Comedy Death Ray and I Love Movies This Week

Wow, was this a heck of an amazing show! You really missed out by not going. What's wrong with you? Both shows were at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles.

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I Love Movies

Doug Benson once again proves that he's being robbed by the fools running television for not having the foresight to give him his own show. This week his guests were "Weird Al" Yankovic and Chris Hardwick, and they were fantastic. As always, the show will be available via iTunes or whatever podcatching service you use in a few days, and this is one you won't want to miss. (Despite a tiny chunk of it being three men Twittering at once.)

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Comedy Death Ray

A fantastic show. Hosted by Mike Kaplan, who we have not seen previously, but will now go out of our way to see. Excellent work. Also on deck:

• Dave Anthony
• Charlyne & Armen (seemingly improvised musical act/sniper spitting)
• Rory Scovel (stand-up plus something involving clowns that courtesy prevents us from spoiling)
• Zach Galifianakis (a few jokes, a whole lotta great crowd work)
• Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak (a conceptual piece about Tom Bergeron's kids)
• Chris Hardwick

Hardwick brought a lot of brand new (to us) material, and never disappoints as a headliner. Mr. Galifianakis was fantastic to see, particularly because his ticket price probably just quintupled since the summer-- great stuff, very funny. We were expecting Hardwick to come out in a yarn beard in-character.

The evening was fantastic, the pacing was great, we're pretty sure you would enjoy it if you were there. Some kid in the front row was taping most of it so it wouldn't be a stunner to see this on the web some day, if we find out about it we'll link to it.

Comedy Death Ray This Week: Too Much Funny

With a really strong roster, this week's Comedy Death Ray was truly one of the season's best. Just hours ago, the UCB Theatre in Hollywood was buzzing with some truly great acts, including...

• Host Hari Kondabolu kicked off the set with a fantastic routine that puts him in our "watch this guy" list. This particularly sharp set skewered race and other fun issues, race being a running theme throughout the evening. Be sure to catch Hari if he comes to your town.
  
• The always awesome Chris Hardwick returned with a mostly new set, filled primarily with gooey new material and a few bits from his CDR performances earlier in the summer, but refined with the kind of deliciousness you should expect from the host of G4's Web Soup. Aside form a sack of new material, he brought along a fake beard and did one of the best impressions of another famous comic we've ever seen. We'd go into more detail but we'd like to preserve the surprise should you see it. (Remind us in six months if you're still curious.)
  
• We saw Ali Wong perform and this San Francisco resident did indeed have plenty of great material. She was a sea of blue in a fairly dry evening of comedy, giving a stark contrast to the other performers of the evening.
  
• The new Between Two Ferns debuted, and we were informed this was a rough cut. The Zach Galifianakis quasi-talk show featured Charlize Theron, or to you comedy fans, "Mr. F." It will likely be up on Funny or Die or other video sites shortly, at which point you should watch it repeatedly.
  
• The great Nick Kroll has brought various character-based acts to Comedy Death Ray quite regularly, but tonight was the first time we were lucky enough to see him perform his stand-up act. He had a ton of material to test on the crowd, which ate it up. Anyone that can bag on a room for knowing who Ira Glass is may truly be a comic for all seasons.
  
• Doubling up with The Sklar Brothers, a duo you may know from sports programs (unlikely for our readership) or their appearance on It's Always Sunny. Watching two comics perform with essentially one mind is either some fantastical Wonder Twin power or evidence of what must be grueling practice, we expect some of each. A particularly strong aspect of their act is the ability to make use of the second person on stage. Neither is "the straight man," but they switch effortlessly between one another to deliver the funny. Normally when a comedian tells a story with multiple parts, the comic has to change his voice or face another direction to indicate a shift in character. The Sklars don't need to do this, so the transition from a stand-up set to what amounts to a mini sketch is pretty seamless.
  
• The night was rounded out by Aziz Ansari, who had a ton of new material to try out since his TV special taping and tour. What's more, he even had a book of more new stuff which an audience member asked what it was during a Q&A session, despite Ansari referencing it throughout the evening. It was clear he had the audience in his front pocket with tons of material ranging from DJs ruining new songs on the radio to some stupid thing an audience member said at a recent show. It's also funny to hear a comic deconstruct their own act, as Ansari did complaining that his cousin isn't doing anything stupid lately which generally generates about 10 minutes of material. Trust us, it's funny.
  

All in all, a solid show with a few nice surprises. We were a little surprised to see the night start off with Hardwick, being one of the strongest performers in the Comedy Death Ray pantheon of comedians, but clearly someone had to go first. Combined with I Love Movies, it was another great night of comedy and if you're in L.A., it's worth your while to check it out before it becomes overexposed to the point where you can't get in.

Comedy Death Ray This Week: A Doug Benson Interruption CD Recording

At the UCB Theatre in LA this week, Comedy Death Ray deviated from its usual format. Rather than a normal Comedy Death Ray (a series of comedians perform with a host), this week's was the second part to an ongoing recording of a "The Doug Benson Interruption" CD to be released on A Special Thing Records in the future. So unlike most Comedy Death Ray shows, you may actually be able to hear this one. It's worth noting that the evening lasted about two hours, and since this was the second recording of comics for the album, odds are it's going to get trimmed down. (Unless someone's really cool and makes it a mega-MP3 download or a quad-CD set.)

So which famous or soon-to-be-famous faces did you miss by not going this week?

