Dan Nainan

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It was early in the morning and I was in no mood. I sailed through airport security in Tucson, mostly because I don’t have the sense to carry anything like food with me, even on a long flight.

My wife had brought some yogurt for both of us, but she was stopped by a screener who then spent 20 minutes removing every single item from her carry-on to scrutinize it before he gave a final careful look to the yogurts.

“What’s he doing, looking for the detonator?” “ I mumbled as I waited just beyond security. But I was careful not to let anybody hear me. The yogurt was dumped, and she was free to go.

There was a connection at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where they incessantly repeat that grating recorded announcement by the lady who has a voice just like Granny in “The Beverly Hillbillies,” who warns that “inappropriate jokes or remarks concerning security” will get you arrested.

I’m pretty sure the word “detonator” would fall into the category of inappropriate material, even if modified by the word “yogurt.”

Incidentally, I’ve never heard that particular announcement in any other airport — although the same woman seems to make all the announcements at all other airports, including the one that keeps reminding you, as if you were a stone idiot, not to accept bags from total strangers and take them on a plane.

So I watch myself in airports. Besides, I don’t find anything funny in any of this “liquids-gels-pastes, put them in a quart-size zip-lock bag for display like some fourth grader on the first day of school” business.

Last Wednesday, a woman who always takes a fresh-baked cherry pie when she flies to visit her son and his family for Thanksgiving dinner e-mailed me with an anxious note, “Will the pie get me in trouble?”

This is the country that won the Battle of Midway, and now we’re scaring a nice woman over her cherry pie?

Last week as I braced myself at the Houston airport for still another rendition of the “inappropriate jokes or remarks” warning, it occurred to me that reflecting on the current air travel environment might present a challenge for an actual comedian, someone whose livelihood depends on the ability to make jokes and the occasional inappropriate remark.

“You really have to stifle yourself,” said Dan Nainan, a comedian who made the transition from the corporate travel world to the comedy travel world. “You don’t want to be with a friend and say, ‘Man, I hope I don’t bomb tonight,’ and have him reassure you, ‘No, man, you’re going to kill.’ “

Mr. Nainan used to work for Intel as a technical designer, traveling worldwide. As a stand-up comic, he still travels worldwide — but now it’s usually in coach, not first class or business.

“Unlike a lot of comedians, I thrive on the travel,” he said. “From traveling so much in the corporate world, I have all the tricks down and I usually manage to work all the time on planes.”

He recently returned from a five-day gig in the Netherlands, where he used to have a girlfriend back in his corporate days. “I speak Dutch — in a country where nearly everybody speaks perfect English,” he said.

His girlfriend lived with her parents in a farming town outside Amsterdam. “Her parents had never been on a plane, or even outside Holland,“ he recalled, adding:

“I was living in L.A. at the time, and when I would fly into Holland, that’s like a nine-hour time difference. The first day, I could not get out of bed before 2 in the afternoon — and here they are farmers in Holland who get up when the sun comes up at 5 in the morning in the summer. They have no idea of the concept of jet lag. They’re looking at her like, ‘What are you doing with this long-haired guy who can’t even get out of bed before the middle of the afternoon?’ ”

Mr. Nainan’s act — you can see a clip of it at www.danielnainan.com — is partly based on gentle ethnic humor, framed in a cosmopolitan context. His mother is from Japan and his father from India.

“Our family photo looks like a Benetton ad,” he said. “Some people have said to me, ‘Your Mom is from Japan and your Dad is from India, so that makes you half-Asian.’ What continent do they think India is in? I mean, 20 percent of American schoolchildren can’t find Earth — on a map of Earth.”

Mr. Nainan may have incessant travel down to an art. But he still worries a bit about those admonitions about making jokes. I mean, there’s no comedy club at Guantánamo.

“You tell a comedian not to do something and he opens with it,” he said a bit warily.
- by Joe Sharkey