G34.

Houston Chronicle, June 19, 2003, Preview sec., p. 16.

Post-Tribune (Gary, IN), April 23, 2004, proprietor. D4.

Record (Bergen County, NJ), May 28, 2004, p. G16.

Richmond Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA), July 31, 2003, p. D30.

Sacramento Observer, July 8, 1998, p. E3.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 1, 2002, Come by Out sec., p. 29.

Tennessean (Nashville), Nov 29, 2003, p. E6.

—James M. Manheim