Bill Maher at Lincoln Center

November 9, 2:46 PMLong Island Pop Culture ExaminerKailyn Terlato

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Last night, Bill Maher did a stand up comedy show at the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The opening act of the evening was Marina Franklin, who you may know from the Jay Leno show.  She had a fairly entertaining opener with jokes ranging from her name, ("a place where you dock boats") to disagreeing with how other black women raise their children, (her physical acting here was hysterical!).  She received a fairly warm reception with a couple good rounds of applause for some of the zingers in her act.

Then, thankfully very shortly after, Bill Maher hit the stage.  He tackled his usual topics, including some material we have heard before on his HBO show, "Real Time With Bill Maher", (such as "I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma!"), but to be able to clap and cheer him on with the points that the audience concurred with created a strong sense of satisfaction.

At one point in the show, Maher mocked the Muslim culture with a "fashion show" consisting of four ladies dressed in the exact same garb while Maher read off his description of each "new outfit" with such gems as "this one has a seductively plunging eye-hole", and things of that nature.

Maher also included some new material where he talked briefly about Michael Jackson's death and other recent newsworthy topics, and included also some new material on his classics, like Bush, religion and Sarah Palin.

All in all, it was a great show and Maher went above and beyond in the hour and a half that he was on stage.  The good thing about Maher's shows is that you have a reprieve of enjoyable seriousness between jokes so that you don't feel like you're stretching your smile to your ears by the time you leave.  Watching him on stage felt like watching a beginning of "Real Time" that was stretched out to fit a larger block of time.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing.