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Comedian's hilarious raps get nursing home residents grooving any way they can

Pauline Schantzer (aka Polly Wolly) created "The Finger Dance" so those in wheelchairs can groove.

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Comedian Polly Wolly raps and dances with nursing home residents.

You're never too old to sing or dance. And Los Angeles-based comedianomedian Pauline Schantzer (@therealpollywolly) is making it her mission to keep residents in nursing homes doing both. The actress, writer and rapper (aka Polly Wolly) has been bringing her beats, songs and dance moves to nursing and assisted living homes, inspiring them to live it up and find joy.

"I started performing in nursing homes in November 2023," Polly tells Upworthy.

She got connected with her first nursing home via her friend, Rena Hirsch, who was the director of the nursing home that first booked Polly. "At first I didn't plan to pursue [work] in nursing homes. But I grew up going to see my grandma in the nursing home, and my mom Judy who is my comedic inspiration also lives in an assisted living home," she shares. "She has minor dementia, so it means a lot to me to give people laughter. My mom used to be full of laughs and jokes, and she's lost that. So it's been really tough on me to experience that. And humor is how I've dealt with it."

Understanding her audience, Polly recently created a song called "The Finger Dance" that allows everyone to get dancing, including those in wheel chairs. In the video, Polly raps and sings as she interacts with the residents. "In the wheelchair, let's groove! What's that button do? Oh ooh. It's electric, vroom vroom. Can't get up? That's fine! Put your fingers up real high, aye!" she raps and sings in the video.

She continues, "Move it from side to side. Yeah girl, looking real fly! Aye! Shake them fingers, don't be shy. You got arthritis? Come on just try!" Polly pans the camera to the small crowd, who have their fingers up and are grooving along with her.

The sweet video got tons of supportive comments from viewers. "Ur in those homes everyday! I love it! Respect what you do so much, laughter is the best medicine," one wrote. Another added, "👏👏 I love how you bring a moment of happiness and joy to our seniors !! ♥️" And another viewer shared, "You've got me over here doing the finger dance at my desk while at work. Lol."

Polly adds, "I wrote this song, 'The Finger Dance' because my mom always did this dance [with her fingers]. She was so cute, she was overweight and her cheeks would look all chubby and she'd point her fingers up in the air. It was inspired by her."

In another post, Polly performed another original song in another assisted living home, encouraging everyone to dance through their aches and pains with more funny lyrics. "You got aches, you got pains, da da da da da da. So groove with your cane, da da da da da da da." And viewers noted that her performance was "100x better than Coachella" and "Next stop…Coachella."

Another bop she created is called "Shake It Doll", and it's a banger that has consistently put smiles on faces when she performs it. During a recent show, she told the crowd, "Let's get wild up in here, you know? We only live once. Let's do it!" she said as the song started. "Shake it doll, shake it at the mall! Shake it doll in the bathroom stall!" The beat is irresistible, and in the video Polly dances alongside an enthusiastic woman.

"It makes me really happy to see the residents really enjoy it. A lot of times they will first refuse to dance and enjoy. But when I get a man or woman who doesn't [initially] want to dance to suddenly get up and move, it means so much to me," says Polly.

She has big plans for the future and reaching more residents in nursing and assisted living homes. "I would love to do a nursing home tour around the United States. I have a lot of big visions for it," she says. "It really warms my heart a lot seeing how many people around the world tell me how much I'm making their day and giving joy to them. It means so much to me to see people have laughter. That's what life's about."

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A comedian sparked a fierce debate when she exploded with rage at a male heckler

After the guy got kicked out, Natalie Cuomo read his texts to his friend live on stage.

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I once had tickets to see the late, great Mitch Hedberg at a comedy club in Baltimore. I was unimaginably excited about seeing my hero live. A few days before the show, Mitch sadly passed away. The venue got another comic to fill in and my friends and I went anyway, not really knowing what else to do. The new comic was... a lot different from Mitch. We unwisely sat in the very front and that led to me getting brutally roasted for a good portion of the show.

I understood even then that that's how comedy works sometimes, but I admit, it did feel a little mean-spirited at times, and I can't say it was the greatest experience. Comedians, especially in smaller clubs, are known to dish out some good-natured abuse. Sometimes the abuse isn't so good natured. But one of the big questions when it comes to "crowd work" is — if they dish it out, they should be able to take it, right? A viral encounter between a comedian and a heckler is raising questions about proper etiquette at a comedy show — both from the performer and people in the crowd.


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Comedian Natalie Cuomo was doing crowd work during her set at the DC Comedy Loft when she began interacting with a guy who wasn't willing to play along. Heckling is part of the life of a comedian, especially when they start ribbing the audience. After all, the spectators are real live people -- you never can be sure how they'll react or what they might say back!

But this guy seemed to get genuinely offended at a little jab, and Cuomo called him out on being a little overly sensitive.

"It's not my fault you don't have material," the man shot back. "I can roast you, too. You can't just roast all of us and get nothing." Shortly after, he offered, or maybe threatened, to take the mic from her.

And that's when, in the clip posted by Cuomo to her TikTok page, she went off:

"It's such a hard time in this world right now. There's so many people that came together to be supportive and fucking amazing, and you're putting..." She then knealt down to the guy's eye level. "Look me in the eyes!" she screamed at him. "you're putting negative freaking energy out here! ... You wanna say mean shit to me? OK, so don't fucking do that."

Not long after that interaction, the guy was removed by security, and Cuomo's set continued on.


@nataliecuomo

Right after I said how grateful I was for everyone being there and selling out the show, this little man in the front row decided to let his true colors shine ✨ Always stand up for yourself!! And if you’re going to be rude, at least have the decency to LOOK ME IN THE EYES 👀 ❤️


Generally, comedians are expected to keep their cool and win these battles with wit and not rage. But not always.

Female comics have to put up with an awful lot just to get on stage. There's the being expected to work for free or less pay than male peers, being harassed by other comics and audience members, and being cat-called by people in the crowd. They're judged by their looks in bizarre ways. They have to be pretty but not too pretty so as not to be funny. Guys like the heckler in question sometimes go out of their way to give women comics a rough time.

Maybe Natalie Cuomo had just had enough that night and didn't have the energy to hide her anger with whip-smart jokes — who knows?

"i worked in comedy clubs for two years and saw so many female comics in this position who felt like they had to be funny and not angry. endorse this," one commenter wrote. Others applauded Cuomo's "female rage" and the way she stood up for herself. The live audience was also on her side, chanting her name after the awkward encounter.

But some folks weren't so thrilled with Cuomo's response. "She literally chucked a tantrum on stage," one user wrote under the video.

"a [comedian's] one job is to be funny, so crashing out at your own show over a bad interaction really rubs me the wrong way," said another.

It begs the question: Was the guy's heckling fair game for a comedy show, or was he really out of line? There might be a clue in the conclusion to Cuomo's video: After the heckler was tossed out of the venue, Cuomo noticed that the man's friend was sending texts... so she grabbed his phone.

"Lol, what a fucking clown, I did warn you I would get kicked out," the heckler's had told his friend in a text — which Cuomo kindly shared with the live audience. "Man, she is sensitive, especially for a comedian." Then she texted him back a selfie of her holding up the middle finger.

Sounds like maybe he came prepared to raise a stink with whatever comic was on stage. Whether Cuomo handled the situation perfectly or not, I think we can all agree that's in pretty poor taste.

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Comedian humorously nails the reality of modern adult friendships

"Would I turn up at their house unannounced?"

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Getting together as adults can be…tricky.

When you're a kid, friendships just sort of happen. The kids in your neighborhood, school, place of worship, sports or other activities are the pool of kids you pull friends from, and friendship in childhood mostly revolves around sharing common interests and having fun playing together. As you move to the teen years, friendship becomes more about "hanging out" and bonding over emotional things, and then adulthood comes along and throws the whole concept of friendship all out of whack.

As you become entrenched in career and family and full-on-grown-up responsibilities, friendships can be harder to maintain, at least in the way we're used to. Time becomes a trickier commodity to manage, and what friendship looks like changes. That's not good or bad, it just…is.

via GIPHY

Comedian Jake Lambert hit the nail on the head with a bit about various realities of modern adult friendship, pointing to relatable friendship norms such as:

Not really knowing what your friend does for work:

"What's my best friend's job? Something to do with numbers…I once heard them use the phrase 'project manager.'"

"No, I don't know exactly what they do for work, but I do know about every single one of their colleagues, who they hate and who's sleeping with who."

What forms the basis of adult friendship:

"Are we friends because we like the same things? No, we're not children! We're friends because we hate the same things."

The reality of rarely getting together:

"Oh we hang out all the time. What is it now, September? Well the last time I saw them was…I wanna say June? But we talk every day. I mean, not on the phone, on WhatsApp. I mean, not on WhatsApp, but we send each other memes on Instagram. But we message properly as well. Like we'll message to say we need to catch up soon, and then we do catch up, within about two or three months."

Unannounced visits? No thanks. Unannounced phone calls? Also no.

"Would I turn up at their house unannounced? No, not unless I wanted to give them a panic attack and completely ruin their day. I mean, I wouldn't even call them without a text to warn them first. You know, that's real friendship."

via GIPHY

People totally related and added their own friendship realities to the mix in the comments:

"Say what you will but not talking to a person for months and picking up like you never stopped talking when you finally get together is a new level of friendship unlocked 🙌❤️🤣😂"

"Texting to warn them before calling is friendship!!!!!!!!!! It is!!!!!!💯"

"I wouldn’t even call them without a text to warn them first is my love language."

