Where Have All the Poo Jokes Gone?

This morning, the first thing we thought to ourselves upon waking up was, “Fucker’s twat.”

No, we’re not suffering from Tourette’s. We loved Michael Showalter’s routine so much last night at the TLA that we fell asleep chuckling to his joke about changing the names of different ailments so they sound more hardcore. Rather than ordering a cream for gonorrhea, Showalter thought it would be better to ask for medication for “Fucker’s cock.” Which had us laughing so hard we were gasping for air and wondering what the female version of that ailment would be. Our answer came to us 7:30 this morning, hence, the first line of this post.

Between describing how growing up on the mean streets of Princeton, N.J. made him turn to the music of Run DMC, and admitting that he hides lame music by Sheryl Crow in his iPod under Cat Power, Showalter had us cracking up from minute one of his performance. Having been a huge fan of his since The State and Wet Hot American Summer, we knew he’d be funny, but we didn’t expect him to steal the show from headliner Janeane Garofalo. But he did.

When Garofalo took the stage, we were pumped because we love her acerbic wit and her political rants. Yet something seemed off last night, because her politics came off kind of preachy, and her wit had more snark than substance. While the show had its moments, such as a rant comparing right-wing conservative talk show hosts to high school bullies, and some funny discussion about Rachel Ray (cocaine-fueled giggle or just a bubbly personality?), we found her performance inconsistent. Just when she seemed to be getting on a roll, she’d get into something that was less a laugh and more of a “Hmm.” But no one’s perfect, and we still love her. We just wanted to hear more jokes about irritable bowel syndrome.

Perhaps the super-annoying audience had something to do with it. We can’t imagine how distracting it is to perform to an overly vocal audience. One woman, presumably an MMR employee, took the opportunity to quiz Garofalo about whether she’d received her flowers from the Preston and Steve show. After going back and forth with MMR Girl for a minute, graceful Garofalo politely said, “Why don’t we talk about this later?” We wished she’d said, “Why don’t you shut the eff up?” Another audience member walked to the front of the room to ask what she thought of Nancy Pelosi.

We weren’t aware that we’d stumbled into a Choose Your Own Adventure comedy show, but apparently that’s where we were. So we yelled out “Poo!” every once in a while, but we guess she didn’t hear us.