I Watched 14 Gallagher Specials in 2019 and These Are the Notes I Took.
An Uncensored Evening (1980).
Gallagher is 34-years-old here and has been doing comedy for 11 years.
On paper this is a fairly charming introduction to Gallagher. It has its moments (which I’ll get to), but I just keep thinking about how a lot of these jokes seem like first-year-in-comedy type bits. Or maybe that’s just me. So many things reminded me of things I tried to write my first year in comedy. Because yeah, Gallagher is a prop comic. Because that’s what you remember. But he’s mostly a joke machine here. I just can’t decide if his one-liners are under appreciated or if he uses his wordplay and observations the same way a magician or comedy hypnotist uses them.
Also, it’s 1980. So I don’t know if all of these are original Gallagher jokes, stolen jokes, street jokes, or what was considered ‘hack’ at the time. Just as an example, he does a bit about how women cary their purse if they have money in it vs. if they don’t. And when he says, “If it’s like this, that bitch ain’t got a dollar.” Like, he uses an affected voice and delivery for the punch line he never uses the rest of the hour. Like he got it off a black Comedy Store miker without permission. But I’m making a lot of assumptions. It just feels like anyone could tell these jokes since there’s no part of him in most of them. He has a joke about the wet spot. He makes fun of commercials. He has Polack jokes. He has a gay interior decorator voice. Mexicans in a car jokes. He basically says, “These are the things I think about while I’m getting high.” He does, “If I was in charge” jokes. And his crowd work goes over well, but it’s peak club hack. I just don’t know if it was in 1980.
There were jokes I liked. Getting Jehova’s Witnesses to deliver the mail made me laugh. He doesn’t comb his hair because, “Parallel hair? Who needs that?” Which almost sounded like Hedberg to me. I found his transexual joke really interesting, “What if there’s a female spirit trapped inside my body and I don’t know it because she’s a lesbian?” And he follows it up with saying his preference for female bicycles. “Does it seem reasonable to you that the one with the balls gets the one with the bar?” But again, what are the chances that Gallagher’s take on bicycles was original? I don’t know. There were glimpses into who this dude actually is. Like, I can tell he really hates Jimmy Carter. And while I probably wouldn’t agree with his politics, I kinda wanted him to go there instead of just dipping his toe in.
But I guess none of this is the point of Gallagher. He comes out on roller skates. He pulls a banana out of his pants. He tosses out candy bars. The point is the fun. And actually, the part where he pretended to almost fall down towards the end actually made me laugh pretty hard because of the tension he created by hitting on a woman in the front row. And honestly, the best part of this was the introduction of the watermelon. The crowd had never seen this shit before. So they had no idea what to expect. There’s a point when he’s basically taunting them with smashing it onto them if they don’t laugh at his jokes. And then he leaves it there as a reminder. I loved that. It added a layer of danger that had them giddy with anticipation. And then during this whole thing, his microphone cuts out and his riffs, plus the crowd’s reaction in support, is one of those magic moments that I’m so glad they kept in the final cut. Which also seems very ‘alt’ of them to do. Yeah, I guess I’m curious to see where he goes from here.
Mad As Hell. (1981).
Well, Gallagher is in a theater now. And someone must have given him the same notes I did from his first special because the whole thing is quasi-political, “if I was in charge” material. The one-liners are mostly gone. So is the watermelon. It’s like a deep-cut Carlin special without the gravitas or like, if “Weird” Al had reimagined Chris Rock’s “Bigger and Blacker”. I don’t know. The POV is more clear. But I am guessing it’s also entirely forgettable.
Let’s set aside the fact that this is his second hour in a year. And that he has another one coming later in the year. Or the same night (I’m not sure how it works yet). And that’s really fucking impressive. But this is still just applause-break comedy with the crutch of a bigger audience. He still hates smokers. And balding. And he still thinks money is worthless. There’s still a slight element of danger with the crowd. But this time it’s just graham crackers and spit liquor. I honestly don’t know why he’d move away from that unless it’s coming later in massive amounts.
