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Clean Guys of Comedy | Dave Coulier, Jamie Kennedy | Fathom Events

By Josh Bell

“Clean” is not generally an adjective that comedians use to describe their material; it conjures up images of “funny” pastors or children’s entertainers. Even performers like Jim Gaffigan or Brian Regan, who are known for eschewing harsh language and explicit subject matter, aren’t really using “clean” as one of their selling points. But former Full House actor Dave Coulier has embraced “clean” as a brand for his comedy (in contrast to Coulier’s former co-star Bob Saget, known for his vulgarity) and has put together a lineup he calls the Clean Guys of Comedy.

The Clean Guys’ September 19 show at the Buell Theatre in Denver, Colorado, was broadcast to movie theaters nationwide (it repeats in theaters today, September 26), but it probably doesn’t herald the arrival of a major new comedy force. Coulier was joined by Jamie Kennedy, Andy Hendrickson, Heather McDonald and Ralph Harris, each of whom performed for about 20 minutes. And although they did keep swear words out of their acts, they didn’t shy away from more adult topics, including sex and drugs (“I’m not allowed to do any drug jokes,” Kennedy said before launching into a lame, dated medical marijuana bit). McDonald in particular seemed like she was constantly on the verge of saying something she wasn’t supposed to, and all of the comedians had their go-to replacements for the naughty words they weren’t allowed to say (Coulier was particularly fond of “flippin’”).

Tom Shillue | Heyday | BSeen Media

By Nick A. Zaino III

For the past ten months, Tom Shillue has been on a comedy marathon, releasing one new album every month, each with its own theme. With Heyday, he is nearly to the finish line of what has so far been a successful experiment. He has done a remarkable job putting out consistently funny work, producing this series of Moth-like personal stories.

The arc of the three stories on Heyday follows Shillue’s progress in love and work, from his early days driving an Orangina truck and demonstrating cookware with Aasif Mandvi in malls (while making awkward advances on co-workers) to the present day. Show business can be particularly ridiculous for a comedian, and Shillue opens his treasure trove of terrible gigs here. He was lured from Boston to Florida to play Jimmy Stewart, complete with his own Harvey the rabbit. His would-be big break in TV sketch comedy was a multi-ethnic pilot helmed by sociologists called What’s Up?, which painfully tried to be hip. That was followed by an audition for an insurance campaign, which unfortunately puts him in competition with a certain talking duck.

None of it works out, but then, success isn’t nearly as funny as a good, hopeful failure. The hope is the funniest part—no matter how bad the job, it’s a chance to be in show business, and in Shillue’s eyes is one more rung on his ladder to stardom.

J-L Cauvin | Keep My Enemies Closer | Self-Released

By Daniel Berkowitz

At the top of his new album, Keep My Enemies Closer, New York comic J-L Cauvin comes out swinging, launching into a five-minute diatribe about Girls creator Lena Dunham, or, as Cauvin calls her, “the patron saint of overrated shit.” In Cauvin’s view, we’ve elevated Dunham to the role of hero because, despite her unattractive physique, she’s nonetheless willing to get naked onscreen. “She’s a hero just for showing off her flaws,” Cauvin says.

Dunham’s icon status is an easy target for those who like to attack mainstream figureheads, so for a comic to tackle such a visible subject, he or she needs to put a unique spin on it—to look at it from an angle few others can find. To that end, Cauvin uses his weight—315 pounds—to justify his beef, saying, unlike Dunham, he’s “disgusted” with himself. The difference between Cauvin and Dunham, according to the former: “I’m ashamed.”

A loud personality onstage, Cauvin comes off keenly aware of the stature his presence carries. To balance the inherent power of his persona, he smartly qualifies and personalizes many of his grievances, in effect bringing the audience onto his side. When he talks about racism, he notes his own black heritage. When he claims that gay men get away with things straight men could never dream of, he makes sure to say how strongly he believes in equal rights. And when he rails against certain groups of women, he’s careful to drop in his relatively conservative views on sex.

Doug Stanhope | Beer Hall Putsch | New Wave Dynamics

By Nick A. Zaino III

Years ago at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, Doug Stanhope appeared on a show called Confessing It. The lineup of comedians found laughs in everything from the mildly embarrassing to genuinely soul-searching. Then came Stanhope, who told a story about a former girlfriend using the morning-after pill. His graphic description walked a few in the room who ostensibly were there to hear people’s deep, dark secrets.

Stanhope’s secrets are usually a lot deeper and darker than most. And they are rarely secrets. He lives the kind of life that would have given Hunter S. Thompson a worthy muse for a series of books, and celebrates it all onstage. And, the important part sometimes forgotten by comics dealing with potentially shocking material: It’s funny. It may take a bit of a dark soul to appreciate it, but it is funny.

