Via FacebookTim Lee, a scientist-turned-comedian, has found a niche in Microsoft PowerPoint. Lee concludes a two-night stand at the Atlas Performing Arts Center tonight, returning after a sold-out run last year.
In his set on Friday, Lee observed that the H Street area has changed a lot: “When I first came here, there were drunks on the streets. Now they’ve pushed them into the bars.” Judging from the rest of the show, tonight should offer confident and amusing, if mostly safe, comedic fare. The guy knows how to build a joke—particularly with slides that mesh scientific method with the more trivial aspects of our lives—such as a line graph that charts cat video producers. He explains the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle with a picture of a television set placed over a urinal: “The more I know about what’s on the TV, the less I know about where I’m peeing.”
Lee’s Ph.D. in biology is what sets him apart from most other comedians, and he’s at his funniest when he continues to draw from this store of knowledge and wit. Unfortunately, bits of the show do lapse into fairly tepid standard open-mic fare—observations on women, relationships, Los Angeles.
He should stick with the science.
And mostly, he does. Chuckles will rise and converge as he smoothly glides from the Ninja Turtles to Charles Darwin, ribbing our culture one analytical slide and theorem at a time.
