By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 11 years ago

Comedian Aziz Ansari on the ridonkulousness of marriage

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Nothing helps demonstrate the absurdity of society’s sacred institutions like a little bit of comedy.

In his new Netflix stand-up special, Buried Alive, Aziz Ansari takes on just how weird the institution of marriage is…

“Imagine if marriage didn’t exist, and you’re a guy and you ask someone to get married. Imagine what that conversation would be like. You’d be the guy and you’d be like,

[guy’s voice]: Hey, so we’ve been hanging out all the time, spending a lot of time together and everything.

[girl’s voice]: Yeah, yeah. I know.

[guy’s voice]: I wanna keep doing that … til you’re dead. I want to keep hanging out with you until one of us dies. Put this ring on your finger so people know we have an arrangement.”

[girl’s voice]: Who’s that guy?

[guy’s voice]: It’s a priest. I want you to swear to god you won’t back out of this deal.

[girl’s voice]: What’s he wheeling in?

[guy’s voice]: It’s a cake with two tiny dolls that look like us. Eat a slice! Now feed a little bit to me.

[girl’s voice]: This is really strange. Why are we doing this?

[guy’s voice]: Tax purposes.”

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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