1. Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!- Live Performance Review

This weekend I had the privilege to attend a sold out comedy performance at Chicago's Vic Theater. The performers were members of the cast of the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, with a duration of only eleven minutes, this television show airs on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. A close friend of mine bought the tickets after I had spent the last year and a half indoctrinating her with their absurd comedic stylings. One thousand, four hundred fans and newcomers to the charades packed the venue and were presented with a multimedia program consisting of scripted skits, pre-recorded sketches, and medleys of humorous songs they had performed on the show.

The stars of the show are the Pennsylvanian duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. The have accumulated a cast of what seems like public access television and grungy lounge act rejects. There is the inspirational ventriloquist David Leibe Hart (Brief documentary on his actual Public Access career: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc-mZVPGKSk ), the socially inept impersonator James Quall (fan recorded video of him on the 08 Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dID0djivHyE ), and barrel-chested comedian and crooner Sire Spicer, all of who were all in attendance. The Chicago audience also had the advantage of having guest star John C. Reilly, reprising his role of Dr. Steve Brule a not so qualified doctor who gives health tips via a news broadcast on the show. This was apparently one of only two shows that he appeared at, and it was exhilarating to see him perform live.

Their comedy on the whole can be described with one word: awkward. The continually attempt to push the line between what is funny and what is either too taboo, bizarre, disgusting, or abhorrent to be found humorous. Heidecker and Wareheim began their television career with another on Cartoon Network, Tom Goes to the Mayor. Produced by comic-veteran and personal hero of mine, Bob Odenkirk, the show followed an eager but passive citizen who every episode started a project with the hair-brained and ill-intentioned mayor of the small town. Awesome Show!, also produced by Odenkirk, continues the staple of casting higher profile comics in quirky roles. The show has recently had guest spots from David Cross, Zack Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Rainn Wilson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Jeff Goldblum. What is incredibly interesting is the way that these people are written into the show with in the same way that the aforementioned ‘rejects’ are. This materializes in an amazing fashion; the fans of the show begin the thread a hero complex for the non-celebrities. Which is almost unsettling in an eighties hair metal sort of way. When James Quall came on stage, the crowd erupted in ferverent applause. Quall, who must be in his fifties, seems to be a drawn to live performance, but in all logical arenas he would not be considered a very competent performer and would not likely be considered entertaining for entertainment’s sake. But in this limelight, and for absurdity’s sake, he shines.



My two gripes for the night would have to be the brevity of the show and their continued reliance on fecal humor. On the length, we arrived within the first minutes of the show, and it was over within 90 minutes. Which was enough to justify the moderate ticket price, but I knew they had more up their sleeves, but they must be saving content for future shows or not recycling material from past shows to maintain freshness. I would never say their humor is high-brow, but most of it does take a seasoned appreciation for absurdity. But one continued trait theme that they use is talk about, playing with poo and pee. The fecal humor typically manifests itself through their satirical songs (“I sit down when I pee” & “I’m never-ever-ever going to wipe my butt”) and through parodies of infomercials (‘The Poop Tube” which enables you to emit your feces into a urinal), but I get frustrated by why they go there. Sex is primal enough, and they go there a lot in, and often in inventive ways, but feces has been done before and I would hope they would understand that a chunk of their audience is a little past poo-humor.

What I am interested in asking the class is about how to classify their work. It is without a doubt multimedia, they continually use tropes of digital and analog technology and a large percentage of their material relies on green-screen composition. What I am curious about is the ‘performance art’ merits of their endeavors. They are often being edgy, but rarely do they use the public as an audience.

All in all, this was one of the best sets of comedy that I have seen, and seeing John C Reilly give an inept breast exam to a mildly-willing hipster was well worth the cross-state drive.

Website: http://www.timanderic.com/
Review from a recent Denver show: http://blogs.denverpost.com/reverb/2009/01/23/tim-and-eric-awesome-tour-the-ogden/