Comedy Death Ray and I Love Movies This Week

Boy oh boy, did you miss a great night of comedy in Los Angeles! It may be cold and rainy, but the crowds certainly didn't seem to mind. First up, Doug Benson's I Love Movies podcast (which you will be able to hear on iTunes shortly) had special guests Sarah Silverman and Steve Agee, promoting the upcoming third season of The Sarah Silverman Program and doing their usual thing. You know, being funny. As always, the show was funny although significantly more... multi-directional than usual. Good times. It's still a crying shame this isn't videotaped and aired on TV.

Comedy Death Ray had a fantastic lineup where everybody seemed to have a really funny set. Hosted by Matt Ruby, the brisk show went through a lot of comics really fast. Gabe Liebman and Hannibal Buress should be both added to your "go see these guys" lists if you keep one. The latter is an SNL writer with some fantastic material that he's clearly not sharing with the show this season. (Good on him.) Matt Walsh came out as "Tony Stella," an anti-intellectual comic character with a bit on how one might be an egghead. Great stuff, although the audience didn't seem to be buying it.

Next up was Jeff Garlin (of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame) who riffed on important matters such as sparkly clean penises. There were other things as well, plus something to the effect of "you think I have an act? I just make this stuff up." Which, if true, means this person is far more gifted than any of us will ever hope to be. The reason we jumped at tickets this week was John Mulaney, whose album we looked at last year and who is also a writer on SNL. With tons of new (to us) material, as always, he was a lot of fun to watch. Headlining this week's show were the Sklar Brothers who, as far as we know, are the only funny folk working today with a bit about CJ from District 9. They just recorded a new Comedy Central special, and it's unknown to us if these bits will be in said show, but if they are you probably should make it a point to catch it whenever it airs. (Which, based on what we've seen as incubation times go, could be really late 2010.)

So there you have it! Another fantastic week to remind you of just how spoiled you are to be able to see this kind of comedy for $5 in Los Angeles.

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.