John Tole | Reign in Laughs | Stand Up! Records

By John Wenzel

If you’re going to step to Brian Posehn‘s “heavy metal comedian” title, you’d better come correct. And while John Tole never calls out Posehn on Reign in Laughs, it’s easy to interpret his bushy beard, tattoos and eye-rolling nickname (“The Slayer of Comedy,” again reinforced with Reign in Laughs’s play on Slayer’s Reign in Blood) as overt challenges.

Tole out-metals Posehn in the acerbity of his material, at least. Posehn is just a dude who happens to love metal and has incorporated that into his persona, whereas Tole’s meathead aggression drives his jokes. Posehn talks about smoking too much pot (or not smoking at all anymore, as is the case these days) while Tole quips about “banging huge rails” of coke. Posehn is a kitten by comparison, but also funnier and less hysterically eager to let you know that he can say whatever he wants, man, because fuck all you uptight PC pussies!

Joe DeRosa | You Will Die | BSeen Media

By Daniel Berkowitz

At a minimum, Joe DeRosa’s You Will Die merits a listen purely because of the unique circumstances surrounding its production. The first disc of the double album is the 70-minute set that DeRosa intended to perform. The second disc, however, is an unedited hour of DeRosa’s failed attempt to record that same set. What went wrong? A drunken audience that continually shouted at DeRosa, talked to each other during jokes and stared into their glowing phones.

The second disc—each track of which is titled “At the Mercy of Drunks”—showcases everything that can go wrong in a comedy club. But as DeRosa says on the disc’s introduction, the incident was not a reflection on the venue; he instead chalks it up to the old adage “Shit happens.”

You Will Die is DeRosa’s third album in the last four years. Where 2010’s The Depression Auction and 2011’s Return of the Son of Depression Auction focused primarily on DeRosa and his personal struggles, You Will Die finds him looking outward more frequently, taking the same cynical, critical eye that he’s so deftly used to make light of his own flaws and using it to point out what, in his view, plagues society at large.

Tom Shillue | Impossible | BSeen Media

By Julie Seabaugh

Midway through describing a random meeting with The Waltons actor Richard Thomas, Tom Shillue interrupts himself to marvel at the number of times people have incredulously asked how much truth his stories contain. “It’s all very basic stuff up here. I’m not rocking anybody’s world, right?” Shillue asserts, continuing, “Why in holy hell would I make up anything? I mean, if I was making this stuff up it would be profoundly uninteresting, wouldn’t it? It’s friggin’ boring! I ran into John Boy? Who gives a crap?”

Yet it’s precisely that embrace of the seemingly mundane setting the NYC-based Shillue apart as such a renowned, compelling storyteller. His choices, distractions, meanderings and resolutions accurately mirror the narratives woven into (and from) every individual life. The journeys boil down to the baby steps, the process, the setting and accomplishing of goals—like, say, Shillue’s own “12 in 12” year-long series of monthly EPs, of which Impossible checks in at number ten—that bring about the small victories and the dramatic revelations. Confronting and processing reality is, after all, a confounding, universal cornerstone of being human.

High Plains Comedy Festival | Multiple venues | August 23-24, 2013

By John Wenzel

Denver has been in desperate need of a national-quality stand-up festival for years. The explosion of open mics and alternative showcases, plus the city’s growing reputation as an incubator of new talent has nevertheless failed to put it on the same footing as similar scenes in Austin, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. Newer events like the Laugh Track Comedy Festival or the punk-rock Too Much Funstival are stacked with talented locals and a few out-of-towners, but neither have the resources or attention to compete with something like Portland’s Bridgetown Comedy Festival.

Cue the High Plains Comedy Festival, a two-day event run by Adam Cayton-Holland and Andy Juett. Cayton-Holland and his Grawlix troupe buddies Andrew Orvedahl and Ben Roy are not just at the top of the Denver food chain, they’ve been dining out at festivals like Just For Laughs Montreal and flirting with fame via Conan spots and Amazon pilots. The relationships they’ve built touring nationally gave them a chance to book solid out-of-town talent for the first year of this mostly-DIY festival (as did, of course, the bankrolling of its sponsors).

Brooklyn Comedy Festival | Multiple Venues | August 19-24, 2013

By Elise Czajkowski

In the five years since Jenny Slate, Max Silvestri and Gabe Liedman started their weekly comedy show Big Terrific in the then-rapidly gentrifying (now completely upscale) Williamsburg, Brooklyn has become a home for the new wave of young comedy. There’s at least as much good comedy to be found as in Manhattan, with many comics playing bars and coffee shops there before crossing the river to perform (and make some money) at the city’s traditional clubs. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take advantage of the borough’s impressive comedy scene. And lucky for us, the Brooklyn Comedy Festival did it right.