Again, there were jokes that I liked. His chunk about traffic was pretty strong. I liked the line about left turns (”That’s your yellow, you paid for it with your green.”) He has a strong riff with the audience about what to call a car with a bathroom. His bit about gene splicing (in 1981, holy shit) and his cat is all pretty solid (”Why don’t they make a butt flavored cat food?”, “When’s the last time your cat brought you home a tuna?”, when he wipes his feet on the pre-flattened cat). But there’s still arguably-racist jokes about the Japanese, the Iranians, Mexicans and their cars, etc. And there’s still jokes I’m not sure if he actually wrote (”military intelligence”) or might not be the most original (”why does a man have nipples?”, getting charged more when a check bounces).
But the weirdest part comes at the end. And I say this knowing full well that he enters the stage singing, with a roller skate on one foot and a spring on the other, and that stage hands toss him hats or American flags at various times throughout the show. But Gallagher’s big Hannah Gadsby moment is a ‘save the whales’ poem complete with illustrations, one of which sprays water. It has nothing to do with the rest of the show. And Gallagher’s seemingly anti-union, dog-whistle-racist commentary seems at odds with such a cliche-hippy message. I have no real problem with it. But shit was weird. Like, maybe just smash some watermelons, man.
Two Real. (1981).
Okay. I stand corrected. This was incredible. I don’t even care if things didn’t necessarily work. Yes, there was still gay voice and his most anti-Mexican joke yet. But this was ambitious as fuck. The ‘stupid’ part of the show makes the first part (since this was the same night as ‘Mad as Hell’) almost come off as brilliant. It’s AM & FM by Carlin meets Steve Martin meets the Carnegie Hall show by Andy Kaufman. He’s got sketches with a female performer. More songs. More balloon animals. Even a song-and-dance act with a prosthetic woman on his back that I feel like would have murdered at the Lincoln Lodge in 2005. The sledge hammer is even bigger. He even has the watermelons perform in a trapeze act. And he still finds ways to sneak in commentary on Middle Eastern oil or says the network news ain’t real or whatever. I’m trying to picture a 35-year-old comic from my generation pulling this off now and I’m coming up completely empty. Maybe Vatterott. It’s just hard to believe this is the same guy from the year before.
Totally New (1982).
The name probably wasn’t meant to be ironic. But this is a lot of rehash from the first special. Actually, I think the watermelon routine is the exact same as the first special. But I just keep thinking about how the watermelon smashing is the only thing we currently remember about Gallagher, when so much of this is political in nature. The theme is essentially, “How do we beat the Japanese?” That comes with some pretty dicey commentary on Japanese people, themselves. The worst of which is when he asks a member of the audience what they did today to beat the Japanese. And when the man replies that he dug a ditch, Gallagher says, “And buried a Jap in it?” I mean, Jesus Christ. Even if that line was handed to him on a platter... yuck. And since his overall message reminds me of a nationalistic Trump campaign rally, it might be important to know that our president is only a month older than Gallagher. Take that for whatever it’s worth.
I guess I miss the fun of the last special and was hoping Gallagher was finding his groove. Maybe the dislocated elbow has something to do with it, but the same magic isn’t there. And the odd editing and misplaced laugh tracks also distracted me to the point that I had to assume some the jokes didn’t land when he did them live. I’m not even really sure if any stand out to me. There’s anti-union stuff. He does gay voice again and says “fairy” towards the end. There’s a point where he says, “I want you people to respect me for my mind,” and I thought, ‘that’s interesting’, but then he follows it up by saying, “See how dumb that sounds, girls?” So yeah. That’s what I’ll probably remember. I don’t know. The observational stuff wasn’t for me. He had a bit about women loving shoes. He sang a country song (!) that would definitely not be okay in the MeToo era. At times, some of the sight gags reminded me of something John Oliver would do towards the end of his show. But most of it felt like filler.
