Patton Oswalt, Werewolves and Lollipops

I have a really hard time writing about comedy. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but just that it’s not my “area,” so to speak. I’m a music guy, not a comedy guy, and believe it or not, there are rules to both — and if you don’t know the rules to something, it’s damn difficult writing about it. There’re things you do in a rock song (especially in a rock song), formulas to follow, and if you don’t, well, you’re either a mad genius and will probably end up changing your name to a symbol and referring to yourself annoyingly in the third person or you’re a musical imbecile who can’t write a song that holds together to save your life and should probably stick to playing covers of Nirvana songs on Wednesday nights at that sports bar down the block.

Listen to enough music, and you learn the rules and formulas to the game, as well as how to tell which camp all the rule-breakers fall into (it’s a lot more of the latter than the former, I’m afraid). I know, for example, that if a band’s playing a song that’s heavy as hell and rhythmic and staccato, there’s gonna be a breakdown in the middle of some kind, either quiet and melodic or even heavier still; it’s just the way it works, honestly. If I run across a song that fits the bill but doesn’t do the expected, well, the song’s either a lot more interesting than the run-of-the-mill or it sucks ass. Like I said, you need to know the rules, but you also need to recognize that rules are really meant to be broken, at least by a brilliant few. So musicians learn ’em, take ’em to heart, and then do their damnedest to prove they’re geniuses by breaking ’em in just the right way. Pull it off right, and you’re golden.

Now, take comedy. Again, comedy’s got rules, too, and comedians and improv people and true comedy nerds know ’em. Me, about all I know is that if you want something to be funny, you have to do it three times — not two, not four, but three. A very wise improv junkie told me that once (hi, Marc!), and it’s absolutely, categorically the truth. (If you don’t believe me, try counting the next time you see a repetition gag in a movie or on TV. If it’s funny, it’ll happen three times, no more, no less. Trust me.) Beyond that, though, I turn into the comedy equivalent of the guy who just shrugs when you ask him why the fuck he likes that annoying Staind song: “Hell, man, I dunno. I just like it.”

So that’s my conundrum when it comes to Patton Oswalt’s latest offering, Werewolves and Lollipops. I glommed hungrily on to the disc when it dropped on my desk, giggling with glee and eagerly anticipating laughing myself silly, but after repeated listenings I’m still having a hard time not being That Guy Who Likes Staind when I go to talk about it. All of which is probably just a cheap way of me trying to distance myself from my own crappy writing, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Luckily for me, Werewolves in Lollipops is good enough that it sort of makes my job easier, because it turns out that I really, truly fucking love it. Patton Oswalt, to me, is just about the perfect comic for the looney-tune times we live in — simultaneously cynical and adoring, obsessive and manic about the details of things in a way that only a post-modern, self-analyzing society can really ever be. He’s a geek’s geek, and unashamedly so, still delving into the quirky arcana of comics and movies and sci-fi and whatever. When he loves something, he goes whole-hog for it, and hell, I have to respect that. (I suspect, by the way, that his casting as Remy the rat in Ratatouille says something about his passion for food and chefs, and it makes perfect sense.)

On top of that, he’s got a way with words. You get the feeling on Werewolves that Oswalt — being the obsessive he seems to be — painstakingly works over every word of his routine until he gets it exactly the way he wants it, rather than relying on the improv-ed schtick like Robin Williams and the like do. Nothing wrong with Williams, by the by, but it’s a whole different ballgame, and while his stand-up stuff is funny, it’s nowhere near as memorable as Oswalt’s is.

By the end of “America Has Spoken,” you will damn-sure remember about half of the bit, if not the whole damn thing. The last comic I heard where I could do that was Eddie Murphy, back when my friends and I memorized whole chunks of Delirious and Raw. I like a lot of comedians I’ve seen over the years since, but none of ’em, not even the excellent David Cross, sticks in my brain like that. Except, now, for Oswalt.

Of course, there’s a fine line between making people laugh and making them uncomfortable, and there’re times when Oswalt skirts that line, occasionally making forays over into territory that makes even me twitch and cringe — towards the end of “I Tell a Story About Birth Control and Deal with a Retarded Heckler,” for one (and no, it’s got nothing to do with the heckler, because the righteous indignation with which Oswalt hands the guy his clueless ass is impressive). That particular bit was cringe-inducing enough to make my wife not want to listen to the CD again, although I can’t say with any certainty that anybody else would feel the same.

But hey, even the edge-riding kind of appeals to me — he’s a guy who likes to take a risk with humor, and once again, if you know the rules of comedy well enough, you can do that. And if you’re good, you can pull it off nicely and make even something dark and disturbing funny as hell (see “Clean Filth” for a good example, or the awesomely funny “Steak,” off of Feelin’ Kinda Patton).

And I can’t give a little glimpse of this disc (which has been brief, I’m afraid, in fear that I’ll screw up the punchlines if I say more) without mentioning the DVD that comes with it. Yep, it’s a set, but unfortunately, the DVD ends up being not so much a selling point for the album but rather little more than a happy extra. Beyond the utterly useless intro bit with him in his(?) house in Athens, GA, which goes on for way too long and comes off as self-indulgent time-killing and isn’t particularly funny besides, the fact is that the recorded performance on the DVD is just about the same as the one on the CD (minus the audience member pissing on another audience member’s shoes on the DVD and the idiot heckler on the CD).

Worse still, the one on the CD is the better performance — Oswalt seems to be more on his game, sharper and quicker on the jab. It also sounds like he’d refined the jokes a bit more by the time the CD version was recorded (the DVD show is from about a month earlier). Bits like “The Dukes of Hazzard” feel more fleshed-out on the CD, while a handful of really good bits (“The Best Baby in the Universe,” “You Are Allowed 20 Birthday Parties”) didn’t get told/recorded at the Athens show on the DVD. I naturally listened to the CD before watching the DVD, so the jokes that changed slightly in between the two don’t fly as well, somehow; the details are just that little bit off.

The funny thing is that Oswalt’s last DVD foray, No Reason to Complain, actually felt pretty much the same for me. I’d bought and loved Feelin’ Kinda Patton beforehand and knew the jokes by heart by the time I finally saw the DVD, and as a result, the jokes seemed watered-down and not as good as the CD versions. Plus, there’s the fact that I paid for two (well, bought one and rented the other) slightly different versions of the same jokes — if there’s not anything new on the DVD, then what’s the point, right? I guess that’s the downside of Oswalt being a non-improv comic who writes and writes and rewrites all his stuff; when you work the jokes like that, you necessarily have to tell them frequently and change them a little to see what works best.

On the whole, though, my problems with the DVD are minor, minor quibbles. Look at it like this: you’re already getting a CD packed full of freakin’ great, laugh-out-loud-at-work comic genius; you just happen to also be getting a bonus DVD, too. It’s like what I did with Feelin’ Kinda Patton and No Reason to Complain, only the DVD’s free (well, sort of). However you look at it, it at least doesn’t take away from the CD itself, and that’s a very good thing.