Eugene Mirman, En Garde, Society!

“I can kill a dog in six ways. Five of them are throwing missiles at it.”

I’d be lying if I said I was much of an expert on recorded comedy. The only comedy album I own is Mitch Hedberg’s Mitch All Together, a document of genius from a sadly-deceased comedian. So where I feel reasonably secure in giving opinions on music, I don’t know how much my word counts for on comedy. On the other hand, I feel like comedy is the most basic of all forms to evaluate — you either laugh or you don’t.

So, on this level: I laughed quite a bit. Eugene’s almost a bit of a stealth comedian; on the CD, his performance isn’t the sort of outsized “comedian” performance you might expect. He feels more like your funny friend, the one where you can never quite tell if he’s telling a joke or not ’til he’s most of the way through it. Which isn’t to imply he’s not talented, as Mirman has a particular talent for extending a concept to a joke and running with it into very random places that you’d never expect — sort of the opposite of somebody like Hedberg who thrives on one-liners.

“It was like being invited to a ’50s theme party where the only theme element was segregation.”

It’s worth noting that this is actually a CD/DVD combo, with the DVD being a collection of short films. They mostly have the feel of a guy sitting down in front of a camcorder, riffing along for a while, and then editing out the bad bits. Which isn’t to say that some of them aren’t pretty damn funny (particularly his “sexpert advice”), although the more he started hauling costumes and “characters” into it the less I got into it. Still, a nice bonus for a CD price.