Theater/Classical Music

Family. Politics. Marriage. The economy.

Stand-up comedian Sinbad looks for - and finds - something funny in all of them.

This Saturday, Sinbad brings his show to Morongo Casino Resort and Spa in Cabazon.

Sinbad's good-natured, clean humor has brought comparisons to Bill Cosby, but he takes mild exception to that.

"There's only one Cosby," he said in a telephone interview. "I think it does him a disservice and myself."

Sinbad feels those comparisons are a simple way of putting comedians into categories: "If you're dirty, you're Richard Pryor. If you're clean, you're Bill Cosby."

Either way, Sinbad said, "It's still about being funny."

And while Sinbad is a big admirer of Cosby, he doesn't hesitate to praise comics who have worked on the blue side, including performers like Pryor and Lenny Bruce.

"They changed the game for everybody," Sinbad said. "I'm a big fan. If a guy's funny, he's funny."

Sinbad says he finds material for his own act everywhere. Recently, he's poked fun at elderly couples who've been married so long they wear the same bifocals; the trouble men get into for telling women the truth; and homebuyers who bought a $3 million house for a dollar a month - then were surprised when the payments went up.

"There's no demographic," he said of his audience. "It's young, it's old, it's all colors, all shapes and sizes."

Sinbad hasn't appeared much on film or TV in the past few years, prompting some to think he hasn't been active. That's why he called his recent Comedy Central television special "Sinbad: Where U Been?"

"When people don't see you in the movies or on TV, they think you went somewhere," Sinbad said.

But he's been performing his standup act steadily since 1983. And while Sinbad looks forward to doing more TV or film projects in the future, he remains a standup comedian, first and foremost.

"There's nothing that compares to being a standup comic," Sinbad said. "It can't be judged -- if people laugh, you can't say it doesn't work. Everything else I've had is because of standup."