Search - Michael Showalter :: Sandwiches & Cats

Showalter

some guy | walla walla | 11/21/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Having been a fan of his since that MTV sketch show "The State," I bought this album having seen some of Showalter's standup last year. I'd say, if you like his previous work (Stella, Wet Hot American Summer) then you'll get this. Showalter's sense of humor is hard to pin down in words, a lot of it comes from his delivery and persona, which is usually enthusiastic yet capable of wild mood swings. He gets a lot of mileage out of weird voices and fixating on small things.



I was curious how his stage act would translate to a comedy album. So much of what's funny about this guy comes across visually, and a lot of hs humor is conceptual or 'anti-humor' (when I saw him perform, he told very few traditional 'jokes' and instead gave a funny Power-Point presentation, then played some embarrassing cuts from his iTunes.)



The CD includes stand-up material recorded in front of an audience as well as some skits and musical numbers. The standup is well done, but my main complaint would be that it's rather short. There's probably less than 30 minutes of standup, the best bits are 'Cats' which finds Showalter reacting to the audience and improvising brilliantly, 'The Apartment' where he reads some awful high school poetry, and 'Requip' where he makes fun of 'Restless Leg Syndrome."



The skits (which are studio cuts, not performed in front of an audience) are uneven, 'Berhune Orchids' and 'Term Werner Cable' are the weak cuts, there is very little replay value in them and they don't really fit with the rest of the album thematically. The rest of the skits are framed as mock articles for a travel magazine, ostensibly written by Showalter, where he has a lot of fun goofing on 'writerly' descriptions of sumptuous meals (seriously, this guy has some food fixation).



All in all, I'm a fan and this CD delivered. It could have been a little longer and some editing could have been done to make it 'tighter; but tightness isn't necessarily what this guy's going for.



"

Very Good

Sean Douglas | Cincinnati | 01/22/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This album was hilarious. It has songs dispersed throughout the stand-up tracks. The songs were very funny, especially "The Mountain". There is also a very funny, very NPR sounding ad for an apple farm. This cd is varied. There are a lot of things going on. It's hard to pick a favorite because the entire cd is so good, but my favorite stand-up portion of the cd is probably "Coffee". I highly recommend this cd to any fans of Stella or Michael Showalter, and I actually found this to be much funnier than Michael Ian Black's recent stand-up cd."