There’s a point where he takes a fuzzy bathroom mat and lid and pretends to be a baseball catcher, which is a pretty great sight gag. His spelling material was interesting, but lacked punch lines. And I liked when he talked about his daughter. Because maybe it was the only time we’ve really gotten to see the real guy behind all the mess. The title notwithstanding, I am ready for something from Gallagher that is totally new.
That’s Stupid (1982).
Hey gang. This was bad. And I’m not really clear what it was for. It’s the same jokes for the most part, but this time it’s done in a frantic and oddly-edited public-access-style monologue. There were lots of takes he should have re-shot. And I’m wondering if these were originally supposed to be digested in 5-minute chunks between shows. And maybe they threw them together into a special at a later time? And I almost skipped this because it’s not live. Then I remembered Drew Michael’s HBO special, which is essentially the same thing. So oddly enough, the two most avant-garde specials of 2018 (Drew and Hannah Gadsby) had already been done by Gallagher in 1981 and 1982. But I guess that’s what happens when you have 100 specials.
Just about the best thing I can say about this is that he looks like he’s having fun. He keeps going for a joke about a Japanese computer spitting out fortune cookies, which... no. He also complains about cab drivers not being from this country. Then again, I swear Seinfeld has the same fucking bit. And he has even more anti-gay jokes. Some of which appear while he’s shirtless with manikins, which seem like a fever dream. I guess I liked seeing his house in Malibu. He had two jokes I hadn’t heard yet that I liked (one about finding good parking spots for the gym and the other about how they should get the net out of the middle of tennis courts because it ruins the game). And the one genuinely funny moment, quick though it was, came when he talked to a blonde woman at the unemployment office who said a man exposed himself from behind a newspaper. And Gallagher asked if he was reading the want ads. It’s objectively funny. But yeah. This one should be avoided. But I guess his joke about E.T. is a kind reminder about just how long ago this actually got made.
Stuck in the Sixties (1983).
So there’s a theme of sorts, even though almost every joke was on “That’s Stupid.” Again, the editing is distractingly bad. I always think how expensive it must have been for him to just buy all these random things just to hold them up to the audience and say they’re stupid. But again, that still reminds me of John Oliver. There’s a long chunk about women’s nightgowns, and I have to admit that the sight gag of him pretending to go to the grocery store while saying, “This is a hideous problem,” made me laugh. I find it interesting that he said we shouldn’t have phone books, we should have computers. And that we should be able to dial people’s names. So he was right on those ones. But really, this is forgettable. And still, nothing gets a reaction like the Sledge-O-Matic. This one includes cottage cheese, so that’s fun. And the anti-Mexican, anti-Japanese stuff was barely noticeable. He says “rice-burnin’ cars” and he points at a guy in the crowd and identifies him as a Mexican. Other than that, it’s peace and love. But not much else.
The Maddest (1983).
Do I think this one is memorable? Yeah, because I remember it from when I was a kid. It’s the giant couch trampoline special. And I’ve noticed that Gallagher has developed a bit of swag over the last two specials. And why wouldn’t he? This crowd is with him on everything this time. And at the end, they know the Sledge-O-Matic is coming, a few people have brought protective sheets and these people WANT that watermelon. And they want that son of a bitch smashed. He’s definitely performing to fans. Finally.
I also might be changing my mind, in hindsight, about the “That’s Stupid” special. These last two specials have been packed with that same material. So it’s like he crammed every joke he performed into an hour and did them as fast as he could. “That’s Stupid” is jam packed. It’s two-other-specials worth of material. Which also means a lot of this stuff is repeats again. There’s also an outsized number of jokes I have to wonder, again, if they were written by Gallagher. Hot dog packages and hot dog buns have different numbers. 7-11 has locks, but it’s open 24 hours. And agin, I have to wonder if all of that is besides the point since he’s also entering on roller skates, driving around a school desk, having an Exorcist baby spit water and doing backflips on a fucking couch trampoline that he bought “with yer money.”
Again, I think his stuff about his baby daughter is probably the strongest. I liked the bit where he says Californians were pissed they couldn’t go any farther west so they built piers. And he has a men vs. women joke that’s eerily similar to Chris Rock’s from “Bigger and Blacker”, which came almost two decades later. Also, there’s some homophobia (he calls a hat ‘sissy’, he repeats a joke about sexual confusion in San Francisco). And I’m curious if his “busses taking kids to the wrong schools” line (another repeat) is anti-integration, which would be fucking flagrant.
Mostly I’m curious about all the repeat material. Like, what is the need for Gallagher and Showtime to put out multiple shows with the same jokes shuffled around? The sight gags are what’s new, which I guess answers the question about what was important. At one point we’re almost 55-minutes in, and Gallagher references being up there for an hour and a half. He’s done something like this before and it makes me wonder if he had a longer show they edited around or what. I guess I’m just confused as to why we keep getting two specials a year or whatever it is, just so another big sight gag can be introduced. Then again, I remembered the couch. But I couldn’t tell you a single joke. And I think it’s probably gonna stay that way.
Melon Crazy (1984).
The jokes are no longer the point. You could argue that they never were to begin with. But things have fully devolved into a big messy finale, new gadgets and sight gags and nothing else even matters. The people have brought their tarps from home. There’s a kid in a welding mask. And you’ve heard a vast majority of the jokes already. Nobody seems to mind. Part of me is surprised Showtime didn’t mind. But again, the jokes are no longer the point. If they were ever the point.
In fact, this time, Gallagher brings out Bill Kirchenbauer (Growing Pains, Just The Ten Of Us) to do 12 minutes of material and then another 5 minutes of riffing. But I guess, why do other people’s material when you can just get other people to do their own? And Kirchenbauer isn’t bad. He’s physical. He has props. He’s bald. Less charismatic, but more likable. I feel like I remember watching his set when I was a kid.
But we should probably talk about the sight gags. Gallagher comes out with a train-set hat shaped like a watermelon. He has a giant inflatable watermelon. He flies a small zeppelin (also a watermelon) over the audience, telling them he spends money on these things because they’re tax deductible. Now there’s a cleaning bucket for the Sledge-O-Matic. And the big closing piece is a Jackson Pollock-style painted map of the United States made with condiments and goop.
The bit is also a vehicle for more racist jokes about Mexicans. The crowds all seem to be in California. And they seem to laugh and applaud at the jokes. He uses guacamole to paint California. Then bean dip to indicate the southern border. It might have seemed more innocent if he hadn’t already had a joke about Californians wanting to annex Mexico because, “If you’re gonna live with the people you might as well get the real estate that goes with ‘em.” And he’s already told you (again) that he’s not thrilled about foreign cab drivers (”I don’t have anything against foreigners, but it ain’t no reason to give em a job,”). He also alludes to Chinese people in San Francisco, but it seemed more innocent without anti-Chinese shit earlier in the act.
Maybe none of this matters. Maybe it’s just a cadence, words to say while he does the thing they came to see. But as the credits roll, snippets of his act are repeated in audio form. Like, “Remember this one?” And yeah. I do. Because you’ve used it on four specials. Which, again, is probably besides the point.
Over Your Head (1984).
Hey, some new stuff. Or like, 70% anyway. This time Gallagher is in Texas. And he’s figured out new ways to fuck with the crowd. He’s got a bucket of water in a paper bag. When they think that’s done, he sprays them with a water gun as they scurry for their tarps. At the end, the stage has sprinklers, which is actually pretty genius. And I have to admit that I love when he gives the crowd a knowing look. About 13 minutes in, he does just that while saying, “You’re very correct to have your plastic up at this point.” Because, really, what’s the fun if everyone is ready for it?
This is almost a full-on variety show. He tap dances. Sharon Baird from The Mickey Mouse Club tap dances even better. Gallagher reads a poem about river pollution, while a blue screen shows videos to the home audience. He sings “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” while a zeppelin hovers over the crowd. It’s bigger than the one from the last special. Then the feed cuts to Gallagher flying an actual zeppelin somewhere. Presumably over a rainbow. All while wearing a top hat that turns into a rainbow. And it’s somehow all a message about air pollution. In Texas. In 1984.
So he definitely gets an A for ambition once again. Because as I typed that out, it started to dawn on me how insane that sounds on paper. Plus he’s got jokes about the Phoenicians, he’s got a mascot-like character of guy with his head up his ass. His fake daughter hangs off the rafters. And he has giant swim trunks he turns into a dress and a bull whip he bought at a 7-11. Maybe I’d be more impressed if I liked the stand-alone jokes. It’s really broad, for the most part. Women be shopping. Lots of pandering to Texas. Lots of facial mugging. But when the slop comes out everyone roars. By now I should give up on the ‘smart’ portion, accept the applause breaks, and embrace the stupidity.
The Bookkeeper (1985).
James Franco should totally play Gallagher in the movie. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m getting so annoyed at all the repeat material. Maybe because saying ‘14 specials’ is kinda misleading since it’s one or two specials, shifted around by theme or at random. The theme in this one is taxes. He doesn’t like paying them. And there are some funny lines in there. He breaks down whose seat payed for what and then says, “That’s why I love the balcony. You’re MY money.” And “Congress is the opposite of progress,” which I’m guessing there’s zero chance he wrote. But he also shoots a ball of money into the crowd with a cannon, so what’s the point of dissecting it?
And I could complain about his ‘men don’t stop to ask for directions’ bit. Or tell you that his material about masculine female athletes would be problematic in 2019. Or that he does a bit about women breaking a nail. Because he also has an invisible elephant climb up a ladder (complete with bending bars) and dive off a diving board into a pool, splashing water on the first few rows. He also has new mallets. He’s got a peeled watermelon. He’s got a giant big wheel. He’s got strobe lights. And it still hasn’t gotten old to me when he fakes out the crowd.
There were things I liked or found interesting. I honestly liked hearing him talk about Michael Jackson (”You sing about Billie Jean, I want to see the bitch,”) and Brooke Shields ("Her name even sounds like an anti-sexual device,”). It’s funny when he talks about all the ridiculous things he learned in school, which he pronounces SHULE. And the bit about the ‘W’ in ‘One’ and ‘Two’ is clever. And the commercial he saw for the suppository, where the woman saying, “Don’t take my world for it,” is just a nice way of saying, “Stick one up your ass.”
He’s spending a fuckload more times on the props though, and it shows. Even if there are multiple repeats, he’s always a step ahead of his audience in the splash zone. Just not sure if you can fault him if he’s giving the people what they want.
Overboard (1987).
Honestly, I think this might be Peak Gallagher. If this isn’t his pinnacle, I’d be shocked. The material is new (or like, 95%), and strong enough that an editing decision was made to just give a highlight reel of the Sledge-O-Matic starting at the 45-minute mark. He must have done over two hours by the looks of it. And he’s got the biggest stage yet, the biggest set yet and the biggest props yet. In other words, yeah, Overboard.
