Situation Comedy

There are only seven days left before the presidential election, and W. Kamau Bell is realizing he has some work to do for his winter standup tour, The Kamau Mau Uprising. "By the time the show comes through Cleveland, there will either be a new administration in office or it will be the second term of America's first black president," says Bell by phone in late October. "So basically all of my jokes are going to be irrelevant in about a week." Either way, it shouldn't be a problem when Bell takes the Grog Shop stage on Dec. 13, as he's learned to craft new material rather quickly for his television show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, which premiered on FX in August. It's also a skill he's been working on since before he could vote. "I pretty much learned how to write comedy in high school when I learned how to write term papers," says Bell. "State your premise, prove your premise, close strong. ... If there's no punch line around it, it's just a bad lecture." 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs