HBO: Wanda Sykes' "I'ma Be Me"

The Special: Wanda Sykes' "I'ma Be Me"
Runtime: 90 minutes
As seen on: HBO October 10, 2009 (and repeated until the start of the zombie apocalypse)

She's been a sitcom actress, a famous stand-up comic, a maker of prank phone calls. Tonight, she's the star of I'ma Be Me, a rather large collection of jokes and other material. Watching the special, it's clear that what you're seeing is a mix of monologue-style jokes on recent events like Obama and other political happenings with a series of personal stories about the goings-on for her life.

Most HBO specials, particularly George Carlin's, were about an hour long. This length was about perfect because it didn't ever feel like it had been going on for too long, plus it had the added bonus of being the appropriate length for a cassette or CD. In the MP3 era, time has no meaning, and should this ever see release on an audio format, well, length isn't an issue. The material is enjoyable, Wanda's clearly having a good time, and seems to have a great rapport with her Washington D.C. crowd.

Other topics covered include: waxing, babies, aging, and what appears to be the female equivalent of being kicked in the balls. At 90 minutes the show is about 30 minutes too long-- none of the material is bad, it's just that our MTV-addled brains are used to shorter bursts of comedy. She had enough material to do two specials here, so this is more of a king-sized mega-performance that her fans will no doubt love and fans of comedy in general will likely enjoy.

Worth seeing! Just budget some time or watch it in pieces.

Also notable: She reveals her age during the performance. I personally would not have guessed this one. Also, she's getting her own talk show on Fox shortly, if what she's done here carries over to broadcast TV she's probably going to have a great run.

Rhys Darby: Imagine That!

WHAT: 1-hour special of Flight of the Conchords' Murray
WHEN: You probably missed it, and that's OK
GOOD IF: You are not below 40

Have you ever wondered what it might look like if New Zealand tried to make a comedy special with the look and feel of something that would air after a Gallagher special on early 1980s HBO? Well, someone made it for you.

Aired as an anchor in a Conchords-themed special on Comedy Central, Rhys Darby made this special which, as far as can be told, started life as a direct-to-DVD comedy special sold overseas, licensed for air in the USA. Most of the material seems almost warm and fuzzy, while not necessarily funny, with occasional outbursts of cursing. Which doesn't seem to go well together.



(The promo is a little misleading, as the Rhys Darby in the wrapper segments is much more likable than the one performing.)

The comic lacks a clear voice, this special seems like it saw production before Darby managed to put together a really solid chunk of material. The more savvy comedy fan may initially view the show as being a joke about some of the hacky material you've seen other comedians do 20 years ago, then you find out that this is the actual show. He's really making jokes about mimes, and inkblot tests, and sheep.

While repetition is important in comedy, the amount of unnecessary callbacks to his robot bit don't get funnier as the shows go on. He keeps doing them, and other little beeps and blips and helicopter impressions, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. There's a lack of wit which was replaced by a light version of the career of Michael "Police Academy" Winslow.

Considering the likes of Eugene Mirman and Arj Barker were excellent supporting players on Conchords and genuinely funny on their own, it's a shame that Darby didn't produce the same kind of special. Imagine That! proves surprisingly bland for a performer that just recently came out of a highly regarded paid cable TV series. If you really dig Murray on Flight of the Conchords, do yourself a favor: hold on to that memory, and just watch DVDs of the HBO show instead. You're welcome.

Down + Dirty with Jim Norton: Episdode 1

One thing that it seems we see less and less of these days are showcases for stand-up on TV. On talk shows, most comedians turn their material into Q&A sessions on the couch. Comedy Central has a special here and there, but rarely is there a program where you might be able to check out sets featuring multiple comics. Thankfully, HBO has realized that we've got a massive gap from when VH-1's Stand-Up Spotlight was dropped, and decided to give us a new show with less bleeping and more (any?) funny.

The format for Down + Dirty with Jim Norton is as follows: Jim comes out and tells us jokes. His musical guy is Lemmy from Motorhead. Four comics come out and tell us jokes in 30 minutes, making this a pretty manic show. The episode I caught featured Whitney Cummings, Artie Lange, Jim Florentine, and Anthony Jeselnik-- and it was pretty good. Despite the fact that herpes jokes infected multiple sets, the half-hour went by pretty quickly and the comics had at least a couple of really good laughs. Being an HBO special, it seemed going blue wasn't so much an option as a requirement.

You might be asking "so column writer, who are these people?"

