June 19, 2007 Late Show.
Patton Oswalt has been a dependable comedic foil for TV and film over the last ten years. Janeane Garofalo is a comedian whose delivery of dialogue in film has made every appearance distinct from the film she is involved in. So it is interesting that both of them would go an adult humor comedy tour in part to promote a Disney/Pixar Film that they both voiced. Both of them out on tour at first seem strange, but it worked and brought the funny out to a late night crowd on a Tuesday night, and both of them delivered a truly magical performance.
The evening started off with the owner of the venue, The Lakeshore theatre, passing out “Dane Cook sucks and you know it T-Shirts”. It was funny to see the setup for two hours plus of truly blistering comedic heights. After a local starter act that this reviewer could not catch the name of, Janeane Garofalo appeared on stage.
Garofalo, who looks smaller in person delivered a wandering set that covered a whole cornucopia of topics. The first topic was the catered dinner her and Oswalt had which was referred to as a Meat belt. Oswalt appeared in this part of the show to indicate that he was filled with meat. Garofalo was amazed at the amount of meat on the meal, yet was completely infatuated with being able to dunk roasted potato into mashed potatoes. Then the act proceeded to an explanation on why she needed to slow down on the drinking because Vince Vaughan said so, the confession would lead to her occasionally being concerned with her set being on Youtube. Other topics of interest included United States politics, social conservatives in her family and her aggravation with the ending of the Sopranos.
Her set also was interesting because of the amount of give and take she has with audience reaction, and her awareness of her fan base. During the set an audience member offers her a cigarette, and this leads to her soliciting painkillers from the audience. The painkillers lead to a story about how Garofalo fell off a horse some years and has to always stand in awkward manners. The remainder of the show involved a discussion on the difference a crowd can have on comedy in which she expressed the trouble that Oswalt and she had in performing in a show in Houston, Texas on an earlier shop and how much she appreciated the crowd in Austin and in Chicago, which lead her to express flattery for her love by the lesbian fans and her appreciation of them. Garofalo’s performance was genuinely funny, touching, intelligent and appealing.
After her set finished, the show headliner Patton Oswalt hit the stage. Oswalt looked slightly tired due to performing a set earlier in the evening, and feeling a tad under the weather due to travel related illness. Needless to say when he got on stage he found momentum. Oswalt’s set displayed a talent for improving and working with an audience that has not been seen since Bill Hicks’ time. Yes, he was that good.
The context of his comedy centered on a Transsexual woman in the audience who offered Garofalo a cigarette earlier in the show. What occurred was that by interacting with this audience and the larger crowd of gay, Lesbian, & transgender folk Oswalt worked his audience. A person who wrote a scholarly novel and a grad school graduate were tossed into the set where Oswalt joked about the pains of being an English Lit grad and the suffering they get. With the Transsexual woman in the crowd Oswalt got an education on Chicago’s gay community. Which lead to truly funny extemporaneous comedy that is raw but non-offensive. The set included Oswalt’s classic joke about the need for more Gay Pride parades, but thought the conservative Bible belt of the United States. He also delivered a joke about ugly men in dresses that delivered howls from the audience and finally tying into his work on the Disney Pixar film Ratatouille, he discussed the inherent creepiness of cleaning up adult words by substituting different words that lead to a more disturbing meaning ion a kid’s film as opposed to a more adult conversation.
The crowd gave both Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo standing applauses and the audience was amazed by the show they had seen and both comedians delivered the high water mark of comedy for 2007.
- Francis Davis a career drunk with a love of comics and movies, lives in and works for the City of Chicago. Confidentiality agreements prevent him from saying exactly what he does, but it is important.