Smart. Outspoken. Opinionated. Three-time Emmy Award winner Wanda Sykes is back! Reigning over everything from television sitcoms to feature films, this comedienne extraordinaire has returned in her second solo HBO comedy special, I’ma Be Me. Live from Washington D.C. and edgier than ever, Wanda holds nothing back as she riffs on the perks of having a black President, coming out, getting married, motherhood, aging and twenty-first century pirates. With her trademark wit, Wanda shocks and astonishes at every turn in this feature-length special.Blunt and exasperated, standup comedian and sitcom star Wanda Sykes launches into politics, race, and sex without hesitation or fear–and sometimes talks about all three at once. This is not comedy for the easily offended, liberal or conservative. Stalking the stage in a metallic silver jacket and vest, Sykes talks about how having a black president has eased the need to be dignified for the sake of the collective African-American image (only she says that in far more pungent and far funnier language) before gliding through such wide-ranging topics as Somali pirates, the metric system, and leaf blowers. Unsurprisingly, a big chunk of her performance tackles her life as a lesbian, but Sykes avoids anything sanctimonious or preachy. Instead, she contrasts being gay and being black and decides that being gay is harder because she never had to come out as black–then she rattles off a sidesplitting routine about what that might have been like. Kegel exercises, Michael Jackson, impotence–it’s all fair game. Her final segment about getting her first bikini wax is both hysterical and cringe inducing. Sykes’s humor comes with a strong dose of upfront honesty (about herself and the crazy contradictions of American culture); anyone who likes that sort of thing should check out Wanda Sykes: I’ma Be Me. –Bret Fetzer

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