An adult female performer in a modern green sleeveless dress with a deep V-neckline, holding a microphone on an indoor stage with blue-toned geometric backdrop and stage lighting. 3:40
America's Got Talent channel icon America's Got TalentOriginal creator 924K views Save

Comedian's friend Keisha gets the license plate

Crystal Powell is 46, comes from Texas and still keeps a marketing job. She tells the America's Got Talent judges she is here "to bring some laughter to the world." more

She lives in Los Angeles now and does comedy part-time. Asked about a horrible gig she still remembers, she says she got booed once. On her way out, people told her, "You cute though. You got cute shoes, girlfriend." When the crowd talks about your shoes instead of your jokes, she says, you know it went badly. Her shoes, for the record, still get compliments.

This stage, she says, is "the career changer for me." Then she gets going. "You all need different types of friends," she says. There's Becky, "with the good hair," and there's Keisha. Everything that follows hangs on how different those two are.

In her story, her husband gets caught cheating, and her girlfriends are the ones who spot him. Becky calls first, and Powell makes the phone ring herself. "Are you sitting down?" Becky asks. "Do I need to be?" Becky has seen him with a woman nobody knows. She has never seen her in the carpool lane, and "she's not even in Zumba." Her advice is mild. Ask him about it when he gets home.

Then Keisha calls, and even her ringtone is different. Keisha saw him downtown in Pasadena, at a restaurant, with a woman. "Didn't you say he was laid off?" she asks, because the woman ordered an appetizer, an entree and dessert. Keisha pauses to be kind. "She cute now, she ain't got none on you." Then she reads off the license plate.

An adult female performer in a modern green sleeveless dress with a deep V-neckline, holding a microphone on an indoor stage with blue-toned geometric backdrop and stage lighting. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Crystal Powell is 46, comes from Texas and still keeps a marketing job.

For a closer, Powell sings "The Star-Spangled Banner" twice. Becky's version goes the way it is supposed to. Keisha's starts with "Turn my mic up, turn my mic up" and climbs into a long run of "me, me, me." A couple of fans say that is where they laughed hardest.

She does all of it with no crowd in the room to laugh back, which is a hard way to tell jokes, since comics feed off an audience. All four judges laugh along anyway.

"That's my time, guys," she says. The best review came later from a fan, who decided that anyone who didn't like the set must be Keisha.