Let’s also get out of the way, that it’s also probably the most ‘problematic’ of the Gallagher specials if it were released in 2019. He’s got a ‘Fat Bitch on a Stick’, basically a heavyset woman on a pole that he holds over the audience and says, “She’ll poop on ya.” Which she then does. And I’m laughing as I type that. He throws the mannequin of an ugly Soviet/Russian woman in a pool. He hands vibrating watermelons to bikini models. He has bikini models. He says he doesn’t like women who look like men. And if they want to pump iron... it’s a dumbbell made of clothing irons. He says prison overcrowding causes homosexuality. But that might just be for his street joke punchline of “nowhere to put their stuff.” He says ‘sissy’ again, regarding the names of nuclear missiles. He has more jokes about the Japanese (”a race of very short people who are always bending in half”) and does an L/R pronunciation joke for the Toyota Corolla. There’s also Japanese tourist material. But the real ‘yikes’ stuff is about Arabs. TWA stands for ‘Travel With Arabs’, Delta stands for ‘Don’t Even Let Them Aboard’. He mistakes ‘Arab’ for ‘Muslim’ again later in the show. This is in 1987, mind you. And then the skinned watermelon at the end is Muammar Gaddafi, complete with a turban. It might be Bugs-Bunny-level racism, but still.
If we can get past that, this can be a fantastic spectacle full of fantastic spectacles. He has a giant car, designed to look like a boat. He has a seagull on a pole, which also shits on all the people in their raincoats. He swings on a rope over their heads, which looks fucking dangerous. He invented a beer gun. And a champagne gun. And a moose douche, which is so stupid, it’s hilarious. He has a muscle coat, which I wanted really bad as a kid. And at the end, his daughter (I assume) hits him in the face with a pie.
I think the biggest relief for me was that the material was new. I think we get to the 43-minute mark before he does verbatim jokes I’ve heard him do. Sure, some of the ‘new’ stuff seems lifted. He does the Greenland/Iceland bit. He does the “the cops didn’t have anything to go on” street joke. A new joke about men not asking for directions. But it’s also commentary on Iran-Contra, the presidents since LBJ, and after he ranted about spending money on other countries and giving back the Panama Canal, I swear Trump has seen this special. Especially when you see Trump splashing water. If he could hand vibrating watermelons to bikini babes at his rallies, you know he would.
In 1986, Showtime put out a special called, ‘The Messiest’, which was just clips from pervious specials. I joked to myself about how that’s basically what every Gallagher special was. Not this one. Maybe if five specials from now, he’s still splashing the crowd with a paddle while Frankie Ford’s “Sea Cruise” plays, but as of now, this one will be hard to top.
We Need a Hero (1992).
I can’t quite place my finger on it, but I feel like this isn’t the same fun-loving Gallagher from the 80′s. Maybe it’s because he seems obsessed with ‘getting’ the audience now. He makes fun of them when he fakes them out with water and slop. He tells them they look dumb when they duck. He never used to do that. Maybe it’s because they bring massive tarps now. But the ‘pies’ he makes at the end just gross the audience out. They grossed me out too. A soaked diaper with mustard and beer? That’s pretty fucking disgusting. So is watching him hand-mix baked beans and apple sauce for some reason. But I guess he stands in the audience while his infamous brother smashes shit this time to prove he can take it, but still. At this point, if you go to one of Gallagher’s shows, he’s fully intent on ruining whatever you were wearing. Hey honey, I got tickets to a full-on food fight tonight. Can’t wait to come home stinking like god-knows-what. This is the same guy who used to throw out candy bars and cookies.
Maybe it’s his age. Gallagher is 46 now. He’s got a shaved head, which is actually an upgrade, even though he looks like G. Gordon Liddy. And I can’t help but think he feels angrier or like he’s not having as much fun. At least until the whig comes off. Maybe he’s just seeing how far he can take things. All that being said, this is also Gallagher’s most topical special thus far. And it does have some truly great moments (which I’ll get to).
