Mr. Show with Bob and David: Genius or Overrated?

can only assume you are misunderstanding Bill Maher's politics

i...wasn't saying they share views?

not sure what you're getting at then. the main thing I associate with Bill Maher is reactionary libertarian politics, being a sexist asshole, a sanctimonious atheist, and generally ignorant jerk. Cross isn't really any of those things.

can't really envision Cross hosting a "chat show" or whatever either

apart from the "Mr. Show Water Cooler" sketch I guess lol

Doesn't he have a rep for being a "sanctimonious atheist"? I remember about 6-7 years ago - this local blog i used to write for, one of the other writers reviewed a performance of his and was bothered by the fact that he made fun of Mormons. It turned out the writer was Mormon, and David Cross actually replied in the comments (i think) and restated that he thought Mormonism was dumb.

xpost PRE-TAPED CALL-IN SHOW!! Funniest 4 minutes in televised history imo.

he is sanctimonious abt a great many things

yeah i was gonna say, that was kind of the meat of my comparison (xpost)

I think Cross's brand of inflammatory rhetoric is a different strain from Maher's "All religions are stupid, I'm gonna make an entire 'documentary' about it" approach

xp

yeah, that's why i said he's almost a gen x equivalent, not the exact same thing. sorry for using words.

Maher is only 8 years older than Cross, dunno where this generational divide is being drawn here

maybe we could delineate that in depth

I think they have fundamentally different approaches - Maher wants to be taken seriously for his "ideas", he craves legitimacy. Cross knows he's not a legitimate arbiter of anything and mines this for laughs, his sanctimony is part of an overly aggressive schtick afaict

they don't have to be 30 years apart in age for one to be generation x and one not. anyway as was already pointed out, the comparison was mainly made on the basis of their having smug condescending attitudes towards sheeple that don't share their views. maybe you agree, maybe you don't, but we don't really have to board lawyer the point to death.

I say Baby Boom lasted from D-Day to Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

With one Generation X exclave during the period between JFK getting shot and the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan.

the comparison was mainly made on the basis of their having smug condescending attitudes towards sheeple that don't share their views

but...this includes like 90% of America

They could at least be funny about it, since that their chosen profession.

someone on my facebook irl used the term sheeple the other day, first time id seen it in the wild

but...this includes like 90% of America

fwiw what I meant here was that 90% of America has smug, condescending attitudes about people who don't share their views, this is hardly some sort of unusual characteristic unique to Cross and Maher

you're not a professional comedian, though

ugh shakey

hey some dude

http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/141/44faaa13616b4d6b829952c223059e15/m.gif

SPEAK ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER

lol

"i saw mary lynn rajskub do stand-up on one of those john oliver comedy central stand-up shows and it was SO. BAD."

i dunno if it's part of her routine to say this but at the beginning she says she's never done stand-up before.

maybe your first time doing stand-up shouldn't be on a tv show?

i think on average, i'd rather watch a show full of nothing but first time stand-ups than most shows with stand-ups on it.

that wouldn't be a bad idea for a TV show but the fact remains that dropping a first-timer into a regular standup show is probably not going to go well

its a p funny idea

just go to an open mic or something

pffft w/e

i've always hated this weird implicit contract in standup where the comedian goes through this well-practiced setlist of jokes as if it's extemporaneous, and the audience is supposed to react accordingly and dropping a first-timer in just destroys that. i love it. but you can do the same thing with pros. there's this recording of oswalt getting super-drunk and the audience starts yelling requests for bits they've heard before.

David Cross' audio book has some hilariously great and irritably sanctimonious parts to it. There's an extended section where he just rags on some Midwestern scrapbooking group that comes across as the meanest Vice magazine hipster cokehead snark horseshit you ever read.

The bit where he gets into an argument with H Jon Benjamin in the recording booth is awesome, though.

Some of his stories are great, others seem to be him taking all the shit he got growing up in Georgia as a pretense to attack anybody who's not as loudly atheistic as him.

MLR's standup is okay, apparently more performance art than anything, but her set doesn't warrant the placement it can get in the show. She headlined a show of great comedians at Bridgetown a week or two ago and her stuff was only good->middling, but fell far short of what guys earlier in the show brought.

Cute as hell tho.

thread is the first time I've heard of Cross being an atheist tbh. that's what I get for avoiding his last couple albums I guess.

I like him and find him generally funny, but also have to agree with the sanctimonious comments upthread.
i've seen his standup and man – he loves to rag on religion. I was in the second row and after he'd been mocking religion for maybe 15 minutes or so, I had started yawing when I locked eyes with him everso briefly. He immediately switched subjects.

i wish i had such a superpower..!

Yeah the famous bit is where he reads from the Atlanta Journal Constitution where someone wrote in to ask "Are there cars in heaven?" and he goes on and just destroys the response.

Not sure I've ever heard him say "I am an atheist" tho, so who knows? Btw I sort of suspect Colbert is a devout Christian who just knows his market well.

sometimes cross is really funny, sometimes he's a really strident asshole, sometimes both at once. imo his body of work is funny enough for me to overlook the shitty stuff, usually

though i think with him its not even so much being an asshole as sometimes you're just like... 'man this guy is really into himself' (in an unappealing way)

he looks really gross these days too

"I sort of suspect Colbert is a devout Christian"
he is! i don't think he's cynically pandering to anti-christians though.

Btw I sort of suspect Colbert is a devout Christian who just knows his market well.

He makes it pretty clear he's Catholic. The show has its own chaplain!

Colbert is infinitely more hilarious AND biting AND humane on religion that Cross ever has or will be.

Cross in that Tripping youtube could easily be posted in "pictures of people that aren't whiney" thread

The only Cross standup routine that got real lols form me was the one where he ate a chocolate mountain covered in gold.
His book was not funny. He's kind of a jerk. I've tried not to let it rub off on my views of Mr. Show, which I still think is funny overall.

Hungry4Ayyyyy nailed it

otm - like the "emotion lotion" sketch kinda felt a bit too revealing