Road Trip Album Picks: Doug Benson's "Professional Humoredian"

WHAT: Stand-up album from one of Twitter's favorite sons, host of the "I Love Movies" podcast, the dude from the movie Super High Me, and VH-1/G4 gadfly
LABEL: A Special Thing Records
GOOD IF YOU LIKE: Laughing
WHERE TO FIND IT: Pretty much nowhere, so try iTunes or the label (mail order)

Here's an album from someone you'll probably love on a label that's so obscure you can keep your comedy snob cred even after someone else tells you about it. How's that for awesome?

Doug Benson is generally known as a pot comic which is actually pretty unfair. Sure, his star shot up thanks to the Marijuanalogues, a live show that's... well, you can figure it out. This is a great place to start following his career, particularly because he's a prolific guy. Between his podcast and TV specials, you might hear references to these jokes again and again. As such, starting here will probably make you feel better about buying this album, rather than recognizing bits of it from his many hours of free funny.

This album is absolutely worth listening to if you can find it. Benson's next release will be on Comedy Central Records, which means you might find it in stores unless they pull another digital-only release out of their backsides.

Comedy Death Ray This Week

I just came back from this week's Comedy Death Ray at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles, and it was a heck of a great show. Here's this week's menu.

Host: Ben Kronberg
From Colorado, he brought a mix of anti-comedy and actual comedy. Also, he wore short shorts and his underpants peeked out from underneath. I've never seen him perform before, but if you have a chance to hear his rapping, I suggest you take it. His bits ranged from winners to quasi-bombs, but it was largely excellent, as was the whole show. He's a snappy emcee, so kudos on the good pick.

• Tom McCaffrey had a great set. Unfortunately, he reused some of the jokes on the Invite Them Up CD, which is sorta like a New York CDR. As one of "Rich Dicks," the video screened previously, he has a great voice and a good set.
  
• Adam Cayton-Holland also made the trip from Colorado, and had a spectacular set. Again, if you have the chance to see him, do so. A+ for Brown vs. Board of Education and Poe references.
  
• Greg Behrendt you may know from his short-lived talk show or the media spawned from the line "he's just not that into you." The bulk of the set had to do with the Fleshlight, which you either already know what it is or you can go look it up and see why I won't discuss it here.
  
• Doug Benson showed up with a surprise appearance. Highlights: clips from a new G4 special, announcement of a CD release party, and highlights from Dane Cook's Twitter feed. It was awesome.
  
• Rory Scovel was bearded, funny, likable. Worth seeing.
  
• B.J. Novak of The Office fame came out and read the story on the back of a "Honey Bunches of Oats" box. He was also very, very sweaty.
  
• Chris Hardwick rounded out the set. It was great. It's not often you hear a comic open up with something on Dementor sex and work in stuff about Lincoln being gay conspiracies near the end, but that's why Mr. Hardwick is the headliner. If you listen to the Sound of Young America podcast, you may have heard some of this material, which was all really top-notch stuff.
  

Sorry that isn't too in-depth but I don't want to spoil the jokes or stay up all night. I still got some stuff to work on, so sleep tight knowing you missed a fantastic show down near Hollywood tonight.

Messing With A Friend

Susan Messing is one of those people who is famous in Chicago, but outside of Chicago you probably have never heard of her. No, she wasn't on Will and Grace. The only notable recent thing you may have seen her in is the stripper in traction in Let's Go To Prison. No, wait, nobody saw that movie. Nevermind.

It's a shame. It's a really, really big shame that more people don't know of her, because she's fucking awesome. She's a quick wit, deft with characters, and even at 45, cute as a button.

If you're in Chicago, one of the places you can see her do her thing is The Annoyance Theater, where her show Messing With A Friend (get it? her last name is a verb!) is coming up on it's third year.

The premise is simple, as Susan usually introduces it: "I'm going to get a suggestion and then me and my friend are going to fuck around." By "fuck around" she means doing some improvised comedy scenes with a guest which changes weekly. Sometimes the guests are semi-famous like "That guy from SNL" and "I think that guy was on...what was that shitty sketch comedy show that I am glad is off the air? Oh yeah! Mad TV."

Most of the time she brings some of the most talented people around Chicago that you have never heard of to perform with her. Even then, Susan usually outperforms them. She is a lady who is not afraid to do anything, whether it be to swear up a storm, or sit on an audience member's lap, or chew their gum, or comment in character that she has to pee, then actually go to the bathroom for five minutes. It's kind of like having an Super-Plus Amy Sedaris perform for you.

