- Karin Martinez
One of the most satisfying things about Curb Your Enthusiasm’s continuing reign as the funniest thing on television (fact) is the re-emergence into the public eye of the great Richard Lewis. During the comedy club explosion of the 1980s, he towered over—or rather stooped below—the brick wall brigade by tearing the top off his head and letting tireless neurotic agony burst forth like a geyser. Clearly, he wasn’t the first comedian to mine angst for laughs (and lord knows how many lesser talents ripped him off), but Lewis wasn’t just telling jokes. Relentlessly manic, he paced the stage like a nervous animal, his body flailing and contorting in concert with the surrealist jazz of his material—vignettes about love, sex, death, and despair spoken in a dizzying barrage that, over the course of an hour-long set, began to sound like music, an anxiety fugue.
In a period that saw live stand-up proliferate madly before turning into a parade of observationalist clones in jeans and blazers, Lewis was equal parts classic comic and innovator, a mélange of Lenny Bruce, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Reichian therapy. His triumphant cable specials, I’m In Pain, I’m Doomed, and I’m Exhausted (recently reissued in a DVD collection) were the very best live comedy could aspire to: idiosyncratic, confessional, cripplingly funny. Having conquered the stage, he moved down the familiar path of the successful stand-up. His better-than-average network sitcom with Jamie Lee Curtis, Anything But Love, lasted four seasons—before drug and alcohol addiction derailed things personally and professionally. He returned with a recovery memoir (The Other Great Depression), and has remained a talk-show and guest-star staple. But it was the advent of Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself in a recurring supporting role alongside his friend Larry David (they’re like a deconstruction of a classic comedy team—two Abbots, two Hardys), that has restored Lewis’s particular greatness to the main stage of TV comedy, where it belongs.
It should come as no surprise that Lewis has never stopped performing live. He’ll be in town (well, Bellevue) tonight and tomorrow, doing two shows a night, at a club called Parlor Live. You hear a lot these days about the resurgence of stand-up comedy, but it still seems like a form dominated by middlebrow hacks whose popularity seems like it has to be some kind of long con designed to demonstrate that the public will swallow anything if they can wash it down with booze. Nevertheless, here’s a chance to go see an actual master of the craft in his natural environment. Tickets are still available, but not for long.
700 Bellevue Way NE Ste 300, Bellevue WA, 98004. 425-289-7000. $25-$35. http://www.parlorlive.com/parlorlive-main.html
This post contains much truth.
“You hear a lot these days about the resurgence of stand-up comedy, but it still seems like a form dominated by middlebrow hacks whose popularity seems like it has to be some kind of long con designed to demonstrate that the public will swallow anything if they can wash it down with booze.”
Finally, someone writing for The Stranger hates stand-up comedy more than Dan Savage.
What the fuck are you talking about, Sean? Do you even know?
Do you actually go out and see much stand-up, Sean…or are you making your mind up after watching a Comedy Central Roast, a Larry The Cable Guy special and an episode of Tosh.0?
Stand-up is like any art form–there’s good and bad. How many shitty bands have you seen who wouldn’t exist if not for the steady supply of alcohol to make them tolerable?
I heartily second your recommendation of Richard Lewis (and doubly recommend everyone read a book called “I’m Dying Up Here” by William Knoedelseder, where Richard Lewis plays front in center in a compelling depiction of a VERY different era of stand-up comedy.)
But just as you might want to seek out the music that you might enjoy more than the shit you might just walk in on or hear blaring from your teenage neighbor’s stereo, you might want to ask Lindy to steer you to the shows that feature comedians who will regularly challenge your assumptions.
(You might want to start this weekend by checking out San Francisco’s Brent Weinbach, who is appearing at the Comedy Underground…)
Jesus christ. Stand up comics and their fans are the most defensive people in the world. You’d think they’d have a better sense of humor.
I’m more than happy to laugh, heywhatsit!?, when there’s a joke. What should I have found funny?
When someone I like, know and admire (Hi Sean! This is Peter Greyy, formerly from Orpheum) dismisses the entire scope of the art form that I’m an active participant in, in a way that The Stranger has a years-earned reputation for doing (despite Lindy and Brendan’s efforts to at least highlight some of the stand-up comedy they enjoy)…I’m going to challenge that…
I have no problem with people not finding a particular stand-up funny…even performers that I happen to like. Comedy is subjective, certainly.
But to dismiss ALL stand-up for the sins of some…that happens far too often, especially in The Stranger. It usually happens due to a lack of information or stereotyped and dated preconceptions regarding the form.
And I don’t find that funny.
Hi, Peter. I try not to read or respond to comments, but two people asked me about yours, so I checked it. I have been going to see live stand up semi-religiously for almost 30 years. I worked at a comedy club, am friendly with tons of comedians, and a devout fan of many more—and I have never seen a Larry The Cable Guy special. I think stand-up of the great performance art forms. I also think that most people you see doing it tend to be uninspired and unimaginative. The same tends to be true of pop music (which I have been passionately interested in for a long time, too) and fiction writing (which is apparently good, too).
I didn’t dismiss the form. I dismissed middlebrow hacks. But what I really meant was that when someone like Lewis comes to town, you remember how uncommon real greatness is in any art form.
oops. “I think stand-up is one of the great performance art form.”
Cool, thanks for the heads up! I loves me some Richard Lewis.
And, FWIW, Sean, I was immediately impressed by the quality of your writing. Best-written Slog post in quite some time, In My Humble Opinion.
Seconding @7. And it was very sweet of you to restate it more plainly for that concerned fellow.
Well, never let it be said that I can’t be informed by more information myself, Sean…and I’ll apologize for painting you with a broad brush, conveying guilt by association (based on a history of ill-informed anti-stand-up comedy opinions shared by other Stranger writers) on you.
I’ve never seen you at a comedy club here in Seattle–and until recently, I’d been a regular at most of them. That doesn’t mean you don’t go…of course.
I was judging you on a comment (that I still disagree with) that can be very easy to make, and far too easy to parrot, if you’re not actively aware of what there is to choose from–and comedy, to its own detriment, doesn’t always make it easy to be actively aware.
I don’t know that I can agree that “most people you see doing it tend to be uninspired and unimaginative.”
Perhaps most people YOU’VE seen, Sean. I can’t argue with your personal experiences, certainly.
I’d say that there are probably more people doing it now that are inspired and imaginative, and doing it with some success, than there have been in decades.
The only time I knowingly see a middlebrow hack is when I look in the mirror.