Eugene Mirman, "En Garde, Society!"

Eugene Mirman is a very funny guy, the most promising of the current crop of so-called "alternative" comedians, a group that also includes Zach Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Michael Showalter and Brian Posehn. His debut album, The Absurd Nightclub Comedy of Eugene Mirman, was a hilarious, brilliant collection of stand-up material that introduced Mirman's unique brand of self-reflexive, postmodern comedy. In comparison, this follow-up CD/DVD on Sub Pop can't help but seem like something of a letdown, but it's not entirely a lost cause.

 

Sub Pop

Absurd Nightclub Comedy was, to me, an instant comedy album classic, containing so many memorable bits: humorous and bizarre anecdotes told in an incredulous tone, strange meta-jokes curiously devoid of punchlines, hilariously tangential asides and adlibs, and several well-rehearsed routines worthy of a Bob Newhart or a George Carlin thrown in at random intervals.  I learned why people with no education were likely to utter phrases such as: "I am bike cheese!"  I learned that gay rights aren't rights for gay people, gay rights are just rights that are gay: "Like the right to an attorney.  That's a pretty gay right."  I learned that my home state of Florida is "kind of like a warm, open-air prison," as well as the differences between crazy homeless people in New York and those in Seattle.  Mirman read aloud his cosmically funny answers for an application to appear as an eligible bachelor on TV's "Cupid" dating show.  In probably the funniest bit, Mirman created corporate advertising slogans for geometric shapes.  "Circle: Now That's a Shape!  Square:  The OTHER Rectangle!  Triangle:  HOT, THREE-WAY ACTION!"

En Garde, Society! is not as immediately likeable, and doesn't contain half as many instantly memorable bits.  Mirman's delivery remains solid and quite entertaining: his incredulous, self-mocking tone adding a level of self-reflexive irony into the mix on almost every joke.  Eugene Mirman is one of the many modern comedians following from influential comedy forbears such as Andy Kaufman or even early Norm McDonald, underlining the absurdity and inherent phoniness of the stand-up comedy art form itself, mocking the form from within the form.  Eugene Mirman frequently takes a bizarre left-turn with a joke that may seem incredibly lame, random or sloppy and unrehearsed, but he always saves it merely with his tone and mannerisms, with his linguistic prevarications, and his knowing laugh, delighted in realizing his own potential to confuse and subvert an audience's expectations.

All of that is still there, yes, but the material here just isn't as funny.  Where the debut seemed to contain a whole act, from beginning to end, this album seems to be highly edited and assembled from many different shows, snatching a new joke or a new bit from here and there and slapping it all together.  Some of the bits are just as hilarious as those on his first disc, such as the Christian beauty magazine routine, where Mirman merely reads the aforementioned publication out loud to the audience, pausing now and then for a sardonic or cutting commentary on the sheer awfulness and stupidity of this shining example of religious propaganda for the young.  However, other bits, such as the "Papa John's pizza or not remembering my abortion," seem tacky and not well rehearsed.  There are more hilarious bits that resemble humorous personal anecdotes more than they do jokes, which is always good, and rarely found in contemporary standup comedy, except for the great David Cross.  More stories about Mirman's background as a Russian emigre' figure in, this time narrating his family's daring escape to America while having their phones tapped by the KGB (all true, apparently).

This sophomore album is a bit shorter than the first, and contains a long and annoyingly pointless filler track towards the end.  The track consists of a "skit" with Mirman talking to himself after driving home from the show, which segues into an overlong and very stupid song which will not seem funny to anyone except for those who masochistically enjoy laborious and unfunny "comedy" routines.  There was also a silly and superfluous "megamix" track at the end of the first album, but at least it elicited a chuckle or two, more than I can say for the new one.  All of these weaknesses, however, are more than made up for by the number of times Mirman still made me laugh on this album, such as the insane screaming of a waiter to a customer about to eat seafood fished from red tide waters: "Your face will shit mice!"  When Mirman painstakingly deconstructs some asshole's random comment that he would like to put his "tubesteak" in a passing girl's "hot oven," I nearly rolled on the floor with unselfconscious laughter, and I was listening completely alone, unaided by cannabis.  While the "Letters to Nouns" and "Coupons for the Audience" bits don't work nearly as well as they should, other bits are far funnier than they might seem on paper, such as the Jack in the Box chicken strips that are mysteriously advertised as "REAL" on a billboard.

The included DVD is not a video of this standup routine, which would have been nice, but rather a collection of short films that were originally posted on Eugene Mirman's website, or on his Village Voice blog.  As such, they have been available to anyone with a high-speed connection for a while now, and thus the DVD seems fairly superfluous, even with Mirman's commentary track, which is generally unhelpful and only occasionally funny.  The short films range in length and quality, from painfully unfunny skits such as "Scotch and Soda" to supremely amusing clips like "A Video Eugene Sent Himself From the Future."  It all amounts to not longer than 10-15 minutes of video.  All told, this is a bit of a chintzy package from Sub Pop, but still, what's there is more often than not embarassingly hilarious, and well worth a listen.  In my mind, Eugene Mirman hasn't lost his place as the most talented young comedian of the contemporary milieu.

samples:

• Joking and Lying, Jack in the Box, Extreme Bowling
• Movie, Deep-Fried Stuffed Cheeseburger, What Kind of Animal?, Red Tide, Abortion
• Revolve (The Complete New Testament in the Form of a Teen Magazine)