He’s got jokes about Pee-wee Herman, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker (”It’s too much to ask the preachers to do more than laypeople”, “I’m not a preacher ‘cause I already got your money”), Mike Tyson, George Bush (he said, “Read my lips” because he’s lying out his ass), Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, the Kennedys (they’re “drunk butts” from High-anus), Pete Rose, Madonna, Dr. Ruth, etc, etc, etc. Everything places us clearly in 1992. And I believe it’s 100% new stuff. There were lots of lines that made me laugh. “Soup isn’t food. Soup is what’s left over in the dishwasher after a good meal”, “A fair is where we all go to get cheated”, “Women can’t keep a secret but they can hold a fart”. And the problematic stuff might not be as noticeable. He doesn’t like men who wear an earring or women who look masculine. But that might just be a way for him to reveal his shaved head or the bikini top he made for his muscle suit. He has a “Black Or White” joke for Michael Jackson, but I’m guessing every comic at the time thought of that joke.
My favorite part is when he brings up Robert Morris, a 14-year-old boy, who is so perfectly dorky that he is probably a plant. Like, I rewound the part where he tries to speak into the microphone and gets sprayed with water three times. That shit killed me. Even thought I’m positive I’ve seen this before. I mean, Gallagher also sprays the kid with a fuckload of silly string, which could be considered mean. But he really walks a fine line between laughing AT this kid and still making it okay. This special is essentially topical jokes and passable relationship humor done by a guy who probably has the gravitas to not smash shit anymore. And maybe it’s making him resent them for making him.
Smashing Cheeseheads (1997).
I’m pretty sure this isn’t a Showtime special, but it almost looks like one, so why not? Gallagher sticks with the topical. He’s got jokes about OJ Simpson and Lorena Bobbitt. After his Mike Tyson joke, a graphic comes on the screen that says, “Two hours after this performance, Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear.” He also thinks the kids should pull their damn pants up. He points out how different men and women are. Men go off to the garage, for example. So it’s definitely not hip. And the hair is back, so maybe that’s a statement on how he’s 51-years-old and he’s not changing. But I also think the career decline is the most evident here, even though the theater in Green Bay is full.
This is also the first special where Gallagher just flat-out calls something, ‘faggy’. He also says he’s gonna smash fruit cocktail for the homosexuals. Then he combines the fruit cocktail (aka ‘the queers’) with La Choy (for ‘the China people’) and calls it “a San Francisco treat.” We’re in Wisconsin, mind you, so who fucking knows why that would land. And the laughter seems pumped in for that line. The weirdest fucking thing to me is that, based on the montage at the end, there was a lot of editing done during the show. So he (or whoever edited this) left that joke in because they liked it. Crazy.
I’m guessing this is largely forgettable. The Sledge-O-Matic has devolved into blatant gross-out time. There’s pickle water in a Depends diaper. Peanut butter becomes a shit joke. Jelly is cum. He hits chocolate Pop Tarts into the crowd with a tennis racket and says they're bound to hurt somebody. So like, why do it then? Just about the most interesting thing for me was that this is the first time we see Gallagher actually purchasing groceries for his show. And he spends $253, which would be about $400 in 2019. It’s all fresh food, Gallagher reminds the audience earlier in the show. So if it hits you with your mouth open, just go ahead and chew. It’s also the first time I’ve seen him walk into the crowd with a fire hose and spray the back of the crowd and the balcony. So nobody is safe. And I’m sure if he found a way to splash his gross-ness on me while I watched it 22-years later, he would do that too.
Messin’ Up Texas (1998).
Wow. This is an absolute shitshow. I don’t even know what to say about what this has devolved into. Then again, the tastes in entertainment in the late 90′s and early 2000′s sure were going this way, but Jesus Christ. It’s almost entirely crowd work. A lot of it is downright mean. And then by the end, the stage is just a goddamn disaster. Again, there were parts I liked.
First of all, Gallagher’s nephew, Logan, is a hit with the crowd. Some of Gallagher’s interactions with the kid are a smidge inappropriate. But one of the parts I liked the most from We Need a Hero was when he’d have ‘adult’ lines go over the 14-year-old kid’s head while the crowd laughed. So I have to accept that a boy scooping butter out of a tub with his hands gets told he should be a gynecologist when he grows up. And that’s before a thinly-veiled joke about the kid masturbating in the shower. Real fucking borderline. But those were the good interactions.
