 She's not part of the video. I just forgot to write an intro again In April of this year I was walking around the Upper West Side of Manhattan when I noticed that 75th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam had been blocked off and Tables and chairs were being set up along it now This was not part of the Open Streets initiative, which is a small step in the very necessary Direction towards minimizing cars and maximizing pedestrian space on New York City streets But I didn't think too hard about it until I walked back by a few hours later and saw what Turned out to be a makeshift stand-up comedy show being performed out there to a decent crowd Paying customers sat at those tables while the freeloaders stood behind on the sidewalk I tried to split the difference by tipping pretty well and leaning against the opposite building. I Stayed for the rest of the show and then I came back again the next night when they had an entirely new lineup as is Typically the case when you go to a comedy club. It was a mixed bag some were funny others Not so much. I don't remember a single name nor have any of their punch lines lodged into my brain, but So what? It felt good to watch some folks say funny things into a microphone The pandemic loomed large of course it did the jab had just been made available to all New York adults And so it was less and less the boogeymen we'd been hiding from for 13 months, but comedies inspired by life experiences and that had been everyone's Even so they clearly wanted to get away from that subject just as much as the rest of us and I appreciated that Now that the big names is proper tours are back on and we are once again sitting in packed theaters full of adoring fans We're all looking for a little bit of COVID comedy sure because ignoring it entirely would just be really fucking weird, but also Thoughts on the rest of life Plus many comedians these days are going deeper questioning the essence of comedy what it means to them or to anyone and why But Patton Oswald they ain't here for that. He just wants to tell jokes Hello, by the way, and welcome to the week air of view. You can call me a Guy with at least three distinct laughs and today. I am talking about Patton Oswald's currently touring comedy set Who's ready to laugh? I don't remember the first time that I heard Oswald stand up I would guess it was probably the late aughts around the time he put out his second hour Werewolves and lollipops He was a decade out from his first recorded performance released as part of HBO's comedy half-hour series all the way back in 1997 and things have changed a lot in that time going back to the early stuff Not gonna lie. It's kind of rough His first album feeling kind of Patton hasn't aged well at all and I'm sure that my edgy teen self enjoyed it back then but TBH that's Usually a sign that something wasn't very good and this just Isn't I mean the second track is called facts about midgets What did I really expect and I don't bring this up because I think people should get mad about bad jokes made close to two decades ago Shouldn't really shouldn't it's more of a warning like if you're gonna dive into his back catalogue Maybe don't go all the way You won't have nearly as good a time as you might remember Nowadays this active punching down has been replaced with your typical woke white man trying to work through a rapidly changing culture that He would like to be a part of and be an ally in rather than an enemy to which You know relatable Here Oswald muses about the inevitable moment where he will realize that he just can't keep up and turn into an Angry old curmudgeon when his daughter brings home like a tentacle monster because up to that sure do you but That one's gonna be hard to work through and this Exemplifies Patton Oswald's very specific style of storytelling. He's not excellent with transitional materials So you never really know where things are going next his sets feel like a series of disconnected ideas that he follows to their logical conclusion and then just Kind of keeps going Take for example his request early on that we trust him that we have faith in him and his Sometimes wacky ideas this comes as he is going down a rabbit hole about the phrase crazier than a barn full of clown pubes Which is how he was feeling pretty early on during the quarantine How much material do you think that a man can get out of that idea? Oswald triples it easily getting more and more Specific and bizarre as he tries to work through what it would require to pull off that barn full and also How could you know if the barn you were being presented with was legit or not? This sort of thing is always pushed right up to the line and every so often he has gone past it into We get it. Please just go to the next one territory But I felt like he avoided that here the jokes went on longer than expected sometimes sure But never longer than I wanted the way it escalates is the joy of it All right, like that's why the extended cut of Oswald's improvised rant about Star Wars on Parks and Rec Went kind of viral because people like hearing the way