Patton Oswalt -Feelin' Kinda Patton/Werewolves and Lollipops -(B) Geez, is it weird hearing the voice of Remy, the cute little rat from that Pixar movie utter the phrase, "Chapped, Battered Pussy"...or is that just me? He's in the class of stand-up comedians that perform in music clubs, like David Cross and Zack Galifianakis. Y'know, "Edgy" comedians. (On a tangent here, why is it all those guys wind up at some point in their set, have to deal with a drunk, giggling female audience member? Why is that, ladies? Why do you feel the need to throw back a couple o' cosmopolitans and start screeching at the comedian? We came to see them, not you.)
Anyway, this review is gonna be kind of useless if you're not familiar with David Cross' standup act. (He's that bald dude in Arrested Development and that chipmunk movie, about which horrible things are about to be said, but enough digressing...) Him and Oswalt (and Galifianakis, and Chris Rock, and-oh, shit. Did I say enough with the digressing? Oh, well.) are influenced by Bill Hicks, the current saint of stand-up. That is, they put some genuine social commentary in their act. This is opposed to dimwits like Larry the Cable Guy ('Ah hates them sand niggers!') and Dane Cook ('I fucked me a drunk sorority girl!'), who just aren't funny.
Oswalt's pretty close to Cross in terms of his standup, except Oswalt doesn't come across as snide as Cross does. This is kinda important, as one of the rules of standup, even if you're Andy Kaufman, is that in order for the audience to like you, you've got to let them know that you like them. Cross tends to come across as sneering as a defense mechanism, which tends to alienate him from an audience. Case in point, on his website with Bob Odenkirk from Mr. Show, he wrote a defensive screed about his recent appearance in 'Alvin and the Chipmunks'. (Here you go.)
Cross' tirade is annoying, simply because he's responding to a concern that only affects him. Does he hate himself this much? Does Cross think we care about where his next job is coming from? We might, if he was crass enough to use his white-trash 'Ronnie Dobbs' character to pimp out Popeye's Fried Chicken. But that's not gonna happen. Actually, the original impetus for that blog was an offhand comment by Patton Oswalt about turning down the role on 'Alvin', and having Cross 'intercept' it. It's more a case of a social faux-pax of airing your private business in public by both Oswalt and Cross than a test of one's artistic integrity.
But back to Oswalt. His main strength is in surfing along the tide of the entertainment machine, and pointing out the absurdities in being part of the system. He manages to do this without descending to Cross' level of bitterness, and actually finding some good cheer in the most bizarre of circumstances. ('As I stared mournfully at the meal table at the Batman Begins premier, not eating because I wanted to be trim and thin like the stars are, Brian Dennehy, like an avenging angel, appeared at my side. 'Character actors, huh?', he exclaimed, tucking into the tasty fare. 'No one gives a fuck if we're fat!')
Bonus feature: America has spoken!
On 'Werewolves and Lollipops', Oswalt has a bit on KFC's 'Famous Bowls', where he points out how degrading it is that a major fast food chain's most popular feature is their 'Famous Bowl'. That is, a bowl with chicken bits, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cheese...all piled into a single bowl. He even went so far as to review it for The Onion's A.V. Club, here. Intrigued by his scathing review, I proceeded to try one of these things for myself. At first, no luck. We don't seem to have 'em here in Canada- most KFC's are paired up with Taco Bell, and the menu seems to be limited. Finally, on a trip to Edmonton, I lucked out. Sunday, I had me one of those things, chuckling to myself as I ordered, in Patton Oswalt's words, "The failure pile in a Sadness bowl". What, you may ask, is my take on it? Was Oswalt spoiled by all those years of fine dining? Would it beat out Curry Chicken with rice as my new favorite hot meal in a hurry?
People, it was so bad, I couldn't finish it. It is the literal definition of the word, "Glop".
This easily ties the Swanson's Hungry Man Breakfast as the worst thing I have ever eaten. For starters, the food in the bowl was grey. Grey potatoes, grey gravy, grey chicken, grey corn, grey cheese. Grey! It was hot, salty, and greasy. Like Oswalt, my cheese all melted together in a great, greasy, grey lump. I took one bite and put it aside. I got about a third of the way in and had to throw it away. Even the smell started to gross me out. If I had eaten it at home, that smell would've lingered around my place for about a week like a messy suicide. It was the type of meal that if you had fed it to a child molester/murderer in prison, he would've sued for 'cruel and unusual punishment'. And won. I guess my earlier prediction about 'fifty-nine cent Crudburgers' isn't too far off, then.
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