Michael Ian Black- Very Famous
Comedy Central Records
6/10
Watch out kids, there’s a new comedy CD from Michael Ian Black, or as I like to call him- The Notorious MIB. You may remember him from such shows as The State, VH1’s I Love The…, or as the other Michael from Stella. But even if you don’t, he’d like to assure you all he is Very Famous. Even his child’s cancer-patient hat and vacant expression staring from the CD cover fill you with the vague feeling that you once may have bought coffee behind him.
Michael Ian Black’s new stand up routine is a short, jaunty hayride through a field of narcissism and humiliation. It’s filled with tales about being felt up by doctors, throwing-up on himself, annoying people, being mocked by his peers, and children being continually boring. Fans will be pleased he’s still up to his usual scampy antics.
But beware, because this hayride is haunted. The chuckles are intermittently stopped dead by long stretches of silence and ghostly tittering. Roughly 40% of the jokes he does in the routine are in drawn out pantomime form, leaving the listener to wonder what everyone is laughing so politely at. If he had done this on purpose as one of his trademark delightfully passive aggressive fuck-you’s, it may well verge on brilliance, but sadly it seems to just be an overlooked facet. The CD isn’t very long, clocking in at just under an hour, so that leaves what little meat there is to the routine pretty trim.
-By Laura Gaddy