Tag Archives: comedy

Cross roads: An interview with comedian David Cross

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Diehard comedy fans and mainstream entertainment consumers alike have seen plenty of David Cross in recent years.

In IFC’s out-there comedy The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. Reunited with collaborators from cult-fave HBO sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David for Netflix’s spiritually kindred new W/Bob and David. In small roles in big shows like Modern FamilyLaw & Order: Criminal Intent and Community. In the Alvin & The Chipmunks movies.

And, of course, as Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development.

One place we haven’t seen Cross in a while, however, is on tour, delivering the alternately absurd and cuttingly provocative stand-up that made him one of the late ’90s/early aughts alternative comedy scene’s most visible and polarizing figures. Those familiar with the more politically charged bits from timely, visceral live albums like Shut Up You Fucking Baby! and It’s Not Funnymight’ve been tempted to think there wasn’t enough wrong with Obama’s Generation of Hope to inspire the ire of a comic who once suggested George W. Bush might go down in history as America’s worst president ever. But the truth is much simpler — Cross has had his plate full handling the jobs mentioned above, and many more besides.

“I have not heard that perception, but if that is the perception that’s false,” said Cross during a phone conversation with CL. “First of all, I’m not a political comic, I never was … but I also have been doing stand-up, and plenty of it, during the Obama administration, I just haven’t gone on tour, because I’ve been busy, you know?

“I didn’t stop doing stand-up once a black Democrat got into office. That’s crazy.”

Read the rest at Creative Loafing

This is a Public Apology to Seth MacFarlane

Hey, Seth MacFarlane.

Listen, I’ll get right to it:

I have said some really, really, REALLY derogatory stuff about Family Guy over the years.

Like, really derogatory. Foul, even. So foul that my wife, who thinks Family Guy is about as funny as screening Schindler’s List against the side of a burning pediatrics ward full of abandoned AIDS babies, has given me shit about talking so much shit about a show that seems to play in our house almost constantly.

(I have tried to explain to her that I need a familiar “sonic blanket” of bland white noise to envelop me while I work, and that having Family Guy on is like having the worst, most predictable moments from every sitcom I watched as a kid during the ’80s playing at once, but maybe I’m telling it wrong.)

I am not sorry for saying such terrible things about Family Guy, and so I will not apologize for that. I do want to apologize, though, for the possibility that someone might have heard me talking shit about Family Guy, and inferred that you, Seth MacFarlane, the individual, are not funny by association.

Because I just got around to seeing the season premiere of SNL and you–Seth MacFarlane, a guy directly responsible for an awful show so infrequently funny, its rare laugh-inspiring moments are unworthy of the pain that went into their production, like blood diamonds of comedy–FREAKING KILLED IT. Like, Justin Timberlake killed it. Like, Family Guy-offsetting killed it.

So, yeah, if my incessant, almost pathological tirades against Family Guy‘s existence might have given even a single person the idea that you, yourself, Seth MacFarlane, are not funny, I apologize.

I just wanted to tell you that.

Also, American Dad is awesome.

Today’s Bit – Thursday, April 21

Whenever I’m the new guy at some job, I’m also inevitably the guy who puts his foot in his mouth about something I didn’t know, and couldn’t possibly know. You know that guy?

Like, when some folks at work ask you if you want to go to lunch with them, and you say okay, and they say Jenny will drive, so you all pile into Jenny’s car and head out to McFeasty’s Cavalcade of Breaded Goodness or whatever, and on the way, you see a half-naked crackhead fighting invisible ninjas or dancing with himself or something on the side of the road, and you yell, hey, look, it’s Jenny’s abortion doctor, you know, just to be funny, and everybody gets super-quiet and Jenny’s hands get really tight on the steering wheel and the rest of the whole lunch is totally awkward and then later that afternoon Bill comes up to you while you’re smoking a cigarette outside by yourself and tells you that, last year, Jenny’s mom was killed by invisible ninjas?

Yeah … that guy.