In truth, calling this collection of shows the Brooklyn Comedy Festival was a bit of a misnomer; this was really the Williamsburg Comedy Festival. The six nights of shows took place entirely at venues around the single hipster neighborhood, drawing mostly young, trendy crowds to the inaugural fest. To its credit, BKCF embraced this pedigree; the logo invokes Lucille Ball and a Marx Brother—if they lived in North Brooklyn in 2013.

Set List: Stand-Up Without a Net | Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Friday, August 23, 2013

By Julie Seabaugh

Set List: Stand-Up Without a Net’s penultimate show of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was also its final of five nights taping Nerdist web episodes at the Pleasance Dome. As creator Troy Conrad ran tech, newly ponytailed host and fellow co-producer Paul Provenza explained to the vocal, sold-out crowd how never-seen topics would be projected via onstage TV screen; comics must harness all their talent and creativity to create material on the spot. “It’s like [British panel show] Mock the Week if Mock the Week was fucking real,” Provenza offered, prompting the audience to cheer with a knowing “Heyyy!” “You only have one rule, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued. “Don’t be cunts.” (Audience: “Yayyy!””)

Longtime Fringe veteran Thom Tuck took the stage for his only appearance of the month, the Brit proposing that “Thatcher = Faking It?” implied the late Prime Minister weighed her coffin with three dogs “she strangled herself” and taken to roaming South America…because she was a zombie. Following a quick audience round in which attendees had 20 seconds to riff on either “Wales Tourism Slogans” or “Princess Diana Theme Park,” Canadian Tom Stade immediately faux-admitted it was his first day off the wagon, because…” Looking to the screen, he laughed, receiving the coincidentally appropriate “Loch Ness Liver.” When later given “Pound vs Euro vs Handjob,” he quipped, “Well, my wife always says I’m not good with budgeting,” quickly admitting how, given the ever-declining value of the Euro, he’d been booking much more international work in France, where payment options were decidedly liberal.

Jim Norton | American Degenerate | Epix

By Nick A. Zaino III

Jim Norton has always milked his creepiness for uneasy laughs, but he tops himself within the first minute of his new special, American Degenerate. And it involves a celebrity cameo, to boot. Without ruining the surprise, suffice to say Norton leaves viewers with an image that will sear itself into the crevices of the brain where most people hide only their lizard instincts.

Of course, Norton is at his best when he’s revealing precisely these parts of himself. He cops to getting weirder as he’s gotten older, how he’s turned on by a bit of a stinky foot these days. He shows a photo of himself in his sleep apnea mask, noting it dries up a vagina quicker than a hot fan. He doesn’t think anyone should be mad if they get lured into an intimate moment by a deceptive transsexual. They should congratulate that person and laugh like they just opened a can of peanut brittle with coiled-spring snakes inside. He celebrates his hedonistic weirdness, and by extension, anyone’s weirdness.

Will Franken: Concert to Benefit the Victims of My Father | Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Wednesday, August 21, 2013

By Julie Seabaugh

In the case of Will Franken, America’s loss is the UK’s gain. The San Francisco journeyman earned unanimous raves with his 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut, Things We Did Before Reality; he subsequently relocated to London this part February.

Hard to blame him, really. Franken is lightning quick, biting and, as he’s the first to admit, unapologetically bitter. Instead of cut-and-dry bits or stock catchphrases, he deftly weaves the briefest of character vignettes into (and throughout) each other, inimitable cultural commentary evolving, pivoting and shape-shifting from one moment to the next. Stylistically he falls into a No Man’s Land between the fortified borders of stand up, sketch and improv, defying pat, marketable classification, let alone effortless digestion. He may be wholly unique and unquestionably profound, but mainstream Franken is decidedly not.

Patrice O'Neal | Unreleased | BSeen Media

By Nick A. Zaino III

Most of the new Patrice O’Neal album, Unreleased, is devoted to the late comedian’s give and take with his audience. It’s a compliment to last year’s posthumous release, Mr. P, taken from the same live shows, and in at least one significant way, better captures what was special about him as a performer. To some extent, every stand-up comedian has to sell the idea that what they’re saying is extemporaneous, not something they’ve honed to a sharp edge working stage after stage. For the audience, it has to be a fresh experience, no matter how many times the comedian has done it before.

O’Neal did that better than anyone. There is little on Unreleased that seems like it could have been planned beforehand. He gets into it with a pregnant woman in the audience, apparently upsetting her by interrupting her eating chicken strips. “I’m not afraid of big black bitch attitude,” he tells her. “It don’t scare me.” That kicks off eight minutes of O’Neal talking about how they’ll eventually wind up having sex and falling in love. “You curse the bitch out, and then you love her,” he says. He’s merciless in mocking her in a gruff Cookie Monster voice, but she gives it right back to him, telling him she’ll see his big ass after the show. With some chicken. O’Neal winds up laughing as much as the audience does during the exchange.