Host Jim Norton is a foul, funny man best known for not being particularly well known. I first saw him on Colin Quinn's Tough Crowd, but he also turned in great performances on the HBO series Lucky Louie as a depraved, often underdressed shell of a human being. In other words, he's the perfect vehicle for comedy.

The first guest Anthony Jeselnik I've never heard of before. Apparently he's been on Deadwood and he does a lot of stand-up. His material was certainly pretty good-- he actually writes jokes, rather than observations or funny voices, plus he has more than a few topics to go on. Worth seeing? Yes.

Next up was Whitney Cummings who, again, I have never heard of. We've been pretty good on this blog about not making the typical "woman not funny" jokes, and this lady is indeed amusing, but she's also a one-trick pony as far as her set goes. Pretty much the entire set was "hi, I have a lot of sex." As comedy nerds, we cannot connect with her on this subject, which made up the lion's share of her set. A little variety would have been nice.

If you blinked, you missed Jim Florentine. Best known as a contributor to Crank Yankers, his set was short and sweet-- also funny. Artie Lange was the show's headliner, and I swear I've heard a lot of this material beforer. Lange is a funny guy, known primarily for his Howard Stern connection but he's actually done some interesting stuff. Who can forget "My White Momma" on Mad TV? His material also kicked off by getting the audience on his side by saying what we were all thinking-- how the Hell is this guy still alive? Don't get me wrong, I like the guy's act, but watching him on stage was more than a little uncomfortable. If he isn't hanging out with the grim spectre of death when he goes backstage, I'll be surprised. Here's hoping he doesn't die before his time.

All in all, it was a good showcase of talent-- some were funnier than others, and if you're the kind of person exposed to comedy mostly through network television this would probably be an unpleasant experience for you. It was certainly entertaining, and it's really wonderful to see a TV show giving me a chance to see multiple comics in rapid succession. It almost felt like the only way you'd see comedians on TV were as talk show guests or in half-hour specials... so kudos, HBO, for having the balls to try this format again. I'll keep watching.

Future guests include Andrew "Dice" Clay, Patrice O'Neal, and several people who I do not yet think I've seen. I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger

It's somewhat uncommon for a comedian to enter the spotlight and, after 20 years in front of the cameras, continue to find fame and fortune in front of a microphone doing stand-up comedy rather than sitcoms or counting DVD residuals. Lucky for us, Chris Rock understands the value in making sure that his history as the guy in the back of the Red Lobster scraping shrimp off a plate is shared with you, the American (and international) public.

After getting his start on Saturday Night Live nearly 20 years ago, he's gone on to movies, In Living Color, HBO specials, and the narrator and creative force behind Everybody Hates Chris on UPN The CW. Oh, and he also scored a minor novelty hit with "No Sex (In the Champagne Room)" which didn't seem to teeter over to the realm of being unpleasant. (Examples: "Boogie in your Butt" by Eddie Murphy and "You Look Mahvelous" from Billy Crystal.) Because Rock is consistently funny, he doesn't have to apologize for his past works, they can just be dusted off and enjoyed. And with any luck, this special will receive similar accolades from the comedy fans of tomorrow.

Kill the Messenger aired on HBO this past weekend and is one of very few comedy specials that, in the first ten minutes, I said to myself "this ought to win an Emmy for outstanding editing." Rather than having two or three cameras set up in a single venue, Rock performed the same show in South Africa, England, and New York-- and stitched together a special taking elements from each, often cutting mid-sentence from one continent to another. The effect is a little jarring for a comedy special, but it worked. The sound editors made sure that the audio was consistent, and because Chris Rock tends to repeat the general themes of his jokes (i.e., "there are a lot of differences between men and women,") this technique really, really works well. It shows the world responding to his humor while keeping his technique intact. Oh, and it's really funny.

The 90-minute set is unlikely to spawn another single, but that's OK. With themes as overdone as "men and women are different," it's tough to come up with new, good material-- especially while saying that very quote to your audience. However, Rock pulls it off in a way that, to describe it here, would only make me look like an asshole. This performance is by someone who has refined his craft-- which is appropriately raunchy and hilarious-- in such a way that to even discuss it would be to do you a disservice. It's very funny, well-paced, and absolutely worth seeing. Unfortunately, no DVD or CD releases are currently scheduled so you'll just have to watch it on one of the many HBO channels or crash at a friend with a good cable package.

Of course, the standard disclaimers for Chris Rock stand-up apply. Don't let your kids watch it. Don't let your parents hear you listening to it. Heck, be careful about your spouse or significant other. But if you have cool friends at work? This is a fine topic of discussion for all. It's great to see someone get to talk about things at his job-- like how his audience owes him for getting them laid, for example-- that aren't great fodder for some of us office dwellers.

