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.

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: