If you're a fan of edgy, crass stand-up with lots of creatively-constructed cursing, I highly recommend this album. (Don't get it if you just like him from his role as Kevin's buddy on The King of Queens and think this is gonna be nice and wholesome fun for the family.)
Patton is my favorite comedian currently working. I first saw him on an HBO special back in `98 or so and could scarcely believe someone so attuned to my sense of humor could be working in standup. Mind you, I still love the classics like Cosby, Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, Murphy, Hicks, etc. and have profound respect for such current greats as Bernie Mac, Jon Stewart, Dave Attell, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, David Cross and others, but Oswalt just so completely presses my HA HAH buttons it borders on symbiotic. In fact, I've often said that if my pal Joe and I were in some kind of horrible transporter accident in which our molecules got scrambled, combined and put back together, Patton Oswalt would be the result. (Although, you'd still have to account for a serious loss of mass, but I'll leave that to the mathematicians.)
Oswalt works pretty blue for the most part. I appreciate that, being something of a connoisseur of vulgarity myself. Don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate it when a comedian can cause me to become dehydrated from crying my eyes out with laughter and not say a single curse word. That shows true talent and skill at their craft. However, there is also something to be said for a comedian who not only has a fantastic point of view to their act but can season it with creatively constructed vulgarities in addition to intelligence and a fine vocabulary to boot. Patton Oswalt, I'm happy to say, can do both. I've seen him do curse-free comedy in appearances on Comedy Central, Conan O'Brien and one of his basic cable standup specials and he was just as funny to me as when he curses. So while he doesn't need the cursing to be funny, I think he prefers to give it to us anyway as added bonus value. (According to his blog, he has another relatively curse-free comedy special in the can for broadcast on Comedy Central within the next year, so I'm looking forward to savoring that.)
"Feelin' Kinda Patton" is just great stuff, though. There were parts so funny I thought I was going to run off the road because I couldn't see through the laughter-spawned tears pouring out of my eyes. (He does screaming outrage every bit as good as Sam Kinneson did, only without the underlying menace.)
The album itself is wonderful for just what it is, but there are some Easter Egg extra tracks (one of which is actually called Easter Eggs) which are different recordings of some of his older material from his `98 HBO special, including his choice observations on public television painters like Bob Ross and William Alexander, Ice Cream Magnate Tom Carvel and Pissdrinker's Magazine. I'm a little critical of these, as I think his delivery on the originals was far superior to these cuts, but they're bonus cuts and are great for folks who haven't heard them before.
I'm now delighted to learn that Patton will soon be releasing a 2.5 hour 2 CD concert called "Patton Oswalt: 222" that shall be a required purchase for me.
In the meantime, my new .sigfile quote shall be...
"Every time you eat a steak, a hippie's hackysack goes into the sewer. Always remember that."
--Patton Oswalt, 2004.
No comments:
Post a Comment