Life of the Party

Amy Schumer fearlessly commands the stage with her take on sex and drinking

By Michael Shashoua / Jester editor-in-chief

Comedian Amy Schumer’s digital album debut, “Cutting,” out on April 26, may be a wider audience’s first exposure to her persona and material. Schumer draws heavily on Sarah Silverman’s manner of finding humor in being oblivious to political correctness and social graces, but overlays that with a “Sex & The City”-like party girl demeanor.

Take a couple of pieces toward the middle of the 45-minute album, “Jews” and “Mexicans,” where she says, first, that she recently returned to her homeland, pausing – “Miami,” and secondly, “nothing works 100 percent of the time” – again, a pause – “except Mexicans.” Schumer does show fearless “anything goes” spontaneity that would fit in well on a Comedy Central Roast show. For instance, she talks about going to sleep with a guy who looks like Robert Pattinson only to find out when she wakes up that he looks more like Gov. Patterson. It's a joke without even a whiff of political correctness and constructed exactly like something that would work well at a roast.

“Cutting” is sexually explicit all the way through – as on “Get Tested Denise,” where Schumer speaks freely of a college roommate who was so stupidly slutty that she begged off getting an STD test by saying, “it’s not like I have lesions or something.” And, Schumer opines with her sometimes spacey voice, “I thought the freshman 15 were just how many dudes …  ”

Schumer’s stand-up takes place in a world of blackout drinking, partying and casual sex, which keeps it simpler than the layers of irony Sarah Silverman might craft with the same ideas. But Schumer has enough of an element of surprise to her material to make it funny and entertaining. With “Cutting,” she no doubt will be on her way to becoming better known.