Album Announcement: Paul F. Tompkins' "Freak Wharf"

AST Records confirmed the new PFT album will be out December 1, 2009. AST's releases are widely available online via their own record label or via digital distribution, but finding them at retail is, of course, somewhat difficult.

The label has a news post on this new release, which we expect to be nothing short of awesome. (After all, the man can do no wrong.) Pre-orders to start soonish. We cannot wait.

Road Trip Halloween Party Album Picks: "Eban Schletter's Witching Hour"

WHAT: Spooky music from the guy who did a lot of Mr. Show's score with some funny lyrics, but largely instrumental
NOTABLE GUESTS: Jill Sobule, Dave Allen, Paul F. Tompkins, Dave Foley, Scott Aukerman, Tom Kenny, Samm Levine
LABEL: Oglio Records, 2008
GOOD IF YOU LIKE: Mr. Show's soundtrack and/or Halloween CDs
WHERE TO FIND IT: Some record stores, Best Buy has it for $7.99
LENGTH: 1 hour, 32 seconds

If you listen to the Comedy Death Ray Radio show/podcast, you no doubt recently heard a spot promoting Eban Schletter's Witching Hour with Paul F. Tompkins. As I'm a sucker for PFT and anything he touches, I had to go track this one down. So who is this guy? It turns out that Eban Schletter is not some spooky character like the Cryptkeeper or Colonel Sanders, but is in fact an actual person responsible for composing numerous soundtracks.

This is something to throw on at parties or, if you were a bit of a dork for this sort of thing, a decent enough listen. Most of the songs fade into the background nicely and seem to borrow from cartoon soundtracks and surf music, which is where you want to be. It's not like the Cryptkeeper Christmas CD in the sense that this isn't likely to ever make it on any torture tape mixes-- it's just decent and for the most part, pleasant enough to add some noise to an otherwise quiet evening. A spooky story by Dave Foley is indeed delightfully spooky, and the songs range from mostly somber to a more upbeat number with Scott Aukerman. In short, nothing to be ashamed of.

If you're looking for a collection of goofy novelty songs this isn't it. If you keep the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack or Haunted House sound CDs on a loop this time of year at get-togethers, this is probably a better alternative.

...so to answer your question, no, this isn't good for road trips.

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 Movie Series: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

So the folks behind Comedy Death Ray started a CDR film series at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles over the summer. The premise is simple – a notable comedian presents one of his or her favorite comedies and a smattering of related material, with some live interview segments before and after. It happens once a month, and the ticket price is $14. I went on September 6th, when Paul F Tompkins was presenting Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

I’ll be straight here – Paul F Tompkins is one of my absolute favorite comics and Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is one of my all-time favorite movies (as it should be one of yours unless you're some kind of soulless monster), so perhaps the deck was stacked for me at this particular event, but this whole thing is a great concept that is being executed beautifully.

First and foremost, the audience is immaculate. If you’ve ever been to one of those horrible midnight screenings they do at every struggling cineplex where they show the same 10 movies every Friday or Saturday at midnight – where they offer you the same tired-ass recycled cafeteria menu of overexposed 80’s movies like The Goonies, The Princess Bride, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Back to the Future, complete with totally fucked up reels that usually break or burn during the show – then you know about the people that show up for those things. It’s a bunch of asshole college kids who are there to fuck around and be annoying and call attention to themselves in the douchiest possible manner. They are not there to enjoy the film at all nor do most of them give a shit about what’s on screen, they’re there to take celphone photos of themselves watching a movie and then talk to their friends later about how CRAZY it was that they took celphone photos of themselves watching a movie they didn’t pay any attention to.

The Comedy Death Ray series at the Silent Movie Theatre is the antithesis of that. What you have here is a nice 8pm screening time with an audience that’s there to enjoy both the film and the talent that’s there to present it. It’s respectful and refreshingly sincere; people were there to laugh and enjoy themselves, not to be snarky assholes or try and make it about them. This is a huge rarity among filmgoing audiences; a bunch of appreciative people who just want to have a good time and not be dicks about it. Not a single phone went off during the entire event, if you can believe it.

Obviously, you get more than just the film, too; at this particular event, host Scott Aukerman interviewed Tompkins about why he chose this film, what it meant to him and how it’s impacted his career (although it was much funnier than that sounds). Tompkins then presented some classic Letterman Pee-Wee bits from the 80s, and then went straight into the film. The reel was a little beat-up, but in surprisingly good condition, and it’s clear the projectionist there really knows what he’s doing because it looked fantastic.

After the film there was another brief chat with Tompkins about just how well the film has aged and how amazing it is that it ever got made in the first place.

All in all, this is a great film series that is obviously bringing in the right crowd and is a great way to spend a Sunday evening. They schedule these things months in advance so check the schedule and pick a movie you’ve either never seen before or love to death. Either way you’ll enjoy yourself.

Some tips and recommendations:

The theater is a restored Los Angeles landmark without stadium seating, so if you aren’t a tall person, sit on the aisle seats and prepare to tilt if you want an unobstructed view of the screen.

You absolutely will have difficulty finding parking as it’s located in Fairfax Village, and the entire surrounding neighborhood is a maddening labyrinth of clandestine residential parking signs that resemble old Ziggy cartoons in which Ziggy is instructed to “keep left” and also “keep right” at the same time. I can’t tell you where to park because right now I’m still trying to figure out how I managed to get a parking spot without having to fight the Minotaur, beast of legend.

Next month the featured film is Top Secret! and the curator is Weird Al Yankovic. Click here for tickets. Show up if you like the film, the curator, or have never seen either.

My Weakness is Strong

My Weakness is Strong
Patton Oswalt
Warner Bros. and Degenerate Records
Released August 25, 2009

If you like Patton, you will like this album. Overall, the material is very solid, all new, nothing repeated from previous albums and a very fun listen.

Patton settles down a bit with this one, with his life actually toning down a bit. Not so much raw hatred. It has Patton growing up a bit with him discussing becoming a father and having to give up drugs, and doing a media tour for the Pixar film Ratatouille and having to give up his hatred to be civil to children who might interview him on the Disney Channel or show up at his door dressed as Remy for Halloween.

For longtime fans, there are still many are many dark roads traveled in his comedy, so don't worry about that being lacking. For example, Patton talks about and how he went off his Prozac because of his belief the world will devolve into the world of the Road Warrior in thirty years and he didn't want to end up suddenly hitting bottom and ending up not caring about being the bumper ornament for the head wastelander.

There are, as usual some hilariously-recalled stories told by Patton, such as the story of him, his wife and a Realtor coming to look at a house only to find the owner in the middle of an orgy and a story of doing stand-up opening for a magician who does his entire act hate-fucking the audience over the loss of five dollars.

Patton also muses as only he can, with a theory that religion was invented by someone like himself to dodge getting killed by a giant man with a club in ancient times. He also tells a hilarious bit about how much everything has changed in only the past ten years, and therefore time travel is cheaper.

The album comes in an efficient cardstock case with beautiful art by Ivan Brunetti (known for the award-winning Schitzo comic) and two sleeves, one for the DVD and one for the CD. It is one important advantage the physical album has over the digital download.

The CD and DVD contain exactly the same show. The DVD is filmed at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington D.C. so if you want see the album and not just hear it, it is there for you. It is good to get some subtle visual comedy you would otherwise miss.

The DVD is also well-produced with disturbing animated art by Ivan Brunetti and piano music that sounds like Phillip Glass on horse tranquilizers. A nice step-up actually from a lot of comedy DVDs which in the past have looked like they were slapped together with iDVD.

The DVD also contains extras, such as a bad infomercial for the Patton Oswalt CD which contains cameos from such people as Paul F. Tompkins and Zach Galifianakis. There is also a strange series of parodies of Tommy Wiseau with Patton as Mr. Wiseau, hence the strange. There is an alternate opening to the comedy special which slams openings to comedy specials and a neat little photo slideshow with a series of pictures of items that remind you of jokes. It's hard to explain, but very neat.

So, this album is available pretty much everywhere right now at about $15 or less, so if you are a fan of Patton, you've probably already bought it.

Full outside cover:


Full inside cover:


DVD menu image:


Quite possibly the saddest DVD setup menu ever created:

Postmortem: Best Week Ever

It was announced this week – first via Twitter-happy comic Doug Benson (who is also the man behind the awesome and entertaining I Love Movies podcast) and then confirmed through various other sources including Tompkins himself – that VH1’s weekly clip show, Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins, was going on “hiatus” until 2010.

What this probably means is that Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins is not likely to return to the network, which is really not at all a surprise, considering that the show aired on VH1 and Tompkins did not have to eliminate a broken, alcoholic Los Angeles-area stripper each week. Instead he had to riff on the same exact reality show clips Joel McHale already made fun of a half hour earlier every Friday night.

Tompkins’ run hosting Best Week Ever was a really interesting experiment to watch. The show started out without a proper host, as a way of extending VH1’s seemingly endless “I Love the [Decade]” series, where underpaid comics made cracks about old pop culture artifacts. Initially they tried to translate that series – a bunch of talking heads making jokes about pop culture - into a weekly half-hour format with familiar comics from the show commenting on current events (rather than moldy 80's sitcoms), including folks like Hal Sparks, Mo Rocca, Michael Ian-Black, and Frangela.

What it eventually became - after extensive retooling - was basically a competitor to The Soup, where host Tompkins would riff on clips from reality shows, network dramas and the occasional viral video. They had a few distinct segments – The Sizzler, which was all strained tabloid comedy with comedian Chuck Nice, a Tompkins green-screen interview with some celebrity or a chat with the most recent American Idol loser, and a bit featuring the dry comic stylings of the aforementioned Doug Benson.

