I’ve done that with Ratatouille on DVD. My sister has done that with Ratatouille on DVD. In this household, that’s all I know of Patton Oswalt, that he was the voice of Remy in Ratatouille. I knew that there must have been something that led to him getting that voice role, but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know.
He’s a stand-up comedian, but a vastly different kind from what covers Comedy Central’s daily schedule. He goes places that neither you nor I nor perhaps even any other stand-up comedians have ever considered. Vomit Bag Zorro? Robot lizards that have taken over in 40 years? A title that should be standard for every romantic comedy? Dr. Seuss rejected by a young girl at a bar? A full-on reenactment of fat Axl Rose at the Video Music Awards?
Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play.
This DVD of his special, Finest Hour, causes laughter not of a regular variety, not continuous laughter. Oswalt is not the kind of comedian who wants audiences to laugh every 10 seconds. He’s not desperate for that kind of approval. The set-ups to his jokes take a few more seconds than average, and then the laughter is so uproarious, not only from the audience, but yourself. He places one piece after another of his joke in your mind and then once that last piece is placed, total explosion of laughter is what happens. But it’s not just laughter for the sake of laughing at something funny. At the same time you’re laughing, you’re wondering, “How does this genius’s mind work?! Where is he getting all this from?!” No one knows. He is our guru on the mountain. Listen to when he talks about entering a supermarket, wearing sweatpants with a matching-colored t-shirt, walking up to the deli counter, and encountering a morbidly obese man who is telling the guy behind the counter, “I want all the ham.” That’s only the start of that masterpiece. Once you hear the entire bit, you’re going to wish Oswalt was in charge of network TV. What he conjures up in his comedy alone would make for always-entertaining television.
Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play.
As I went between that and having trouble breathing from laughter explosions, I wondered if Oswalt has ever written a book. It turns out that he has, with Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, which I ordered as I’ve been writing. I hope he writes more and more and more, because he could truly be the King of All Media that we need today. Howard Stern only goes so far, and to basically one demographic. Oswalt can do so much more, and be anyone in his act. When he acts out what Vomit Bag Zorro did on the Southwest flight he was on, and then becomes the morbidly obese guy at the deli counter and a time traveler at the same time, well, why are we bothering with Stern? Let him concern himself with being a judge on America’s Got Talent. Oswalt can take over everything else. He probably knows more about pop culture than Stern ever has and ever will and can always streamline it into something entertaining. He only has to say two words about a band or a movie and the reaction is always, “Man, he knows!”
Included on this DVD is an encore involving his KFC bit which reached the CEO of Yum! Brands in an interview with Fast Company magazine. He updates it, still expressing incredulousness over KFC’s Famous Bowls (“I thought it was a Tim and Eric bit.”), segueing into the Double Down and then the never-been-produced Mega Leg, which he pegs as something having gone wrong in an underground lab. “We couldn’t get the blast doors closed in time,” he reacts.
Then there’s seven minutes of “Preshow Superstitions,” in which he lists the kind of people he doesn’t want at his show lest he has a bad night because of them, including fans of Louis C.K. and Greg Giraldo, anyone who has seen him on Reno 911!, anyone who recites his bits badly. He might lose his bowel functions if he sees anyone wearing a hoodie.
This leads into him describing a TV show he wants to make, and someone in the lobby of the Moore Theatre in Seattle describes the exact same thing. It could be that Oswalt knew that this footage was shot, and played to it, or it could be that he expressed this first and then whoever filmed audience members in the lobby found someone to talk about exactly what Oswalt talked about. On a Patton Oswalt DVD, it’s hard to be sure about just who did what.
Capping off the DVD is “Stuff that Patton Mentions,” a slide show of DVD boxes of movies he mentioned, foodstuffs, logos, books, etc. It’s better than Wikipedia in photos.
Because of Oswalt, I think that I should watch stand-up comedians more often on Comedy Central, to see how their minds work, where they go with their comedy, because after Oswalt, there’s a strong desire to know how others compare or go their own way.
But for now, I’ve got to go back to Vomit Bag Zorro, a non-ironic visit to the Spam Museum, sweatpants as the pinnacle of mankind, Jesus’ rejected sidekick Sandwich Joe, and pitching the circus today. I know exactly what’s going to happen.
Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. Rewind. Play. DVD player burnout imminent.
