In her skinny jeans and BulletBoys T-shirt, Talia Reese looks like any other stand-up delivering a late-night set in a Greenwich Village comedy club.
But while others bemoan their sex lives (or lack thereof), Reese is taking on the dietary rules she and her husband live by: “He wouldn’t be upset if he caught me in bed with another man — unless we were eating a ham sandwich.”
So much for her racy, onstage persona.
“I’m an Orthodox Jewish mom in Great Neck with two little kids doing stand-up comedy with sex jokes in the city, and then performing at a synagogue fund-raiser in front of rabbis and doing mikveh jokes,” Reese says. “Sometimes it feels like a double life.”
She’ll have plenty of material when she starts her six-day residency at Atlantic City’s Borgata Comedy Club beginning Sunday. Growing up on Long Island in an observant Jewish home, Reese kvelled when someone recently compared her to her idol.
“As a little girl I grew up going to the Catskills to see Joan Rivers. I never imagined it would be me up there,” says the 30-something Reese, who majored in music at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directed Bloomers, the school’s esteemed female comedy troupe.
But being Orthodox has its code of conduct, and when she was offered an assistant’s job at “Saturday Night Live,” she was forced to pass, since she can’t work Friday and Saturday, the Jewish sabbath.
As a little girl I grew up going to the Catskills to see Joan Rivers. I never imagined it would be me up there.
So she opted for the “practical” law school route and went on to work at a few white-shoe firms, doing bankruptcy law. But after about five years, Reese, by then married, was the one feeling bankrupt. She started doing comedy full-time nearly 10 years ago. Along the way, she had two children, now 8 and 10.
“Comedy is that mistress I’ve tried to stay away from,” she says, and her observant mother is still plotzing. “She didn’t speak to me for a while.”
Her long-suffering husband, corporate lawyer Cary Reiss, takes it all in stride, even the jokes about oral sex. “As long as it gets the laugh, I’m fine with it,” he told her.
After a synagogue that booked her for an event found a raunchy clip of hers online, Reese was directed to take out the smut. “It was like a line item veto.” she says, and duly removed it.
At least her daughters approve, she says: “My girls call me a ‘comedy mom’ and ‘let’ me leave every night as long as I send photos of my shows.”
Her life is a constant balancing act of religious life and shtick.
“I run around like a maniac six days a week to get everything done and, no matter what, come Friday at sundown, you have a 25-hour period with your family — TV off, computer off,” Reese says. “It’s like the 18th century.”
Even so, she adds, religion has given her the kind of stability other stand-up comics lack.
“I could be at clubs all night on Thursday, but by Friday the family will have a home-cooked meal for Shabbat dinner and we’re all at the table, saying a blessing over the challah, channeling my roots,” she says.
And comedy’s a great topic after services, when the congregants at Young Israel of Great Neck suggest ways for Reese to include them in her routines.
Indeed, she says, the only other person more popular is the doctor: “I can tell a good joke, but I can’t diagnose their ailments.”
Claude Solnik
Stop scratching on holidays
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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