To be honest, the show wasn’t great. Paul F. Tompkins is an extremely talented comedian but the show felt suffocating. He wasn’t given much room to breathe, and everything came across as way too scripted. He was stuck making fun of the same 8 clips everyone on the internet had already mocked days beforehand, and his immediate competition (and by that we mean The Soup) was already far enough ahead in the ratings and recognition to leave this show behind by a wide margin. Not only that, it suffered from a lack of energy; there was no in-house audience. The union crew on Countdown with Keith Olbermann is allowed to laugh at the host’s jokes, for god’s sake. For some reason, Best Week Ever felt like poor Tompkins was talking to an empty room.

Given that there are now no fewer than 2 Soup spinoffs and Best Week Ever always felt a bit like an also-ran, it’s pretty clear VH1 is essentially throwing in the towel on this one. Hopefully we’re wrong, and when the damn thing "comes back" in 2010 (which, let's face it, is a longshot), perhaps they’ll have found a way to make it work while still employing all the great comic talent they had for this go-round. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Impersonal

Paul F. Tompkins

Released by aspecialthing.com

You may not have heard of Paul F. Tompkins. Ever. You may think "That's a name I have never heard of." If you have heard of him, maybe you've seen him as the "Guy who sort of appeared in Mr. Show episodes" and on that "Root of All Evil with Lewis Black How Disappointing That Show Is." 

His album, Impersonal is somewhat hard to obtain in a physical form. I personally prefer the physical copies of comedy albums for the interior artwork, and because many comics are including DVDs with their CD sets now. This reviewer could not find it easily online, but fortunately the digital downloadable copy is easy to obtain.

On the album you will find just over an hour of F. Tompkins' humor, which typically ranges from the sarcastic to the very sarcastic with a grandiose, almost circus emcee sort of bitter cynical tone to it.

A memorable bit on the album is where F. Tompkins deconstructs the whole idea of the "Snakes in a can of peanut brittle" novelty item and how it could not possibly be funny, considering that nobody ever eats peanut brittle, let alone out of a can. Nor would anyone be fooled by the vinyl covered springs that shoot out of the can into thinking they were snakes. Now, take that unfunny argument and make it sarcastically funny and have it go on for ten minutes.

There are also jabs at hipsters who wear strange animals and walk around in public to appear more interesting than they are.  Saying that he would introduce himself to them as"Oh pardon me, sir, is that a bird on your shoulder?  Well you must be THE MOST FASCINATING PERSON IMAGINABLE!"

I guess the good part about Paul F. Tompkins is that he is sarcastic as fuck. I guess the bad part about him is that he's such a sarcastic fuck sometimes the constant sarcasm can be almost grating for the most cynical of us. Also his voice varies from really quiet to INCREDIBLY LOUD quite a bit, which can be disconcerting for even cats, but overall the positives definitely outweigh the negatives as far as this album is concerned.

You can get it from Amazon.com if you want.

Lewis Black's Root of All Evil

Lewis Black's Root Of All Evil
Available on Comedy Central and

Take Lewis Black. Make him a judge. Then take two comedians and make them lawyers. Have the two of them argue over which is more evil in something that isn't really a trial. Sounds like a hilarious show, right? RIGHT??

The format is thus: Lewis Black is the judge. One comic makes an argument for one thing being the Root of All Evil, and another comic makes an argument for another thing. Say like, Patton Oswalt argues that bloggers are the Root of All Evil, and Andy Daly makes an argument that Ultimate Fighting is the Root of All Evil. This goes on for a while, to where the comics put forth a hypothetical monologue as to what will happen if their evil thing is allowed to continue. Then they give their closing arguments and Lewis Black decides which is more evil.

Essentially, it's a bunch of different ideas shoved together in a formula, which makes it broken.

So you have stand-ups doing material on a set subject. Okay, they've got some talented comics so that should be fine, but then you have them present the material as lawyers. This is kind of like going up to a gourmet chef and saying "hey, I know you are a gourmet chef, but could you do your cooking as if you were a gay pirate?" In essence, it takes people who are good at something and has them try to force it into a bad idea.

Then there is the concept of comparing two things and deciding which is the more evil. This is interesting, but it's done in a way that isn't interesting. It would be interesting if this was an actual jury of ordinary people giving their actual opinions as to what is more evil. That would be full of suprise and insight. This is just again, comics doing stand-up material on a set subject crammed up the ass of a bad idea.

I kinda wish that this has been more of a "This Week" format. You know, where comics sat around and had a round table discussion about what subjects considered evil. That would have provided a more open format for comedy and not seemed so forced. Also, it would have made a trifecta of news show satire. You would have the Daily Show for fake news, the Colbert Report for fake Fox news, and Root of All Evil for fake NPR-like discussion.

Ah well, I'm not the programming director of Comedy Central. If I was, then Mind of Mencia would be about cutting open Carlos Mencia's skull to see what brain processes make him suck so bad and develop gene therapies to prevent that in future comedians.

I want to like this show as it is. I really do, because I like the people in it. I like Lewis Black, and I like Andy Daly, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins....and the others, but this format really doesn't work at all. It's kind of sad, like watching Eddie Murphy's career since 1991, except so much more so.

Expect Root of All Evil to run for five more seasons on Comedy Central.