“Concert review: Funny Fluffy searches for a new direction in Plaza show” |
| Concert review: Funny Fluffy searches for a new direction in Plaza show Posted: 16 Jan 2011 04:24 PM PST Click photo to enlarge Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias performed Friday at the Plaza Theatre.  He talked about that Friday at the Plaza, the first of a sold-out, three-night run in the old movie palace that will continue through Sunday (he goes on at 8 tonight, 7 p.m. Sunday). "That was awesome that last time. We definitely put El Paso on the map," the Fluffy one proclaimed at the start of a thoughtful, funny and occasionally meandering performance that ran just shy of two hours in length.How much have things changed? Well, let's put it this way, during a performance filled with peaks, valleys, asides, an ensemble's worth of voices, his trademark sound effects, lots of new, mostly developing material and even a few greatest hits (including an updated version of the racist gift basket story), the man his mama calls Fluffy discussed everything from the perks of his growing stardom to pondering marriage to having his tour bus pulled over by the Border Patrol. It happened in, where else, Arizona, even though his circular mug was plastered all over the bus. He showed pictures on the video screen to prove it, the most telling one showing Iglesias and his mostly Hispanic entourage leaning against the side of the bus ready to be frisked. The picture was not staged, he noted. It was taken by his expletive-spewing bus driver, who's a gringo (my word, not his)."Now, of all the times I'm getting recognized," he said incredulously, recalling that as cars whizzed by, some of their occupants yelled things like "Fluffy!," "He's American!" and "Damn!," Fluffy's signature word for describing his considerable girth. There was no hint of animosity, no effort to turn this into a racial profiling incident. That would have been too easy, and Fluffy's not like that, though his increased travels may be opening his eyes to how his race is viewed in other parts of the country. Fluffy's a big teddy bear of a raconteur, a mostly PG comic storyteller who, like Jerry Seinfeld, finds the comedic in the absurd, the mirth in the mundane. But growing stardom is changing his world, putting the approachable everyman comic in a precarious position. His comedy is studiously broad, not ethnic, and stardom has a way of turning everymen into exclusive men. Iglesias long has prided himself on his accessibility to his growning legion of fans, but he's clearly learning to cope with the growing demands, and embarrassments (see above), that go with his increased fame. The first portion of Friday's performance was devoted to the topic. He joked about not getting any perks from Chico's Tacos, despite namechecking the El Paso institution in the "I'm Not Fat ... I'm Fluffy" DVD. The guy who still gets cakes from fans years after doing a bit about how he likes the sweet confection said his step-son was inundated with free Transformers toys after he mentioned it in the El Paso-shot DVD. His girlfriend suggested he plug Bed, Bath and Beyond and five gift cards showed up. He gets recognized a lot more these days. "People are freaking out," he said. The temptation to exploit it can be strong. A restaurant employee asked if he was really Gabriel Iglesias. "I don't know," he answered. "Is the food free?" But every time his head gets a little big, something knocks him down a peg. Iglesias reveled in the fact that two kids passed up a photo opp with some costumed Disney characters to have their picture taken with him (his imitation of a cursing Mickey was hilarious). "I didn't get attention as a kid, so it's on," he said. But he soon was cut down to size when one of the kids thought he was a repo man. Iglesias didn't focus strictly on his newfound fame. Too much of that would have been indulgent. Once he got that out of the way, Iglesias bounced from topic to topic, pausing at times to think of what he wanted to say next. Iglesias prefers to be extemporaneous over being pat. He talked about contemplating marriage to his longtime girlfriend (he doesn't want to feel he has to do it). He did a bit about different ethnicities' dance music, candidly said he wanted to lose weight ("I'm big, but I still move. I'm not like one of those guys you see on the Discovery Channel") and turned a pregnancy scare into a clever story about fame and a rushed trip to Walgreen's. One of his best bits managed to roll stardom and ethnicity into one. Touring the tony Hamptons for the first time, the rental car GPS had a snobby voice ("Are you going to steal me," he said in a perfect English accent) and he encountered a gardener in a dumpy white truck who was being paid to talk like a Mexican. It's a joke he revisited to great effect late in the set. That's what Iglesias does so well, thread funny but true stories through a performance, then tying them neatly together by the show's end. He didn't do as much of that Friday night. The material is still in a formative stage where all the dots haven't been connected yet, but should be by the time the cameras roll on his next special this summer. It's no surprise that the guy who's reluctant to do his "greatest hits" got some of his biggest laughs doing just that for the last 30 minutes of the performance. He tacked that on, I'm sure, because El Paso has been like a second home to him for a long time and he felt he owed it to the crowd, and, let's face it, some of the newer material fell a bit flat. His 2009 shows felt like concerts, thanks to the presence of TV cameras. Friday's show felt more like a comedy club, a 2,000-seat comedy club, complete with product-schilling video screen, lighted Fluffy logos and four of his buddies as opening acts. Martin Moreno was the very funny, very quick host who had some clever insights on how technology is changing our world, not necessarily for the better. Rick Gutierrez took that middle-aged, old-school perpective up a few notches, his bald head, bug eyes and rapid-fire delivery making his disdain for soft, video-game playing, computer-addicted couch potato kids all the funnier. Alfred Robles is not as well-honed as the others. His jokes were as much hit as miss and his delivery is a little too monochromatic. Noe Gonzalez's humor focuses mostly on his diminutive size - he's 5' 2" - which could have, but didn't get tiresome, mostly because his use of rubbery facial expressions and physical humor (the moped bit was particularly funny) went a long way. Obviously, Iglesias has come along way since he started doing this 14 years ago. He's on the verge of something bigger now, announcing at the end of the show that he's going to start producing a stand-up comedy show in Phoenix because, "The fact that I'm shooting it there will make people talk." He'll probably never stop being the every man, but you get the impression that his comedy is about to expand on become more worldly. The things he's encountered may be changing his awareness of how the world views his race. He plans to load up a beatup old white pickup truck with lawn mowers and hidden cameras for the new show to "see what happens when people get stopped." Clearly, nothing's stopping Gabriel Iglesias. He's a talent whose time has finally come. Doug Pullen may be reached at dpullen@elpasotimes.com; 546-6397. Read Pullen My Blog at elpasotimes.com/blogs. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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