The Unholy Genius of Maria Bamford

It turns out that I'm a stand-up comedy connoiseur! Who knew that this is how the Yale Kaul saga would unfold? It actually probably has everything to do with the proliferation of non-cheezeball comedians over the past 10 years or so. There was, you may have noticed, something of a Great Schism in the stand-up world at some point in approximately 1993. Pre-then, a comedian could expect to make a handsome living doing the same tired jokes about airline food and parenthood, and if they were marketable enough, maybe even a sitcom would come out of it (which still doesn't explain how Roseanne Barr got to be famous, but that's a whole 'nother exploration). Pre-then, a non-cheezeball comic such as the estimable Bill Hicks could be expected to toil in obscurity because most Americans just didn't want their yuks served with any social commentary or evidence of neuroses. And if you're a Bill Hicks fan, you know that his thing is almost entirely social commentary and blatant evidence of dark neuroses. (And as further evidence of life before the Great Schism, check out the documentary Bill Hicks Live, which features commentary by several such 1991-vintage cheezeball feather-mulleted, bolo-tie-festooned comedians.)

Now I don't know exactly what occasioned the Great Comedy Schism, but I have a hunch that it might be the same cultural force that made bands like Nirvana, et. al. to suddenly become palatable to mainstream Americans. Thenceforth you started seeing more of your Patton Oswalts, your David Crosses, your Maria Bamfords, and you also started seeing comedy shows in rock clubs instead of those creepy comedy clubs that all seem to have names like Laffs and The Chuckle Bucket and so on.

And so it was that I found myself at Denver's very own Chuckle Bucket Comedy Works last month, fresh off of a layoff, yet more than willing to drop $17 apiece for me and the little lady to go see Maria Bamford live. I'd only been to a comedy club once before in my life, and it was this very Comedy Works back in November of 2001, and the experience was not a pleasant one. They cram you in there like pickled herrings; the guy next to me was pretty much sitting on my lap, and since there's a two-drink minimum, there are waitrons flitting around the entire time, making sure everyone buys meets their $6 Coors Light quota, and since the seats are so close together, it's a lot like when you have the aisle seat on a long flight and the two other people in your row keep getting up and squeezing past you to go to the loo. The headliner that night was Bobcat Goldthwait, and he totally slayed ass, so I pert' near forgot the situational discomfort during his set.

But anyway, currently, and for the past two years or so, Maria Bamford is my favorite comedian by a mile. Her schtick is nominally voices and characters, but that doesn't do her justice; the genius lies not only in how astonishingly she nails the voices, but in the content added to the characters. She takes peoples' weird hangups and bullshitisms and flings them back at them. Some of her best material involves her parents, whom she portrays as clueless, brain-on-auto-pilot Midwesterners. Some would say that Maria Bamford has perhaps an unhealthy fixation on her parents for a 38-year-old woman, but it makes for such great material that you'll not hear me gripe about it.

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Muscle March Trailer

Not since the Mr. Sparkle episode of the Simpsons have I been so blown away by such an unrelenting display of Japanese culture weirdness. Effeminate bodybuilders accompanied by a prairie dog, a yak, and a polar bear in a Speedo, all dancing in front of rainbows? Check.

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