I was taking a cartooning class at IHS in the late ‘70s and one of my assignments was to create a cover for an ethnic joke book, which were all the rage back then. Unthinkable today, perhaps, but political correctness hasn’t quite managed to kill ethnic humor. CRT Downtown in Cortland presents an “Italian Comedy Festa” on Saturday, October 21 at 7:30, starring Italian-American comics Johnny Rizzo and Liz Russo.

Johnny Rizzo got into comedy during the late ‘70s humor boom, when SNL and SCTV and Monty Python and Robin Williams and Steve Martin were treated like rock stars. He says that getting into comedy is “selfish, because you’re performing by yourself, you’re not in an ensemble.