"Also, you have known each other for 10 years and have 3 photos together."

"The shame of how accurate this is 😂😂😂😂😂😂"

Adult friendships may be challenging to maintain fully, but they're still valuable and research shows that we may be missing out on some of their benefits. According to one analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s "American Time Use Survey" Americans are spending significantly less time with friends—and more time alone—than we did a decade ago. From 2014 to 2019, the time we spent with friends dropped by 37%. Then the pandemic hit, and we all know how that turned our social lives upside down. The most recent data, from 2021, showed even more of a drop in friend time, from a little over 4 hours a week in 2019 to a little less than 3 hours a week in 2021.

Spending time alone doesn't automatically mean feeling lonely—some people genuinely prefer to spend time by themselves—but humans are social creatures in general and research shows we are facing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. A few reasons might be how increasingly online our lives have become, how anxious and exhausted many of us feel, and the connections that got disrupted during the pandemic. Whatever the reason, a whole lot of people are lonely these days.

via GIPHY

Nurturing friendships in-real-life could be a way to counter that. Focus on quality over quantity. You don't have to have a ton of close friends—focus on the ones you share similar values with and who bring out the best in you. Even if you don't have time to get together often, check in regularly with more than just a meme. Even a simple, "Hey, I'm thinking about you and wondering how you're doing," can go a long way. Scheduling get-togethers on a monthly basis (a first-Saturday-of-the-month set coffee date or something) can make it easier to see one another rather than always trying to coordinate schedules. Long-distance friendships can be trickier, but we do have loads of technology to communicate long-distance and don't underestimate those "We need to plan a get-together" messages. Acknowledging that you miss one another and want to see each other despite the difficulty of actually making it happen means something.

Friendships as adults may have some comical quirks, but they're still important to our well-being and life enrichment. Keep sending those memes and get together when you can. You'll rarely regret making the effort.

You can find more from Jake Lambert on his Instagram page here.

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Comedian riffs on how different generations talk about their childhoods and he's not wrong

"Then you've got millennials, who basically had the complete opposite upbringing to Gen X…"

Photo credits: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash (left and center), Andrea Piacquadio (right)

Memories from childhood vary widely between the generations.

There have always been gaps between generations, though arguably those gaps have grown larger with the accelerated social and technological changes of the past century. Generational differences show up in all kinds of ways, sometimes creating friction or misunderstandings but also providing great material for comedians.

Jake Lambert has created a whole series of videos pointing out some of the differences between how boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z do various things, and they’re hilariously spot on.

One thing that separates one generation from another is the way our upbringings played out, and Lambert’s video “How the different generations talk about their childhoods” nails that fact. Naturally, individual childhood experiences will differ and there's some exaggeration for comedic effect, but overall he's not wrong.

Watch:

“First of all, you’ve got boomers who like to let you know how much the world was a better place when they were younger," he begins. "That people just left their doors unlocked 24 hours a day and that basically crime wasn’t invented until the 1970s.”

Yep, that's the story a lot of boomers tell.

“Then you’ve got Gen X," he continues. "They like to let you know how hard their upbringing was, that they’re from the 'school of hard knocks,' how they were just left to their own devices. If they weren’t at school, they were just told to go outside and keep themselves busy until it got dark.”

Also accurate.

Lambert then describes millennial upbringings, which were basically the polar opposite of Gen X, and then the weird technological paradox Gen Z has grown up with.

People weighed in on Lambert's assessment and shared some of their own childhood experiences.

“Gen X here … every video you hit the nail on the head! I totally relate.”

“As a millennial, I had to warn my boomer parent about the dangers of the internet — we’ve come full circle, y’all.”

“I like to think of my Gen X childhood as feral, and I'm glad I survived.”

“Funny as hell about GenZ parents!”

"It’s the internet is a dangerous place while documenting everything on all the socials for me….🤣🤣🤣"

"I'm an early millennial and got both gen x and millenial upbringing."

"Gen X definitely learned about stranger danger, but we were still outside all the time."

"I was a mix of Millenial and x, was kicked out of the house until the sun came down, but also told about all the strangers that would willingly kidnap me if I talked to them/opened the door/answered the phone."

"Okay, what Gen Xer is complaining about being left to our own devices? Most of us LOVE that facet of our childhood. We had so much freedom and independence. It was the best! 😍"

"I brought up my 'School of Hard Knocks' just last week to an Xer, haha. But, seriously, we were left a little too much alone. We have great childhood stories, though. Kids these days would have the cops on them if they did all we got to do."

"Boomers have very faulty memories! I should know, I am one."

You can follow Jake Lambert on Instagram.

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