If you are in the Chicago area and don't have anything to do on a Thursday night, I recommend stopping by this show. It is only five dollars, which allows you extra spending money for drinks at the bar.

This Week In Mildly Pleasant Comedy

Not a whole lot happening this week, probably thanks to Harry Potter and the Only Movie Anyone’s Going To Talk About For the Next 2 Weeks.

IN THEATERS:

Black Dynamite – The trailer for this over-the-top blaxsploitation “spoof” got a lot of buzz some 6 months ago, but all the early screenings produced were a bunch of so-so reviews, most of them indicating that the film was a one-joke wonder that went on way too long. Maybe it’ll make for a decent rental.

500 Days of Summer – The reigning king and queen of Indie Quirk, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, star in this well-reviewed relationship comedy (the creators are very clear that it is “not a romance”, and indeed seems to be more of a comedy about a failed relationship than something you’d see Sandra Bullock drop a wedding cake in). There are musical numbers and a lot of 4th-wall-breaking meta gags; opens limited this week and will go wide over the course of the rest of the month. Probably funnier and more nourishing than any of the standard-issue rom-coms in theaters now.

DVD

The State – MTV’s very first sketch comedy show is finally out on DVD… minus any of the original music. Still, for hardcore fans looking to replace their worn out VHS tapes, this set should provide some relief. I always felt The State was sort of the not-as-funny basic cable version of Mr. Show, but they had some decent bits in there. Most of the alums from this series r (the two most visible graduates being Tom Lennon and Michael Ian Black) went on to do stuff like Stella, Reno 911 and Wet Hot American Summer. If you’ve never seen the series, it’s definitely worth checking out at least on Netflix as a notable chunk of 90’s sketch comedy history.

TV

Michael & Michael Have Issues – Speaking of The State, the reliably funny Michael Ian Black and his cohort from Stella and a bunch of other projects, Michael Showalter, have a new sketch comedy show premiering at in the post-South Park 10:30pm Wednesday slot on Comedy Central. The concept is basically a sketch comedy show inside a show about a fictional sketch comedy show, which is sounds complicated until you realize it’s the same basic concept behind The Muppet Show. All of the clips on the show’s website are pretty darn funny; looking forward to this one. Here’s hoping Comedy Central decides to keep it on for more than 8 episodes.

LATE NIGHT:

Conan:
7.15 – Dana Carvey: Ever since The Master of Disguise and that utterly foul HBO special he inflicted on the world last year, Dana Carvey has become Komedy Kryptonite. Tune in on Wednesday to hear his unfunny Arnold Schwartzenegger impression on Conan! Or maybe he’ll bust out his tired-ass George HW Bush routine! Either way, you won’t laugh!

7.17 – Seth Green: Eternally busy Robot Chicken overlord Seth Green stops by, presumably to promote the show, his upcoming new animated project Titan Maximum, and his various Comic-Con appearances next week.

Letterman:
7.17 – Tom Arnold: OH BOY! TOM ARNOLD IS ON LETTERMAN THIS WEEK! I CAN’T F*CKING WAIT!!!!

Fallon:
7.16 – Bill Engvall: For those of you let down by the lack of Jeff Dunham appearances this week, Bill Engvall is on Fallon. Surely his hilarious country-fried comedy stylings will tide you over.

COMEDY TOXIC WASTE:

Van Wilder: Freshman Year – The unending juggernaut of shitty direct-to-video college comedies bearing the “National Lampoon” name rolls on this week, still abiding by the unwritten law that if you’re designing the cover for a direct-to-video comedy then the cover ABSOLUTELY MUST feature the movie’s cast flanked by a pair of female legs. This is the second (third?) Van Wilder sequel, which surely nobody asked for. How many times can you watch a smuggy smirky guy outwit the stuffed-shirt dean and bed the Hot Chick With A Conscience while simultaneously foiling Chug-A-Lug House and stumbling into a sorority panty raid? I guess National Lampoon thinks the answer is three! Although it’s zero, if you have any sense of taste or reason at all!

Comedy Is Dead Review: BRUNO

When it was announced last year that Sacha Baron Cohen had planned to follow up on his monstrously popular Borat movie with a similar film starring Bruno, his hyper-gay Austrian TV host character from Da Ali G Show, most discerning folks were cautious. On one hand, like Borat, the original segments from the TV series featuring Bruno were hilarious and shocking and did what great comedy often sets out to do, which is to expose something fundamental about humanity.

