Maggie Allen opened the show with an explanation of a new book she has written, inspired by the "That's Not My..." series of books, which teach children to identify what is and is not theirs. Allen flipped through the pages of "That's Not My Boyfriend," an instructional guide showing pictures of men whose balls smell good, who do dishes, who read books that aren't dungeon master guides, and who drive and insure their own cars. Her sharp wit took her to other topics entirely. One transition, faithfully paraphrased: "Unlike the last joke, I didn't write a segue for this next one." Allen’s sense of pace and tone and delivery was equally sharp — did this comedian actually rehearse? This combined with the nontraditional form and modest length of her set was refreshing. And she was the opener.
Next was allegedly Andy Bob’s first stand-up comedy performance, but the sketch actor, TV host and event MC wasted no time taking the mic and pacing the stage, as comics so often do. Bob guided the audience through the many interior moments he has concerning his television and marriage, and he’s comfortable enough in front of a bunch of people to make stupid faces and say strange things. Indeed, Bob is correct: Ice really is a more appealing word than meth, and it does sound, well, cooler even after he repeated this over and over.
Unlike many of us, Mr. Bob knew when his jokes crashed and burned; he did a little hand motion and sound effect of a plane crash, which helped clear some of the confusion in the audience when a joke landed in a field of silence. He must have anticipated this; he had secured a "hype man" for the set, the drummer from the Flaming Lips, who came on the stage to "pump up" the crowd by running around and waving his arms, echoing choice words from Andy Bob’s jokes.
Next was JP Incorporated, a comedy act consisting of one costumed man and bunch of slickly produced music videos, with which he sings and dances along. His set was justified as a focus group for new products and services coming to town; after each video, a bold choice was put before the crowd: ACCEPT or REJECT. Shy or confused in the beginning, by the end of the set the citizens were fully under the charm of this showman, approving everything: the limousine service No Prob Limo, hard rock gods Crap Factory, and even the Internet. The disco-era tunes of the videos lend themselves to JP Inc.'s goofy crooning though his possibly fake beard, and complemented the sensual dance moves he used to whip the crowd into gooey mirth.
The good-natured atmosphere soured when Neil Hamburger soaked into the stage. He was welcomed with the applause that many bands never get, the kind of real cheer of which many comedians never even dare to dream.
If you don't know who Neil Hamburger is, then you have obviously been living in a place that is not under a rock. Hamburger is the world-class anti-comic: he is loud and abrasive when not annoyingly mewling, his punch lines are deliberately flat and mean and absurd, his grease-slicked appearance is disgusting, and he's been doing all of this extremely well for years and years. His litany of jokes follow the same pattern: (1) Ask question concerning motives of pop culture figure or of imagined character. (2) Wait a beat for audience to shout "What?" or "Why?" (3) Deliver crude, crass or violently repulsive explanation in the tone of common sense. This is Hamburger's set, basically but not reductively, and it’s hilarious. The crowd, now mostly drunk (most likely), was more than happy to meet him in the gutter. They wondered with Hamburger: Why did Steven Tyler have a 16-year-old girl contestant sit on his lap during an American Idol audition? The comedy crowd was pleased to learn that it was because Tyler wanted to conceal the erection he had from watching 13-year-olds audition. Sorry, kids, adults only!
Given that his form is Neanderthal, you might think that his appearance in a Lawrence bar would attract town scumbags of the highest order, and you would be correct. Minutes into his set, Hamburger was heckled by a fan who began to shout out punch lines ahead of him. Hamburger began grunting and snorting into the microphone to disrupt these comedic cock-blocks, a technique that would work for no other artist or performer in the universe, and which in fact adds to the visceral quality of the jokes, to the general vibe of slime. (Phlegm is, after all, one of the four humors.) The heckler persisted even after Hamburger asked him to leave and die; a physical altercation between audience members erupted in front of stage right, and Hamburger waited, adjusting the three or four glasses of brown liquid clutched under his microphone-arm.
Naturally, Hamburger could never be unsettled by such nonsense (he's had hordes of the British hurl trash at him onstage, before he continued his act). Hamburger shall not be out-Hamburgered. And so more jokes, and more jokes, all of them belonging to the same twisted universe of sexual perversion, physical tragedy and iconoclastic taste. He read at times off a small envelope, which likely included a listing of Eric Clapton, mentally challenged people, Steven Tyler, Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin, Eric Clapton, fast food, Limp Bizkit, and Eric Clapton — pop-culture props for jokes so crude that the referent is moot. Some jokes, sure, are more brilliantly disgusting than others, but of all he whined into the microphone, all found some effect on the crowd, even when they already knew the joke, even when they were already laughing at it.
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