Cynical Cinema

Until the advent of Sarah Palin, with her striking resemblance to Tina Fey and her amazing inability to answer easy questions coherently, the easiest public figure to lampoon was George W. Bush. After all, the man has not only been dangerously inept, historically unpopular, and frighteningly zealous, he has also been incredibly bad at using words to create sentences, which makes him come off as hilariously stupid. Mixed metaphors, mispronounced words, questionable grammar, and a rather poor handle on facts have made the current American President an easy target for comedians and satirists alike. Now Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing an anthology of these humourous looks at a dangerously unqualified man. Comedy Central Salutes George W. Bush hits DVD on October 21st. It’s a collection of George W. Bush related moments from Comedy Central over the past eight years. The past eight long, painful years.

And as it turns out, even with this incredibly easy-to-mock subject matter, the DVD itself manages to be long and painful! It begins well, with an episode of South Park where Cartman blames Kyle for 9/11. Eventually, the boys meet up with Bush and some intriguing yet bonkers conspiracy theories are revealed. A funny episode from a funny show, featuring some genuinely creepy moments involving the Hardy Boys, for some reason. What follows is a sub-par episode from a sub-par show. Lil’ Bush is just not that good. Obviously this disc was going to contain an episode, and in fact it contains two. But there are some episodes of this show that are better than others, and they have chosen two of the worst. For example, why not pick an episode that genuinely lampoons Bush, like the one involving Lil’ Karl Rove? Instead they have chosen an episode that centres around Lil’ Cheney having sex with Barbara Bush and ending up stuck in her womb. Which is just disgusting, not funny at all, and really has little to do with George W.

After sitting through two episodes of Lil’ Bush, one boring and one unpleasant, we get to a truly bizarre show I never knew existed. That’s My Bush is a really strange show lampooning the Bush family in a sit-com style. It’s basically a scenario that asks “what if George W. Bush starred in a sit-com?” It doesn’t really satirize the president, because it doesn’t touch on his policies at all, or his views or his outlook as president. It goes through the motions of a sit-com. Only it stars George Bush and Laura Bush. Get it? I don’t. It’s a satire of sit-coms, not of Bush. In this particular episode, Bush is trying to hold a meeting to unite the leaders of the pro-life movement with the leaders of the anti-abortion movement, all the while attending a nice, sit-down, romantic dinner that he has promised Laura. So he constantly runs back and forth from the dinner to the meeting, and hijinks ensue. Not once do we get any satire on his own personal views on Roe vs. Wade, we just get the sit-com spoof of him switching dinner jackets a bunch of times.

Then there is some respite from the terrible, with an episode of Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil, one that pits Paris Hilton against Dick Cheney. A very funny episode, but one that deals only tangentially with Bush himself. Then The Last Laugh Squad, a cartoon featuring Black again, along with some other comics, as they shrink themselves, get into a spaceship, and fly up Bush’s ass. Considering the talent in the episode, this is a pretty poor comedic vehicle. Finally, we get to some stand-up clips from Greg Giraldo, Patton Oswalt, Lewis Black again, and Frank Caliendo doing his Bush impression. Some of this is quite funny, but it’s all too brief, and Carlos Mencia’s bit about Bush being the president of Iraq in 2026 is absolutely awful, and not funny at all. Considering all the fodder Bush has provided Comedy Central over the past eight years, I am sad that this DVD is the best they could manage. They would have done much, much better cobbling together a couple of hours of moments from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and ignoring most of this stuff altogether.

I recently reviewed Season One of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila for Cynical Cinema.

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/04/15/a-shot-at-love-with-tila-tequila-out-todayapocalypse-tomorrow-010/

  I made the suggestion that not only is this the worst TV show of all time, it might also be the worst single thing in all of civilization. I further went on to suggest that this TV show might be the most obvious sign of the impending apocalypse, and that perhaps we should all begin building our bunkers right now. And now, another TV show - one that is actually good - has made the same case. Lewis Black’s The Root Of All Evil is my new favourite show on television. Mostly because I really enjoy Lewis Black. He gets two comedians to debate two cultural phenomena who might be the Root of All Evil, and Black presides over the debate like a judge. They’ll do Dick Cheney vs. Paris Hilton, or Oprah or the Catholic Church vs. facebook. It’s hilarious, terribly politically incorrect, and very smart. And the one where everything came together for me was when they debated who was the Root of All Evil - Kim Jong Il or Tila Tequila?

As it turns out, Tila Tequila won. It was found that she is, in fact, doing less harm to the world than is Kim Jong Il. I respectfully disagree. Hers is a TV show where she looked for love in a bisexual way with both men and women - as Lewis Black says in the episode, achieving the impossible, actually dumbing down MTV. And after “Season One”, which I was unable to watch until the end for fear my brain would collapse and I would start speaking in internet lingo “I need to dl my lmao lol omfg, wtf?”, and I would perhaps be mistaken for someone speaking crazy-guy gibberish, and be locked away somewhere. And I have golf today. And that’s my ripple of evil.  But season one of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila is no longer the worst show on TV. Now, there is a season two. I guess she did NOT find true love at the end of season one. Which amazes me. But, season two of Tila Tequila is no longer the worst show coming to TV. No, apparently - I have discovered this through several sources - there will be a spinoff dating show! A spinoff. Of this show. Starring the creepy Italian guy in the speedo from Season One.

Which means that now, you can be famous simply by being the most annoying guy on a reality show that was created to give a starring vehicle to someone who became famous by being the most annoying person on the internet. MySpace, specifically. And THAT is the root of all evil. Or, at the very least, the Apocalypse. This almost makes Tyra Banks look halfway credible. But at least it will give Lewis Black and his terrific program even more fodder with which to entertain me and skewer crappy television “personalities”. And I can’t wait for that day to come. Lewis Black’s Root Of All Evil is one of the funniest shows ever, and Season One comes out on DVD September 30th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

I just received a DVD called The Best Of Comedy Central Presents. It’s eight comedians, each doing a half hour stand-up show on Comedy Central Presents, and brought directly to DVD as a collection courtesy of Paramount. It is hit and miss, much like most comedians. It’s presented in a three-hour, uninterrupted show, broken up by the outros to comercials and the intros back from commercials. You would think Comedy Central could take this stuff out, just like they have taken out the commercials themselves. It’s just distracting and breaks up some fine performances. And some lousy ones. I would recommend the disc, But I would recommend selecting just the individual performances of the good comics, and leaving out the other ones. These are the eight comics:

Lewis Black. Unfortunately, the DVD starts with his show, and it is the best one on here. I am just an enormous fan of Lewis Black, his delivery is superb, his material is smart, and no one delivers a punch line quite like Black with his pointed finger and his growly, focussed anger. Hilarious stuff, but I would have liked to see this one close it out. It starts off the DVD at it’s highest point, and it’s tough to get better from here. This is one of the classic Black bits, the one about seeing a Starbucks in the same building, only across the street, from another Starbucks, and how that clearly signals the end of the world. Amen.

Dane Cook. The DVD goes from the high point to the low point. I still don’t get Dane Cook. I think maybe the appeal of Cook is that…he is kind of attractive? For a comic? Most of them are fairly ugly. Cook is muscular and good-looking enough to be cast as Jessica Simpson’s love interest. And Jessica Alba’s. And, one can only assume, soon enough Jessica Biel’s and Jessica Rabbit’s and maybe Sarah Jessica Parker’s. In this one he imitates an alien from Alien, a snake…none of it is funny, it goes on too long, and I just don’t get it!

Jeff Dunham. If there is anything that smacks of “dated”, it’s vaudeville routines. Second only to vaudeville is ventriloquism. Jeff Dunham is a ventriloquist. He is a fairly good one, although he tries to go too fast and slips up every now and then. His material might seem clever and racy, and he can get away with it because it comes out of a puppet and not him, and he just has to look shocked at what the puppet says, but after watching the rest of the guys on this DVD, there isn’t anything that shocking about what his puppets say. For his act to work, he should be far more offensive, and I just don’t think he has it in him. Pretty boring.

Jim Gaffigan. A pleasant surprise for me. Jim Gaffigan is very funny. I had not seen him before, and his material is very clever, very well-worded, and delivered in a great, almost-incredulous manner. The biggest surprise on the disc, I have seen Gaffigan in small roles in a movie or two, but never doing stand-up, and he is a welcome inclusion here.

Mitch Hedberg. I have always liked Mitch Hedberg. His delivery is stoner-slow, not Steven Wright slow, but laid back and solid. His material is very good, and just about every line he says is funny. The best bit in this set is about his neighbour who would bang on the wall when he played his music too loud. And Hedberg yells back “go around!” Every line is great, and his delivery may just be the best of the bunch. But I still prefer Lewis Black. Because I love him.

Demetri Martin. Again, a guy I have never seen before doing stand-up. In fact, I had never seen Martin before, anywhere. And he’s pretty good. He uses props, but not Carrot-Top type obnoxious props, just a big paper pad like the kind your boss brings to your board meetings, and a few well-placed surprise “guests” toward the end of his set. Not classic material, but worth watching once. Also a very laid-back kind of comic, real smooth delivery and some good material.

Carlos Mencia. Again, a guy I just don’t understand. What is the appeal of this man? I guess it’s the fact that he will cross all lines, insult every race, say terribly shocking, politically incorrect things? But…if he is constantly telling you how controversial he is, if he hits you over the head with the fact that he insults everybody…no, really. Everybody. Ummm…we get it. Get on with the funny stuff. But he doesn’t seem to have much funny stuff to say. He appears to have no original material at all, so he just insults people and stereotypes groups. Frankly, I don’t mind this kind of humour if it is done with wit and inciciveness, a la Sarah Silverman, but Mencia isn’t even close to that level. Skip him.

Brian Regan. It seems sad to me that the Comedy Central people chose to end this DVD with the most bland and blase of all the comedians. Better than Dane Cook, better than Carlos Mencia, but nowhere near as good as Hedberg or Black. Very run-of-the-mill routine, mostly about food, and with a few very good jokes here and there. Sort of a let-down. I would watch him, but I would watch him first.

In fact, here is the order in which the comics should have been presented:
Brian Regan
Jim Gaffigan
Demetri Martin
Mitch Hedberg
Lewis Black
No Cook or Dunham or Mencia. Just those five, and that way you start slow, move up, come down a little again, then hit the big ones to close. That is how I recommend setting up your DVD player for this one. In this order, well worth it!