On the other hand, the Borat movie was about a half hour too long and did one of the worst things that great comedy never sets out to do: launch annoying catchphrases and a voice your coworkers think they can “do”.

Fortunately for all of us, The Bruno film features no real catchphrases of note and you probably won’t hear people straining to imitate Baron Cohen’s German accent. The bad news? It’s still about a half hour too long, and doesn’t seem to have a reason to exist.

See, the central conceit of Baron Cohen’s films is that the character he’s playing is a ludicrous stereotype, a sort of golem molded from the worst nightmares of your average American Neoconservative – here, a shallow, fame-obsessed flaming gay dude with ridiculous fashion sense and a supermodel’s pout. These characters are supposed to encourage reactions from people that show just how bigoted and intolerant they really are underneath the razor-thin layer of Generic American Niceness that permeates society. In Borat, it mostly worked; that film had a number of incredibly funny and shocking sequences that cleverly exposed just how many Americans really feel about brown-skinned foreigners, and came out at a time when such revelations felt fresh, especially given the political and social climate at the time.

Bruno, on the other hand, feels like a joke you’ve been told a hundred times before you even enter the theater; the first half or so satirizes shallow celebrity culture, and the second half focuses on reactions to Bruno’s gayness by the American south. You already know how both of these scenarios are going to play out; people in Los Angeles are going to be mind-blowingly dumb and shallow, and the southerners are going to be a bunch of easily-spooked bigoted homophobic assholes who just can’t handle Bruno. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve basically seen the film, minus all the pornographic sight gags.

The biggest problem, however, is how staged the entire thing feels. There are a few sequences where the scenarios and reactions feel legitimate, but the polished visuals and scene construction are just way too perfect to deliver the kind of “guerilla-social-commentary-via-pranking-rubes” vibe that was present in the TV series and throughout most of the first film. In Bruno, it feels like way too many people are in on the joke and are playing along, and that’s just not as much fun.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t have more than a few funny moments. One sequence in particular involves Bruno interviewing stage moms to find babies to pose with his new adopted African baby in a series of scandalous photos, and the situations they agree to put their children in are terrifying and uncomfortably hilarious. It’s one of the only places where the film feels “real” and gets close to finding the same shock and edge and danger that Borat had. Mostly, Bruno is just crude, telling you things you already know, every now and then offering a laugh. By the time you’re watching Bruno and his assistant strip eachother down and make out in an octagonal cage while a crowd of angry duped rednecks throw beers at them, you may find yourself asking what the point of all this is.

Road Trip Album Picks: John Mulaney's "The Top Part"

WHAT: Stand-up album from this guy you've never heard of
LABEL: Comedy Central Records
GOOD IF YOU LIKE: Oswalt, Mirman, etc.
WHERE TO FIND IT: Anywhere-- Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, whatever

I stumbled on this one because the young John Mulaney appeared on a podcast I enjoy. Otherwise I'd never know who this guy was. He was promoting the CD and his Comedy Central special, which apparently was a wise move because I ran out and bought this on sight.

If you're like most people, you've never heard of Mulaney. I think his highest-profile TV appearances were the aforementioned Comedy Central Presents special or his short quips on the final Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins, but now you can be awesome by getting this CD and making others listen to it in the car when you go somewhere. The most amazing thing about this release is that it's not only hysterical, but it's clean. Not a lot of comedy albums see release without a "Parental Advisory" sticker unless it's on a tiny label which doesn't bother which such things.

Highlights include: "Blacking Out And Making Money," which really sets the tone of his style, and "The Salt And Pepper Diner," which is something you should have around if you want your girl/boy to love you for your taste in humor. Tom Jones on the jukebox + quarters = yes. It's hard to find something genuinely awesome in major retailers' comedy sections, but this is one of those diamonds in the rough. It's a hair over 48 minutes long and about $10, which is quite a deal.

Shattered Glass

To promote his new album Thin Pig (which released digitally on iTunes and Amazon yesterday), Todd Glass has released this clip of him terrorizing the offices of his PR company for not promoting the release. There are few people who do hilarious unbridled violent rage as well as Glass, and this clip only further proves that (extremely NSFW dialogue).



You can get the album and preview a few clips right here.