The special does run a little long, but it doesn't feel that way. Typically, comedy specials last about an hour or so-- 90 minutes of comedy is a hard thing to assemble, so it's great to see someone put it together like this. It might be tough to fit on a single CD but that's why man invented the MP3.

Dana Carvey 2008 (or 2003, it's hard to tell)

Telling jokes isn't easy. Getting in front of a crowd of thousands of people with elevated expectations and a desire for an evening of mirth is difficult, mostly because you won't know what's going to play with these people. Can you tell genuinely insightful jokes about politics? How about religion? These subjects can be touchy, and Dana Carvey has decided that they don't have to be. In his 2008 HBO special Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies, the title alone pretty much tells you everything you need to know-- this is a comic who has managed to find out which words people find amusing, and he isn't afraid to use them even if they don't belong there.

In a one-hour set which feels less like an edgy HBO comedy special and more like an audition tape for corporate gigs, Carvey gets to trot out a number of impressions which should be recognized by the bulk of people in the English speaking world. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, John Travolta, they're all here. Putting one's heart and soul into a routine is what a lot of funny people aspire to do today, laying out one's peccadilloes and phobias for the world to see as the comedian pretty much disembowels him or herself in front of a live audience. The other option is to play it safe, which few do well, but with this special we have a guy who has mastered it. George W. Bush gags? Oh yes, they're here, and these funny voices are what pass for political satire in this special-- and oh, the applause! It's really amazing, but it does show that there aren't just two Americas in terms of economy, but also in humor. There's a joke about John Kerry looking like Herman Munster. The early 1990s were a time where stand up comedy was available on television-- cable or network-- constantly, and it was not particularly common to see people making Mondale or Dukakis jokes after the election season was over. People moved on, and found new material. Perhaps it had to do with the changing political administrations, or perhaps DuPont developed a new technology which allows you to keep jokes fresh in some new plastic container only available to comedians that play venues of 1,000 people or more.

For a set jam-packed with so many jokes, it's really quite stunning how safe Dana Carvey plays it. The political aspects celebrate the mundane, allowing the comic to engage the audience by letting them all feel like they're in on the joke by trotting out voices they're sure to recognize. The bulk of the references seem to be designed to be understandable by anyone presently in their 50s, and due to the kind of things you might know if you're 50, odds are most younger viewers will get the references but unless English is your second or third language, they probably won't appreciate numerous callbacks to the wacky political voices. OK, we got it. Thanks. Carvey infuses his political humor with all the subtlety and with you might expect from Elmo's dissertation on the letter "Q".

Much like the recently released Mike Meyers vehicle The Love Guru, this special seems to be aiming to capture the audience who was aware of SNL back in the 1990s, and may have even enjoyed a few bits, but isn't one of the people who would nitpick the show. In short, if you're the kind of person who might actually find this blog and read it, Squatting Monkeys Tell No Lies is the kind of special you probably won't enjoy all that much. If you're the kind of person who records a program just to check it out as you're a curious fellow, your attention span and immune system may well compell you to watch something else in the first 5 minutes.

Seeing the massive selection of what HBO has offered comedy fans over the years, this is on par with what you can expect. Some things appeal to a broad audience, which seems to be the opposite of where their niche programming seems to go. Robert Schimmel, David Cross, Robert Klein, and others have turned in specials which may not be things anybody could sit down and enjoy, but at the very least you can walk away knowing that someone (me) loved them. I don't think I can say the same thing about Pistachio Disguisey here. The comic earned a tremendous amount of good vibes from comedy fans during his stint in the trenches of sketch comedy, and it's hard to dislike the man. Hopefully he's making good money in corporate gigs, as the special makes a person yearn for something just a little bit better.

Additional Comments:
- There are comics who serve a specific niche. The Blue Collar crew, love them or hate them, has discovered their audience and plays to them. Dana Carvey is your man if you're 45-60 and generally unfamiliar with the material used for Tonight Show monologues over the past decade.
- Dana loves saying "Barack Hussein Obama," giving it a verbal emphasis I've only seen during the local news coverage of the West Virginia primaries. Mr. Obama is also the most timely of the references in the act-- and they're very brief.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger remains the goose that lays the golden eggs. "Hans & Franz", now "the Governator," proving once again that if you're looking to mine comic gold, look to bootleg shirts sold during a long-since-passed election.
- "Gay Al Gore" = "Lock box" plus a lisp. For an amusing joke of that nature, nothing can surpass the passing "Gaybraham Lincoln" gag on 30 Rock, which pretty much starts and stops with the mention of the name.
- Dick Cheney shot someone in the face? No shit! I must take this piece of information back to myself in the DeLorean so that I may capitalize on it before Dana Carvey, as surely no one else has come up with any material on this event.
- On Clinton: "Comedians will still be making fun of your horniness in the year 2008." Yes, but those who do tend to use current events, you see.
- Classic rock jokes. Let's throw the baby boomers a bone here, as nobody old enough to remember the music of the 1970s when it's new would be comfortable with a reference that takes place after the Carter administration.

