RECAP: Louis CK, 2/21

Todd Barry took the stage a little bit after 8:30 and did a very funny set, as would be expected from such a great comedian. Or as he put it, "I'm much too famous to be the opening act." What followed him completely marveled me for the next hour and a half. I don't want to go too much into jokes or what he said in any kind of specificity. But I will say this: Louis CK is the best comedian alive today and is rapidly approaching, if he's not already, being one of the best of all time. What struck me the most while watching him, that more than ever before he speaks with a complete freedom.

I can't imagine there being anything that he would like to say but that he isn't saying. He drops words like "faggot" and "cunt" like they're every day parts of his vocabulary and makes no apologies for them. He speaks about subjects that would (and did) make normal people squeamish and uncomfortable or even offended, and then made those people see things his way and laugh about them. His audience isn't just made up of nihilistic fuck-ups like me who will not have a second thought about laughing at a joke about raping a dead child -- for instance, the group of middle aged women near me were dying at that, even when he kept going in more horrific detail.

Which, I guess, brings me to my larger point. Louis CK never had to sell out or go clean or pander to get a mainstream audience. He never had to tone it down. He never had to go to where the audience was to get them. He's become one of the biggest touring acts of stand-up simply by being the best and the audience came to him. And on his Hilarious tour, he's become more graphic, more extreme, more descriptive of all the horrific details, and yeah, even funnier. He's at the top of the stand-up game being dirty, but also when he's talking about airplanes, or how we use words and language. He can talk about anything and still be the best at it.

Another thing that struck me was how loud on the mic he would get when he was angry. And it wasn't at all artificial like some angry comedians who are known for their yelling. It was completely natural frustration. That's what I felt was most important about the show. Everything he talked about mattered to him. Even when he would get into digressions about the silly or gross, it still led to a larger point or philosophy, so when he did raise his voice in anger, it felt like it mattered to him, so it mattered to me. And yet, he was completely loose and it felt like a natural conversation or dialogue. CK has become the model that all comedians should emulate. Not his style or his subject matter or his delivery. Just that he got to the top by doing the stuff he wanted to do rather than what he thought others wanted him to do. And the result is the single best night of stand-up comedy I've ever seen.

- Luke Giordano is a Phiadelphia comedian and host of the STAND-UP AT THE BULLY PULPIT show at Drexel University on Friday, March 13th.
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BREAKING: Louis CK coming to the Merriam Theater, 2/21

Louis CK is a really busy guy. As the first and only season of his HBO sitcom Lucky Louie came to a close, he was busy putting together a new set of stand-up comedy that would eventually become his one-hour HBO special Shameless. By the time that aired, he was touring again (performing at the Keswick in April) with another hour of material that eventually became Chewed Up, which was released on CD and DVD this week. And if you were smart enough to notice a pattern, he's getting ready for another tour: "The tour is called 'Louis CK: Hilarious' and it's a completely different hour of material than Chewed Up (or Shameless, my special from last year)." This time he'll be performing at the 1790-seat Merriam Theater in downtown Philadelphia:

Saturday, February 21st, 2009
Merriam Theater
8PM
$30-$40
tickets on-sale now
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THE TOP 5: Stand-up Specials of 2008 by Luke Giordano

(I'm stuck in an airport in Detroit for four hours)

5. Chris Rock - Kill the Messenger -- This one should at least be commended for the neat experiment of cutting between three different shows in three different cities pretty seamlessly. However, it did get pretty distracting and I would really have preferred to just watch one show all the way through. The material is solid, though, and I'd call it better than Never Scared.

4. George Carlin - It's Bad For Ya -- "I'd like to begin by saying, 'Fuck Lance Armstrong.'" Not Carlin's best of his later years (that belongs to You Are All Diseased). But looking at it from after his death, this functions as the final words of an angry old fuck. The closing bit, "You Have No Rights" is both hilarious and a punch in the gut.

3. Bill Burr - Why Do I Do This? -- I love Bill Burr. I love this special. Delving into dark material, even for him, his stuff on thinking about running people over in his car and his basically advocating eugenics is so brutal and funny. I might be reading too much into everything, but the fact that he talks frankly about things beneath the surface that are disturbing or violent is so refreshing.

2. Brian Regan - The Epitome of Hyperbole -- Everybody knows Brian Regan. He's hilarious. This special is no exception.

1. Louis CK - Chewed Up -- George Carlin is dead. Louis CK is the best stand-up comedian alive. He is absolutely without fear and will take any subject and gut it completely. And yet, his delivery is so appealing and he is so charismatic and naturally likable that he can launch right into bits about the word faggot or cunt or ni**er without receiving so much as a gasp. The fact that Louis CK is so good, it's beyond the point of angering that it's gone right into awe. Beyond laughter, he is a joy to watch.

Luke Giordano is a part of the improv group DREXEL FOOTBALL TEAM and host of the monthly stand-up show "Stand-up at the Bully Pulpit"
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Louis CK makes a political appeal for Obama

Here, Louis CK eats cookies and urges any undecided voters to vote for Obama. Posting it now is even more useless than it was this morning (as he admits), but it's still pretty funny. [Hat tip: Comic's Comic]

Louis will be at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington on Saturday, November 22nd.
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RECAP: Todd Barry & Louis CK, 4/26

It was a rare night in the suburban Philadelphia town of Glenside. It's not every day that they get to see two of the country's best touring stand-up comics, Todd Barry and Louis CK.

The Keswick Theatre is a 1300-seat theater that without a balcony looks sort of like an auditorium. Alcohol was served in the lobby beforehand and the lines were long and lively.

After the opener, Todd Barry took the stage. As someone that records his albums in comedy clubs- his new one, From Heaven took place above a Chinese restaurant in Cambridge, Mass.- it was interesting to see him perform in a theater setting. And although the crowd was there for Louis C.K., Barry did well with his jokes about New York, Mick Jagger’s email address and performing in Alabama, amongst many others.

He seemed to enjoy combating with hecklers. Perhaps calling them “hecklers” isn't fair, they were more like guys in the audience yelling out stuff. As he went into a joke about giving food to the homeless, someone in the crowd yelled out “fuck that!” Barry gleefully made fun of the guy, which shut him up for a while. At some points there were multiple people yelling out, probably due to the alcohol served in the lobby before the show, but Barry coolly took care of them.

Last was, of course, the headliner Louis CK. Louis had been announcing the other acts from behind the curtain, so when it came time for him to perform he just walked out cold to loud applause. He had shaved off his beard for his work on Ricky Gervais' 'This Side of Truth'and right as he took the mic, the "fuck that!" guy yelled out asking why he cut it off. Because your mother asked me to, Louis replied, for when I am eating her out. Ok, good, he got that out of the way. There was more yelling out from the crowd later, but Louis easily shot down anything that came up. Witty remarks from the crowd included "you're lucky!" (yes, that was the name of his show, sir) and questions about why HBO cancelled the show (these people must not have known that that he's working on a new show for CBS). Someone yelled out "Billy Burr" at one point and Louis laughed. "You guys have such an institutional memory," he said. "Ben Franklin bombed here in 1762!"

Louis filmed a new HBO special, "Chewed Up", last month and its safe to assume that he performed some of that material Saturday night. His act mostly concerns his family but it is not "family-friendly". Instead, he's talks with piercing honesty about his relationship with his wife after two childbirths and the stress and struggle that come with those offspring. The anger and occasional resentment for his children that brews up has hit a nerve with audiences first with his HBO show "Lucky Louie" and then in his last stand-up special "Shameless" and there's more of that here. The difference now is that the extraneous topics have been cut out- nothing similar to his duck vaginas, Awesome Possum t-shirts or waiting in line material from the past. Instead he talks about mostly himself: how's he's getting fatter, how he doesn't really care about young women anymore as he gets older and his take on The N Word. The later is a far different viewpoint than fellow stand-up Chris Rock in his new act, who will also have a HBO stand-up special airing in the near future.

It all falls under the umbrella of a middle-aged guy that is really aware of where he is in his life, which seems to resonate with his audience. And while the way that he speaks of his daughters (aged 2 and 6) may be shocking to some, it rang true for that mostly middle-aged crowd at the Keswick Theater, when they weren't yelling anything out, that is.
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