Road Trip Album Picks: "Invite Them Up"

WHAT: Collection of material from numerous comedians, curated by Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale
LABEL: Comedy Central Records, 2005
GOOD IF YOU LIKE: Comedy
WHERE TO FIND IT: Most better record stores, select big box electronic stores, iTunes

This was basically the New York equivalent of L.A.'s Comedy Death Ray. According to our notes, the show is on some sort of permanent hiatus, which is a fancy way of saying extinct. This 4-disc (3 CD + 1 DVD) set includes a fantastic selection of New York comics performing stand-up, songs, and sketches. At over 3 hours, the plastic artifact has a lot to offer and shows you where a lot of these comics were a few years ago and where they have gone since. And in some cases, still are. But we'll leave that for you to discover.

The sound quality is great, and the references are fresh enough to be funny. Sure, you're going to hear about The Sixth Sense, but it's a solid bit. In this collection, you'll discover Jon Glaser is a genius, Bobby Tisdale is an endless ball of comic energy, and that there need to be a lot more discs just like this one.

A recurring bit-- which is a pretty good idea-- is "30 Seconds of Stand-Up," which was performed at the live event and took more than 30 seconds. Because they had to introduce it and then send it off. It's a brilliant idea to get comics out there, and it's almost a shame that it wasn't adapted into a podcast or, say, a giant collection of a hundred tracks on an audio CD.

The comedy on this album is mostly of the alt comedy variety, which means if you may self-apply the term "comedy nerd" you'll totally love this collection. You get a lot for the asking price, which is typically below $15, and most of it is really funny. And if you don't like it, you can skip to the next one. I suggest you put this one in your collection if you ever do mix tapes for road trips, because you get just so gosh darn much stuff that you will have a whole new selection of stand-ups to go see. Since a lot of these comics have gone on to TV work, and others still tour, this is a great place to go just to get a better idea of who's worth going to see.

The collection comes packaged in a fold-out cardboard case.

Comedy Death Ray This Week: Nealon!

To call the weekly Comedy Death Ray show a grab bag of entertainment is a little unfair to grab bags. It's so diverse in its flavors that it's not always easy to tell if what you saw was actually funny or something that went horribly wrong.

With that, here's what you missed on this particularly packed week!

• This week's host was a tag team called The Fucks, a married couple character bit played by Brett Gelman and Jackie Clarke. A sharp, ultimately mean pair of characters makes for a great emcee pair, this was a great choice of host for the night and kicked things off nicely.
  
• Conan O'Brien alum Andy Blitz played his usual off-kilter self, leading people in our party to assume he was high. This is indeed possible. But considering how funny he was with his material, which included some anti-jokes and great mic work, makes it seem that this probably went exactly as planned. If you enjoy the work of Neil Hamburger, you should enjoy his set if/when he comes to your town.
  
• A trilogy of host segment sketches started with Ultimate Vampire vs. Ultimate Werewolf, which we elected not to jot the names down. And next we have...
  
• New York transplant/visitor/something Andrea Rosen was pretty great-- decent set about pants, parents, and her brother was in the audience. Not bad. Worth seeing if you have the means, particularly on a bill you'd be going to anyway.
  
• Special secret mystery guest Kevin Nealon had a bit that was as deadpan as you might expect and fairly unorganized, as is increasingly common with the big guest stars at CDR. There were some fumbles, but the guy still has it, whatever "it" is. While a little lumpy in the middle, he ended with some sort of a riff on improv and mad libs as he told a story which basically devolved into audience suggestions. One of our party paid much more to see Nealon previously and the guy puts on a great set, even if it may have been cobbled together earlier in the day. If you're not sure if it's worth going to see the former SNL "Weekend Update" anchor, rest assured it's probably worth it. Especially if it's unrehearsed.
  
• Another host sketch was called "Thanksgiving Dinner," which involved Nick Kroll and Jon Daly doing vaudevillian one-liners as characters named "Turkey" and "Mashed Potatoes" until being heckled by and evicted from the stage by the hosts to the chant "Native American Genocide." I was impressed. After this and "Rich Dicks" it seems like someone should hand these guys a sketch show, it seems they have a lot of good ideas.
  
• Paul Rust performed, poorly.
  
• The final holiday-themed sketch was Paul Scheer as Christopher Columbus, spewing anti-native gags and actually having a brief set as the famed explorer. It's always a treat to see him show up, along with Nealon this was one of the best sets of the evening. Here's hoping for more like this in the future.
  
• Finishing up the night was the always funny Andy Kindler who seemed to be going back and forth between having a good and a terrible set. He's clearly workshopping new material, but there's a fine line between "angry comic" and "contempt for the audience," and for this show it wasn't clear what he was going for. (The audience seemed to enjoy it, even if he didn't seem to be having a good time.)
  

Overall, probably not a good show for first-timers, but you got your $5 worth. Nealon's usually a much more expensive ticket, Kroll and Daly are excellent talents, Blitz was funny, Kindler was on edge, overall, it was a lot of fun for you comedy nerd/hipster types.

Except for Paul Rust.