Comedy Death Ray This Week: All The Ham

If you were one of the billions of people not in attendance at the Los Angeles UCB Theatre this week, you missed one of the finest nights of comedy to grace any stage, anywhere, ever. Hot damn. It was also a night of Doug Benson's I Love Movies, which makes it even more awesome.

I Love Movies
Doug Benson's [Twitter] guests were Paul F. Tompkins [Twitter] and Brett Gelman [Twitter]. Games were played. Lottery commercials were discussed. Tom Lennon was mentioned as having canceled due to some movie project. This should be on his iTunes feed in a few days, most likely, so do be sure to check it out.

Comedy Death Ray
Kyle Kinane was not the host, as advertised, but rather Chris Fairbanks [Web]. Very funny. Most of his opening was seemingly him winging it, hysterical stuff, and he also let drop that he's recording a comedy album in San Francisco this week which we fully intend on picking up when the chance comes up. The comedy bounced around from all sorts of styles, so it's pretty much right up our alley. Because it was funny, which is what we go for.

• First up: Paul F. Tompkins [Twitter]. When your opener is PFT, the show has to be awesome, and it was. Paul told tales of drunk, rude, and annoying Canadians while sharing road stories from the recent comedy festival in Vancouver. It's hard to tell how much of this was material or just sharing genuinely funny life experiences, but it sounds like he had a terrible audience that he screwed with the entire time. This is why Paul, formerly of Best Week Ever and numerous other projects, is one of the finest comics working today. We're big fans, and as I like to say, make sure you see him if the chance ever arrives. Seriously, if it's $40 a whack to see him, go do it.
  
• Next up was Susan Burke [MySpace], who brought a number of great jokes focusing on things that, were we to describe them, we would crush the punchlines. So we won't. But do see her if you get the chance.
  
• Jon Daly [Twitter] came out next doing another character bit, of which he is something of a genius. Why this man does not have a TV deal, I do not know. If you've heard of the rule of threes, he managed to take a Bill Cosby persona infomercial gag to the rule of 14s. I would describe it at length, but I don't know if you'll have the chance to see it and I'd hate to ruin it for you. It may be the single funniest thing of the evening, as it certainly seemed that the audience was laughing harder and longer than at any other bit we've seen in quite a while. To say he killed may be an understatement-- if the night was a competition, this man was the clear winner. All hail Jon Daly.
  
• The great Patton Oswalt [MySpace]-- who from here on out must be referred to as great-- pulled out tons of new material in the wake of his recent CD release, which we reviewed here a while back. As one of the funniest (and therefore best) standups working today, Oswalt and Tompkins made this a real winning evening for their fans, and anyone that wandered in from off the streets. Topics included Halloween decorations (specifically, a tree), ham, a new baby, and more. Let us know if you hear these bits in rotation, all were really strong and it's a shame Patton doesn't release albums every few months so you can hear all of this material.
  
• The audience was surprised to see another comic follow Oswalt, the unannounced Reggie Watts [Twitter]. It's difficult to describe-- sort of music, definitely comic, and the performer feels like the fusion of George Clinton and Bobby McFerrin. It's difficult to describe, but it was a brief, funny mix of voices, strangeness, singing, sound effects, and... well, maybe that wasn't so difficult. It was absolutely a treat to see and a nice way to end the show.

In short, or long, another great week without any real lagging.

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.