Sinbad breaks down barriers at Hilton

Monday, Aug. 23, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.

Remarkable.

We're living in an age when every sentence seems to end in a four-letter word, with several others mindlessly scattered around for no apparent reason. Audiences have almost come to expect every entertainer to drop a few expletive deleteds on them during his or her act.

But Sinbad isn't your average comedian.

At 6-foot-5 inches, the imposing comic is head and shoulders above his peers -- in size and in sensibility.

He is affable, frequently smiling, as he paces the stage and seemingly pulls humorous observations out of the air, interspersing them with comments directed at specific fans in the audience.

To one group of fans taking a handful of empty seats down front several minutes after the show began, he said, "Where you been?"

One member of the party replied they had been at the back of the room and decided to move up front.

"So you wait in the back to see if anybody is going to show up then you made your move to the front," Sinbad grinned and turned to the audience. "You see, they finally learned from my people. Black people are the only ones who do that.

"I've been waiting for a family of white people to sit in the back and then say, 'Come on, come on, come on' and act like they belong in the seats. White people will not sit in an empty row even if no one shows up. Black people, 15 minutes to the show and it's ours. Even if they show up late -- uh-uh. Nope. You should have been here on time."

He turned back to the targets of his humor.

"When they show up, don't move," he said. "Be like black people. Get an attitude. Don't look at them. Just look away. Don't be apologetic. Don't you break down. Once you make the move, you stay in that seat. You make eight different people come in and look at the ticket.

"If another family of white people show up, they won't take the seats. They'll just go back to the back. But if they're black people, get up. Just get up. I can't help you. I got to be on their side. I got to stay with my people this time."

But then all people seem to be Sinbad's people. His humor crosses cultural lines.

Sinbad commented on the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson, who is on trial in Redwood City, Calif., for allegedly killing his wife, Laci, while carrying on an affair with Amber Frey.

"Things are not always as they seem," Sinbad said. "We live in some crazy times. There was a time when I just knew Scott Peterson killed his wife. Now, I'm like, yeah, Amber Frey might have killed her."

He said he doesn't think Peterson or Simpson killed their respective spouses.

"I think Scott knows what happened, I just don't think he did it," Sinbad said. "Just like O.J. didn't do it. But O.J. knows the people that showed up in the yard and killed her.

"He said, 'I didn't kill her.' They didn't ask him if he knew who did."

Sinbad began his show by making light of the oft-repeated Vegas slogan, "What happens here, stays here."

"No it don't," he said. "What happens here is on tape. They have a camera in every room on every block. If you did it here ... they're watching it right now in security.

"If you have a life somewhere else, remember that."

Sinbad often starts an observation with, "We live in a crazy world," or "We have lost our minds."

"We're worried about the wrong stuff," he said in an exasperated tone. "Paris Hilton lost her dog. I don't care about your dog. It's not a dog, it's a rat, it's a Chihuahua. You didn't lose your dog, another rat saw it and took it home.

"They put it on the news. She lost her dog. People were worried. I don't care."