What's Next:
Mr. Carvey will be performing live in San Diego on July 30, and has shows in Livermore, CA and Saratoga, CA on August 20 and 21, respectively. Tickets start at $65.

The Stand-Up Comedy of Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV is the record-annihilating bestselling video game for the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3. In it, you can run over pedestrians with an ice-cream truck, throw grenades into Internet cafes, and watch stand-up comedy.

This is what this article will focus on - the stand up comedy. The least interesting of the above choices. Sure, there's been games with comedians in them, like Gallagher's Gallery, (which was neither stand-up or comedy) but I do not think there has ever been a game with stand-up comedy in it. My, the advancement of gaming technology. Revel in it. Revel.

So, let us examine the stand-up. You have comedy from the likes of Kat Williams to Ricky Gervais. Actually, just Kat Williams and Ricky Gervais. Not too many choices there, but a good range of demographic is covered, from pimp lover to comedy nerd. Perhaps in the future incarnations of the game one can see the likes of Maria Bamford and David Cross. Or more likely, charged ten dollars to download them into the game.



The stand-up comedy is performed at a comedy-club stereotype, the "Split Sides" comedy club. The outside of the club is pictured above. You can either go to the club itself in the game or occasionally catch the acts on television...also in-game.

I think this is the first video game in which which you can sit down at your television, playing a video game in which you are watching television. The mind reels.

When you are at the comedy club itself (in the game) one thing of note is that you can't actually interact with the club or the comics. You go to the club, and basically you are treated to a non-interactive cutscene rendered in the game engine.

This is a bit of a disappointment. Not that I would like to shoot Ricky Gervais or Kat Williams and hit them with a car in real life, but GTA IV is all about doing stuff in the game world you would never do in the real world, so it feels like you are getting cheated that you can't just walk in and blast a comic with a shotgun mid-act. Or blast an annoying audience member. Or set the bar on fire.

Perhaps there was an agreement with the comics that they would only appear in the game as long as you couldn't kill them. For that I say: give the comics guns. Does anyone not want to play a video game in which you can get into a gun battle with Ricky Gervais? I submit this question to you.

Okay, well, let us put hypotheticals aside and go to the presentation as is. You go to the club, the cutscene begins, and the comic comes out and does about ten minutes of stand up. Occasionally the camera cuts back to you, Nico, sitting at your table stone-faced. That part is actually amusing. The audience, being that it's essentially computer-animated canned-laughter does what canned laughter does and laughs like people have never laughed ever in recorded history.



Also, obviously a lot of work was done with motion capture to make the comedians move in a way that represents the actual comedian's movements themselves, but they still don't look quite right in the game engine. For example Kat Williams does a bit about listening to a song about "Hustling" and how that might make him move in places like, the supermarket. So he moves but it's like looking at a well-done marionette.



Ricky Gervais I have not seen do stand-up ever and after watching him do stand-up in game I still don't think I've done stand up. He's done brilliant work writing and performing in The Office and Extras, but here, just doing straight stand-up it is just weird. Especially with the LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE coming from the NOT REALLY AN AUDIENCE in reaction to his very dry humor. For instance, he talks about how he talks about how he was incensed that a cancer patient he was doing a benefit show for was still around years later. ENORMOUS LAUGHTER. Yeah.



Kat Williams is presented as the "local" so he mentions living in the city. Since the city is a facsimile of New York, one of his bits is about living in a studio apartment and how hard it is to move around. Again, the marionette factor kicks in with a bit like this, where you are distracted by the fake Kat Williams moving around in the game engine, trying to demonstrate how small his apartment is and not actually enjoying the physical comedy. It's unfortunate that a lot of his stand-up bits are physical in this sense.

Overall, the stand-up is a nice bonus feature to an already very fun game. It's a little odd in it's implementation, but then again, it's a bonus. You can always go back to killing hookers with shotguns at any time.