Gallagher loves telling people they’re fat. That’s a new thing he’s doing. And one poor kid named Adam gets told his mom picked a Biblical name because she’s in motels so often and she picked up a Bible and turned to the first page. And that’s before he tells the kid he has a ‘faggy’ pocket on his pants. There’s more homophobic shit when he starts bringing up dudes from the crowd who have pocketknives to open paint cans. He starts insinuating one guy’s earring is gay. And he tells him people with rainbow bumper stickers deserve to be rear ended. I felt the worst for a girl with the last name Campbell. Gallagher calls her a dumb bitch in a way that felt like he was barely kidding. He hits her with one of his gross-out pies when she wasn’t expecting it. And then has her lift her shirt up to wipe it off, exposing her bra. I felt so uncomfortable. But she was a really good sport and got to smash watermelons at the end. Someone her age now would dash off the stage bawling and her tears would launch 1000 blogs. And these were all the parts where it felt like Gallagher was in control. Not so much later on.
Some of the audience members are not ready for prime time. One teenager is uncontrollable and starts grabbing random things off the stage. That stayed in the final edit, somehow. Gallagher also apparently blinds himself with one of the mustard splats and I felt like the wheels were coming off. There was a point a few specials back where I was sick of his material. Now I’m begging him to reel everything back in.
Sledge-O-Matic.com (2000).
This might be entirely skippable. It’s essentially the same set as the last two specials. Except it’s somehow even more homophobic. He says ‘faggy’ more often. He basically tells a 10-year-old boy he looks like his mom and picked a ‘faggy’ candy. He thinks pro wrestling is gay. Men with earrings look like homosexuals and piss off all the queers that come up to them. Lots of YIKES-type shit. He even manages to throw in a Mexican janitor joke. It’s a little much, to say the least. I guess I’m surprised he put this out. Except I guess he’s got a shaved head and a goatee again. Because he’s trying to look like Steve Austin. And maybe he just wants to sell a new shirt. And I suppose when he tells the little boy he can’t tell his gender, it does yield the line, “What? It’s just a head sticking out of a plastic bag. Looks like Jeffrey Dahmer’s garbage.” So... worth it?
The crowd just wants the smashing. When he’s trying to complain about modern society, he starts to lose them. He seriously tries to sneak in anti-religious jokes in the middle of this chaos where the audience has essentially become children and Hot Topic teenagers with their parents. There are a few other good lines. A guy walks in late with (presumably) a NASCAR jacket and Gallagher says, “You walk in late with Tide on your jacket. Go do another load and come back.” And when he talks about precautions against a lawsuit for things that happen during his show he says, “The things I want to do at night for fun sound real dumb at court in the morning.” In fairness, I guess he didn’t have too much further he could have gone after Overboard. But at this point, we’ve hit a wall.
Tropic of Gallagher (2007).
I can’t find the footage online and part of me is thrilled about that.
Gotham Comedy Live (2014); episode “Gallagher”.
This is listed under his comedy specials on his Wikipedia. It’s not. He’s just hosting a showcase-type show on AXS TV. And it’s part sad, part fascinating to watch. For one thing, he’s not smashing anything, so Gallagher is limited to his old one-liners, which come off really awkwardly and past their sell-by date. He also has a fucking Arab joke that somehow still made it onto the show in 2014. But it’s interesting in that, this is basically back to where we started in 1980. Except he’s not 34 and on roller skates. He’s 61 and he’s had 4 heart attacks. It’s also the first time I’ve seen him with a regular microphone. But goddamnit, Gallagher looks like he’s having fun and happy to be there. It’s charming in an old-guy type of way. And I’m just kinda happy to see that he’s not flinging gross shit at idiots. At least not for this one night in Manhattan.