his brain takes a premise and then just fucking spirals Few things are as interesting to me as listening to another person take you through their mental Process, I genuinely love getting a glimpse into how people's minds work and Oswald does it so well and so cleverly But where I really got to see the cleverness was in a place. I hadn't expected Crowdwork the only special I can recall in which Oswald has done crowd work is 2017's Annihilation where it was specifically being used so he could put off talking about the tragic death of his wife and Though it was a way to postpone this uncomfortable moment. He did show a solid ability to riff It didn't feel like he was unfamiliar with the process of crowd work Which leads me to believe that he always does it, but it ends up getting cut out of the film specials for whatever reason Or maybe it's just something he does more early on in the tour while the material is still being worked out As is usually the case with these reviews that I do comedy shows what I saw will not be precisely what you see when the Fully polished version hits Netflix sometime next year the obvious exception was Anthony Jessenick's fire in the maternity ward Where I was literally at the taping and you can probably hear one of my laughs somewhere in the mix Usually the changes are pretty small, but sometimes they're not the most substantial change I have seen was with Mike Barbiglia's Thank God for Jokes when I saw it in I think 2015 the whole thing about his time hosting the 2012 Gotham Awards was actually just the last part of the set a Disconnected joke by the time it hit Netflix the story had become a framing device around which every other joke was told In any case this show in Brooklyn contained a fair amount of crowd work And this was the only time it ever really dragged for me Mostly because random people are only sometimes funny and are often quiet I wasn't close to the stage per se But I was in front of more than half the audience and still had some trouble hearing the people in the front row One person in particular who Oswald talked to longer than anyone and let talk longer than anyone I just got nothing from and he doesn't repeat what they say for those in the back or the middle So there were just long stretches of Undecernable noise and then responses that I could only sort of follow and That sucked But at the same time it did make for some very funny moments Obviously the two New Jersey bros who wanted to make sure that everyone knew they weren't gay got a good gaffa But there was also an extended bit about the difficulty of selling electric cars to Texas That felt like the kind of thing that you might have heard elsewhere in the special with You know a little bit of polish the best bit of course was when he told a man that his Parent investment in the show was a little creepy making Oswald feel like a farmer whose best customer Buys his corn and then shoves it up his ass right there in front of him This was great on its own and better for being off the cuff And it gave that insight into his mental process that I hope to see from crowd work But it is still just crowd work and ultimately it's not like jam The other key part of a Pat Noswald comedy bit is when he reminds everyone why he is one of the few comedians who actually sort of deserves the voice acting career that he has had Inevitably he will whip out some silly voice as he imagines in this case a Pixar movie as performed by the unused equipment in his home Gym or an advertisement for Captain Covids buffet Do you need a sneeze guard over your clam chattered? You know how to fuck your way and While I think these two can overstay their welcome at times He once again reigns in his worst impulses and keeps them only as long as they're funny going on to the next thing at Just the right time All of that might lead one to believe that I think this is Oswald's finest hour yet and on some level I probably do I think as far as the pure comedy stuff goes It is as good as he's ever been and the only time I really cringed was when he thought he was impersonating a member of Gen Z but was clearly describing a millennial that said I'm not sure he's ever going to be able to top the raw power of annihilation for me the back half of that show hits a Perfect tragic comic note that is very up my alley and that nothing else He's done since has even attempted and I'm not saying he should try again because clearly that Hurt him to perform and that's just not what he's here for and that's fine at least and really better than that Pat Noswald knows what sort of comic he is and the kind of comedy he wants to do and He's really fucking good at it 8.0 out of 10 Thank you so much for watching. Thank you particularly to my patrons my mom Hammering Marco Katz Aracata, Benjamin Schiff, Anthony Cole, Magnolia Denton, Elliott Fowler, Greg Lucina, Kojo, Phil Bates, Liam Knipe, Willow I am the sword Riley Zimmerman, Jacob Alexander and the folks who'd rather be read than said if you liked this video That's great. If not, oh well, if you want to see more, please subscribe. Hope to see in the next one