I’m still trying to figure out if having comedy on CDs as something one regularly listens to is kind of weird. Part of what makes comedy so enjoyable is hearing the jokes the first time, or better, being there in person. But as it turns out, it was a Patton Oswalt bit that a friend put on a compilation disc that first drew my attention. After a hundred listens, it’s still hilarious. So I became a fan.
I’ve never “followed” a comedian like I have Patton Oswalt—my boyfriend and I have multiple DVDs/CDs and have seen him three times. While Oswalt has become more well-known for the “fat best friend role” (one of his jokes—actually he is incredibly self-effacing) he had on Queen of Kings, he’s been doing stand-up a very long time. It shows. What quality keeps us watching, listening and laughing even when we sometimes know all the bits is hard-to-pin-down, but Oswalt has it in spades.
Most importantly, he’s a great storyteller. Someone way smarter than me could explain how we as humans since the dawn of sentience have liked to hear our favorite stories over and over, even though of course we know how they “go” and how they “end” (and then would mention something about Joesph Cambpell). He alters his bits with fairly long stories segueing into one another that I really look forward to hearing. Yet when I compare the different instances of them, he somehow can create a little distinction too, whether it’s the tone, or new details, or just the off-the-cuff self-editorializing he is prone to. I think this would be so hard.
Released on hipster-approved SubPop, the new collection contains a CD from Austin at the end of 2006 and a DVD a little earlier in the year from Atlanta. The CD is actually culled from a few different performances, but I didn’t notice until I read the liner notes. I can understand wanting to do it this way because the overall effect is the listener gets the uber-live show optimized for when it’s just audio: it’s important that the humor conveys without being able to see gestures and expressions. There are other comedians I really like where perhaps a CD is not the best medium—for instance Eddie Izzard is f-ing brilliant, but on CD-alone a lot of his subtlety is lost, and his accent is hard to understand for this dumb American without accompanying visual cues. Plus the sound is very clear on the Oswalt CD, so the spatial quality and crowd energy makes the listener feel like one is experiencing it first-hand.
On the intro to the DVD, Oswalt explains one reason an earlier performance was selected was so we could see the material as he was first trying it out and how it evolved throughout the year. For that reason and the fact it’s all one performance, it does feel a bit rougher, but Oswalt is really enjoyable to watch, and the differences in the routines make it a great release as a whole. Really, for the price of a normal CD you get the DVD included so that seems like a great deal.
I can’t help but feel like one reason I think he’s so funny is because we are the same age and come from the same nerdy, brainy, liberal arts-educated lineage, but my boyfriend is a bit older and never has carried the sci-fi/comic nerd gene. To tell the truth I was just thinking about it this morning and its one of the only things entertainment-wise we have in common (which might be scary and/or sad). We are all music junkies and I love how his current opening bit—which will forever be known as “Failure pile in a sadness bowl” references a This Mortal Coil song—this is the comedian for me! We revel in his observations on people and political rants, and find his humor can be very spontaneous, too. He’s very adept at picking up on things in the room, which is captured in both the Austin and Atlanta recordings. Listen to the samples on Amazon and give it a whirl.
Definitely see him live if you can! …even if you can’t engage in long-drawn out conversations about the origins of Wolverine. Now that his been immortalized as the voice of Remy in the new Pixar flick Ratatouille, I hope he keeps up his appearances in small clubs.
|