Customer Reviews

America's Funnyman

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Neil Hamburger is either actually the worst stand up comedian of all time, or someone whose gimmick is being the worst stand up comedian of all time. I'm inclined to believe the latter, as this album's uncanny knack for perverting hacky stand up comedian cliche to the point of surreality suggests someone satirizing the genre, be it Amarillo Records founder Gregg Turkington or just a comic who found a particularly post-modern gimmick. The anti-humor is hillariously pathetic enough on it's own (sample joke: "yeah, but eating on the road can be tough. All those cars coming at you at high speeds... I try to eat in restaurants. Instead of on the road..."), but better than the routines themselves are the audience reactions; The jokes are frequently punctuated not by gales of laughter, but by Hamburger's own sighing and throat-clearing, other than a few cases where it's blatantly obvious a stadium full of luaghter from a sound effect cd was dubbed in, the only times the audience pipes up are to chatter among themselves or heckle the comedian (a notable exception is when he tells the audience they're being recorded, at which point they simply cannot shut up, climaxing in someone jumping the stage to yell "METALLICA!!" into the mic). In addition to this is some odd playing with the comedy album format itself: single jokes being inexplicably divided into 3 or 4 tracks (the track "gourmet chocolate" is literally just him saying "gourmet chocolate" in the middle of a joke), a top 10 list that is almost completely censored despite it being apparent that at least some of the words being cut are completely innocuous phrases such as "sale" and "the internet", and a 5 minute track dedicated to a visual gag that leaves the listener to wonder what exactly is going on as various sound effects and canned audience laughter are all that's heard.

Okay okay, perhaps Andy Kauffman or some other experimental humourist did this (or something like it) first, but Greg, er, Neil has nearly perfected No-Comedy. This is pure postmodernism. Comedy is often postmodern, but this release (and his others) not only poke fun at comedy, but at the conventions of comedy. Quick joke: A guy walks into a record store to buy Neil's new album. It was filed under F... for Fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnny!!!! Hahahahahahah...

I just saw Mr. Hamburger perform onstage a couple of hours ago. He opened for the underground new wave group Trans Am.

Most of the audience didn't seem to get the joke. The joke is, he's so not funny that he's hilarious. His jokes are beyond horrible. And he spent far more time coughing loudly into the mic and saying "Oh boy..." than actually telling jokes. I couldn't believe how antagonized the audience was. Someone even threw a drink at him. Of course, he threw one right back. I can't imagine a CD quite being able to capture the glory of his stage show (the angry audience is definitely a huge part of the spectacle), but if you happen to get the chance, see him live.

And even if you do, it still might not be to your taste.

Just the right parts of my brain are broken in just the right ways for me to find Neil Hamburger's "America's Funnyman" hilarious.

One thing that cracks me up about it is how some of the tracks will be called, say, "O.J. Simpson" so it looks like there's gonna be a track worth of jokes about O.J. but then the track is like, less than a second long and it's just Neil saying "O.J. Simpson"---there's no joke there. It's a cheap attempt to make it look like OMG THERE'S LIKE, 45 TRACKS ON THIS ALBUM, THAT'S A LOT OF JOKES!

He OPENS with a moment of silence for George Burns and it goes downhill from there. The best part of all of it to me is at the end when he finally confronts one of his many, many hecklers (people are pretty much yelling at him to SHUT UP through the whole thing).

If you really think you'll appreciate this album I highly recommend actually buying the CD vs. the downloads because the inept, typo-ridden liner notes are almost as funny as the CD itself and some of the tracks are so short that the iPod and a lot of other .mp3 players might have trouble playing them.

I picked this album up at his show opening for Mr Bungle, and his routine before the show had me laughing so hard i was going to puke. Nobody else seemed to be laughing much, and on this album, nobody seems to be laughing much either. Neil Hamburger is the funniest unfunny comedian in the world..

Apparently, there are people who enjoy watching somebody whose shtick is to pretend to be really sincerely trying to perform, but being excruciatingly bad at it. If that's your thing, then you will find this disc to be very entertaining, because Mr. Hamburger is the least-funny person I've ever heard.

If you'd rather listen to something actually funny, I recommend against it. Strongly.