Yakov Smirnoff

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Yakov Smirnoff

Born	Yakov Naumovich Pokhis January 24, 1951 (1951-01-24) (age 57) Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Official website

Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Russian: Яков Наумович Похис; born January 24, 1951), better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian, painter and Psychology professor. He was popular in the 1980's for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English. Yakov has a theatre in Branson, MO, where he performs year-round. Yakov is also a professor at Missouri State and Drury universities where he teaches The Business of Laughter.

1 Life
2 Comedy style
- 2.1 "America: What a country!"
- 2.2 Russian reversal
3 9/11 mural
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Life

Smirnoff was born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He was an art teacher in Odessa and continues to paint. He came to the U.S. in 1977 and became an American citizen on July 4, 1986. Smirnoff spent a portion of his early days in this country working as a bartender at Grossingers Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York and living in the employee dormitory.

He was a roommate of comedian Andrew Dice Clay and has appeared in several motion pictures, including Buckaroo Banzai and The Money Pit. Among his numerous appearances on television, he was featured many times on the sitcom Night Court as "Yakov Korolenko". At the peak of his success, he also had a starring role in a 1986-87 television sitcom titled What a Country. In that show, he played a Russian cab driver studying for the U.S. citizenship test. In the late 1980s, Smirnoff was commissioned to provide educational bumper segments for Saturday morning cartoons, punctuated with a joke and Smirnoff's signature laugh. Since 1993, he has been a fixture in Branson, Missouri. He has continued to amass accomplishments including books, CDs, movies, T.V. appearances, a successful Broadway show, As Long As We Both Shall Laugh, and is currently working on a humorous self-help book.

Yakov is a featured writer for AARP magazine, the world’s largest circulation magazine with a distribution of 39 million. Yakov gives readers advice (and a few laughs) in his column entitled, “Happily Ever Laughter”. He also guests at the Skinny Improv in Springfield, Missouri on occasion. In May 2006, Smirnoff received a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught classes at Drury University along with Missouri State University on this topic.

Yakov is developing a new talk show that is based on the important role that laughter plays in healthy relationships. The show will offer enlightenment gift-wrapped in laughter. Yakov calls it enlaughter-ment. Yakov envisioned the concept for the television show nearly ten years ago and has been developing the pilot for about two years.

Comedy style

The largest part of the humour of Yakov Smirnoff falls into two wide categories:

"America: What a country!"

Misunderstanding of American life and custom through the eyes of a new immigrant.
- For instance, reading employment announcements of "Part-Time Woman Wanted": "What a country! Even transvestites can get work."
- Upon being offered work as a barman on a "graveyard shift," he remarks “A bar in a cemetery! What a country! Last call? During Happy Hour the place must be dead."^[1]
- At the grocery store: "Powdered milk, powdered eggs, baby powder . . . what a country!"
- "The first time I went to a restaurant, they asked me 'How many in your party?' and I said 'Six hundred million'."

Bizarre comparisons between the U.S. and Russia.
- "We have no gay people in Russia—there are homosexuals but they are not allowed to be gay about it. The punishment is seven years locked in prison with other men and there is a three-year waiting list for that."^[2]

He once told Johnny Carson, "You have such nice things in the U.S.—like warning shots!"^[3]

Russian reversal

Russian reversal or "In Soviet Russia" is a type of joke originated by Arte Johnson on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and popularized by Smirnoff, and is an example of antimetabole. The general form of the "In Soviet Russia" joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and “In Soviet Russia”, or something equivalent, is added. For example:

In America, you catch a cold.

In Soviet Russia, cold catches you!

In America, you can always find a party.

In Soviet Russia, Party finds you!

In an episode of Family Guy, Peter gets a car with different voices for the navigation system. The voice for Smirnoff in the navigation system says:

Turn right at fork in road.

In Soviet Russia, road forks you!

In an episode of King of the Hill, Bobby, who wishes to be a comedian, watches Smirnoff (who voices himself in the episode) and writes a joke which he sells to Smirnoff:

In America, you put 'In God We Trust' on your money.

In Russia, we have no money!

In an episode of Futurama, Zoidberg, who often (poorly) tries out as a comedian at the Apollo, says:

(Earth, what a planet!) Here, you enjoy eating a tasty clam.

On my planet, clams enjoy eating a tasty you!"

And in another Episode, Fry, after viewing a giant ice dispenser says:

Wow, that ice dispenser's so big, the ice crushes you! (laughs) Yakov Smirnoff said it.

All of Smirnoff's original "In Soviet Russia" jokes made use of formulaic wordplay that carried Orwellian undertones. For example, one well known joke of this type runs "In the US, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" The joke alludes to video screens that both reproduce images and monitor the citizenry, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

At the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia"—he said simply "Russia", as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had existed since 1917, was still extant, and showed no signs of imminent collapse. Smirnoff added the Soviet qualifier after the fall of the USSR, long after his fame had faded, presumably to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state.

The joke form has become a staple of Smirnoff's humor, and is widely referenced in television parodies and references as well as many on-line communities. The widespread reference to the jokes has led some linguists to consider the phrases to be Snowclones.^[4]

9/11 mural

Smirnoff is also a painter and has frequently featured the Statue of Liberty in his art since receiving his U.S. citizenship there.

On the night of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks he started a painting inspired by his feelings about the event, based on an image of the Statue of Liberty. Just prior to the first anniversary of the attacks, he paid $100,000 for his painting to be transformed into a large mural. Its dimensions were 200 feet by 135 feet (61 m by 41 m).

The mural, titled "America's Heart",^[5] is a pointillist-style piece, with one brush-stroke for each victim of the attacks. Sixty volunteers from the Sheet Metal Workers Union erected the mural on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the ruins of the World Trade Center. The mural remained there until November 2003, when it was removed because of storm damage. Various pieces of the mural can now be seen on display at his theater in Branson, Missouri.