Kurt Braunohler | How Do I Land? | Kill Rock Stars

By Daniel Berkowitz

The title of Kurt Braunohler’s debut album, How Do I Land?, comes from the hilarious and absurd stunt he pulled off this past March, for which he launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $4,000 so he could enlist a pilot to skywrite “HOW DO I LAND?” across the Los Angeles sky. As Braunohler explains on the album, he believes inserting stupidity and absurdity into daily life for their own sake can make the world a better place, if only for a short time. Going so far as to say this premise is his “purpose as a comedian,” it’s quite clear that these are not hollow words, but rather something of a guiding vision for Braunohler’s onstage persona.

What How Do I Land? lacks in structure and cohesion, it makes up for in nuance and idiosyncrasy. Throughout the album, Braunohler swings between polished, well-prepared bits and rougher, more free-flowing moments, like his recitations of tweets no one liked or his retellings of phrases he signed in others’ books at Barnes & Noble. These moments aren’t immaculately constructed, memorized verbatim “bits,” but rather unique vehicles that showcase Braunohler’s equally unique perspective.

Greg Fitzsimmons | Life on Stage | Comedy Central

By Nick A. Zaino III

Greg Fitzsimmons is a solid, tight comedy writer. That talent won him four Daytime Emmys as part of the Ellen DeGeneres Show staff, made his book Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons: Tales of Redemption From An Irish Mailbox a worthy read, and helps make him a stand-out onstage. He’s a veteran with more than 20 years of experience as a comic, which makes it a happy occasion to see he’s finally getting his first one-hour special, called Life on Stage, on Comedy Central. That’s the resume Fitzsimmons brings, which means it’s not surprising that Life is filled with clever material, but disappointing when he indulges in a few tired premises.

He is engaging from the start, establishing a philosophy that life is for living. Fitzsimmons believes young people don’t take advantage of their youth these days. “You’re conservative; you’re guarded,” he says. “You don’t do coke.” He then urges a young woman in the front row to try cocaine: “Do it! Not a lot. Don’t get hooked. You don’t have the money to get hooked; you’re poor.”

Caroline Rhea | Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Wednesday, August 14, 2013

By Julie Seabaugh

Plenty of seats remaining in her 120-capacity venue, Caroline Rhea was nevertheless in good spirits at her eponymous Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, or at least in good enough spirits to joke about how thing weren’t exactly going her way. “I had this song written for me for the Fringe,” she noted of her intro music, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” leading the audience in a synchronized arm-wave and chorus sing-a-long. She also recalled how, having spent summers in Scotland while growing up, her family always enjoyed After Eight Thin Mints following dinner. Out came the cookies, around they were passed, and in Rhea dove to an informal, personable, self-deprecating hour of material surprisingly and deliciously registering on the PG-13 side of the spectrum.

Plagued with similar air-circulation woes as fellow Gilded Balloon performer Greg Proops, she paused amid a lengthy chunk on the Scottish to wipe her brow and apologize, “I was originally booked in the core of the earth, but…” The numbers and heat may have been passing annoyances, but Rhea’s frustration nevertheless provided reactionary context for her grin-and-bear-it onstage persona, one deliberately showcasing a more flustered and world-weary side to Rhea than her eccentric Aunt Hilda from the audience’s beloved Sabrina the Teenage Witch (about which she also had a few choice thoughts).

Glenn Wool: This Road Has Tolls | Assembly George Square, Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Sunday, August 11, 2013

By Julie Seabaugh

An Edinburgh Festival Fringe veteran several times over, Glenn Wool has the art of delivering a multi-faceted performance down to a science. One can, for instance, kick things off with a light-hearted video featuring hand puppets performing Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog.” Tales of time spent abroad can temper bewildering experiences with transformative lessons learned. There’s also the option of utilizing as a backdrop a few Popeye slides, the purpose of which remains tantalizingly unclear until the closer’s big reveal. And who knows? An arsenal of geography-related puns might even earn several applause breaks over the course of an hour.

Like fellow globe-trotting Canadian Craig Campbell, Wool assumes the role of animated and amicable storyteller. His propensity for cutting moments of heightened tension with absurdity (and vice versa) extends to such running commentary as “That joke is nice and sweet at the beginning and ends with a horrible disease at the end. Just like life…” and various ways in which his onstage persona has been perceived. “I’ve been called ‘pointlessly theatrical!’” he bellows of past reviews, eyes popping and arm sweeping wide at the injustice. “’Overdramatic!’ Not once! Not twice! But thrice!”

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