patton-ly funny

so, tonight, we finally got to see some of the live comedy i’ve dropped half a strap to see…

…(more than sixty percent of which has already been refunded due to cancellations and shit, but we covered that.)

tonight was patton oswalt and he was hysterical. i saw on his feed that he had filmed a netflix special recently, a good chunk of which i bet i just saw, and i was really hoping it wouldn’t come out before i got to see him because i know me, i wouldn’t have been able to resist checking it out, and i might have ruined some of the surprise from tonight.

it was honestly my one disappointment from thirty-five years prior, the first time i went to the paramount, to see sam kinison. he had released a comedy tape, and i listened to it a LOT when it came out. more than anything else at the time, honestly. so, when he toured in support of it, it was 95% of the set. when a band does this – plays the album you have at home live – it’s cool. you know the songs. you know the solos. and now here it is, being played for YOU (and 24,999 other people) and you got buy a t-shirt!

with comedy, it means that, at best, in your head, you are saying the jokes with them. delivering the punchlines. and when you know what’s coming that well, the zing goes away. also, no t-shirt. at kinison they DID actually have them, i just didn’t have the scratch for one back then.

so while parts of the show kinda rambled a bit, one thing you have to remember when you see a comic, and particularly one who releases stand up specials, is that the special you see is a mix tape of all the greatest hits from the tour. it is (in theory) the fabled “all killer, no filler” bits that got the best reactions from the audience in the most places. but in addition to those, along the way, there will be some schlock that doesn’t kill and therefore WON’T be on netflix – but the only way to know what rocks and what sucks is to do it in front of a live audience, gauge their reactions, and modify accordingly.

we got a little of that earlier tonight, but if you know how the game is played, you know that can happen. i was still stoked to see him and have a rare saturday night out with the wife. NOW i can watch the netflix thing when it comes out and see how much of it is familiar and laugh at it all over again! it’s as crazy as a barn full of clown pubes!