• Doug Benson was host and master of the mostly not-fawkward show. As usual, he had fresh material and kept the show moving despite the ever-looming deadlines. Since this was part of his big CD release party, he seemed to be high on his new album and everybody seemed to have a great time watching him interrupt other comics perform for the CD. It's a really amazing format, so many comics have to rewrite their material to awkwardly fit the talk show couch format and this lets a host interact with the comedian in a much more natural (and funny) way. This would be a good format for a TV show, if any network still airs stand-up these days.
  
• Paul Scheer of Human Giant and 30 Rock had a marvelous set focusing largely on the recent Comic-Con International in San Diego. I've never had the fortune of seeing Scheer perform before, and he did a wonderful job letting us know about all the free crap he picked up at the show, which, as someone who does exactly that, I can assure you is a marvelous bit.
  
• From Last Comic Standing is Amy Schumer. She ranked slightly higher than Doug Benson on the season they appeared on the show, and she worked her way into a bit about her time at the Special Olympics after a night of partying that, if given the chance, you need to hear. (So if it makes the cut on the CD, we'll remind you to buy it.)
  
• Curator of Comedy Death Ray (and CDR Radio), former Mr. Show performer, and I presume some sort of future talk show host Scott Aukerman brought us a great set with even more top-notch Comic-Con material and much, much more.
  
• The infamous Andy Dick showed up without a set so much as a segment which was a good mix of comedy, an interview, and a prank call to Dr. Drew, which is really a sort of amusing comic trifecta. He also introduced us to his ankle bracelet, and apparently he had a whole setlist which he didn't get to tackle yet. And he's been sober for over a year, if you were curious.
  
• The always wonderful Chris Hardwick finished off the set and he was clearly hurried along as the previous sets ran over. Despite having performed at the same venue mere weeks ago, he had completely different material which slowly burned into more of a fight on if his set should end or if there's time for one more bit. Awesome. You never fail to entertain, former host of Shipmates.

We're not sure what will make the cut for the disc(s?), but one recurring theme was that people kept getting up, walking around, and distracting the comedians who addressed the audience but those watching the show didn't have the courtesy to acknowledge the performers. Are UCB patrons now officially too cool to participate in crowd work? It looks like it. As always, we're less about spoiling the whole show and more about making you mad that you weren't there. It was fantastic and it's your own damn fault that you missed it, so be sure to go next time.

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.

CLIP SHOWDOWN: tosh.0 vs. Web Soup

In the past few weeks, two new clip shows focusing entirely on garbage from the internet popped up on cable: Comedy Central’s tosh.0, a direct ripoff of The Soup, starring up-and-coming comedian Daniel Tosh, and Web Soup, an officially sanctioned, Joel McHale-endorsed spinoff of The Soup, hosted by up-and-coming comedian Chris Hardwick. It’s buried in deep cable on G4 TV at 9pm on Sundays.

They are, effectively, the same show; snarky comic stands in front of a greenscreen and mocks Youtube clips both fresh and not-so-fresh. There are some differences; Tosh’s show obviously has a bigger budget, so in addition to viral video mockery they do a weekly remote bit where they track down some viral superstar (Afro Ninja, Miss South Carolina, et al) and give them a chance to “redeem” themselves. Last week they introduced a new segment, ‘celebrity video’, which for now is a series of short comedy videos by lovable veteran character actor David Koechner. Web Soup is a bit more spare and directly follows The Soup’s format, with a few sketches here and there, but it’s pretty straightforward; video plays, Hardwick cracks a joke, and on to the next one.

So naturally, since the shows are so close in format and intent, they’re going to live or die based on the strength of their respective hosts, and it’s here where one of these shows works and the other doesn’t.

Simply put, Daniel Tosh just isn’t that likable. He has this constant smug smirk and dresses in a hoodie and an ironic tee-shirt, like the smug smirking hoodie-wearing college roommate you had that wouldn’t stop forwarding you mildly amusing YouTube videos. His show seems to be centered around him more than the content itself – the remote bits play out exactly like the sort of remotes you’d see on Conan O’Brien or Jimmy Fallon, except Tosh doesn’t have Conan’s timing or his sense of absurdism nor Fallon’s self-deprecating manic energy. So basically, it’s your smug smirking hoodie-wearing college roommate trying to be zany around faded internet superstars. It’s not terrible, but isn’t very appealing. Not only that, but Tosh’s delivery is a little flat – he seems very self-amused.

Not to rag on the guy too much – obviously he has an audience that appreciates his stage personality, and his fans will probably love what he’s doing here. It just isn’t my particular brand of vodka – I probably wouldn’t like a clip show hosted by Dane Cook, either.

Hardwick’s show, by comparison, is much funnier and sharper. The jokes are fresh, the format is familiar (being officially sanctioned by McHale helps; Tosh’s show has the “we totally stole this concept” stink on it), and Hardwick himself is a much more likable host. He’s sarcastic without being annoying, leaves the smugness at the door and goes for genuine laughs rather than banal snark. The show has the same “we’re shooting this on a budget of $4 and a handful of bottle caps and we’re doing the best we can with that” vibe that McHale’s show has, and as a result, it’s more comfortable and loose. They also seem to have a lot more freedom in terms of what they cover, meaning they can show you some incredibly gross (and hilarious) stuff that likely wouldn’t make it into a show that’s on during primetime on Comedy Central. Thankfully they also have a short ‘palette cleanser’ bit that features some adorable animal or whatever to scrub the gross out of your brain before moving on. All in all, the format works, and Hardwick was a perfect choice to host.

Final Verdict: Web Soup works, tosh.0 doesn’t, for now. Check out the former here.