I admit I completely love Kevin Nealon, and have since I
first saw him on Saturday Night Live
back in the mid-1980s. His straight, somewhat casual delivery often makes
what he’s saying even more surprising, catching you off guard. You don’t expect
him to be nearly as funny as he is, because listening to him you sometimes get
the feeling you’re listening to a friend. (As he jokes repeatedly on his new
album, “You know me.”) He undersells
his comedy, which – for me – makes it all the funnier.
His new two-disc set, Whelmed…But
Not Overly, is seriously good. (I love the title, by the way.) His opening
bit on skiing is perfect. For those who don’t ski, trails are marked to
show their difficulty. Black diamonds are more difficult than the blue squares
or green circles. Kevin Nealon mentions that he didn’t know about those
signs either, and he asked a guy what the best mountain in the area is. The guy
responded, “I like Copper Mountain, but a
lot of people don’t like to go there because they’re afraid of all the blacks.”
And from there it just gets funnier. “Some
of them are not very well groomed, but if you want the good white powder,
that’s where you got to go.”
He also makes several short, but funny observations.
Like: “I learned something valuable –
never wear a red shirt to Target.” And: “Do you think if Jesus Twittered, he would be checking to see how many
followers he had all the time? I bet he would. He’s so like that. It’s all
about numbers for him, isn’t it?”
His parents are in their eighties, and he tells the
audience, “They still hold hands, but I
think that’s to keep from falling over.” His connection with the audience
is immediate. There’s no easing into the routine. He’s off and running from the
moment he hits the stage. He asks the audience, “You ever been so tired you fell asleep sitting up? That happened to me
like four days ago. And I woke up and I thought, ‘Jesus, I’d better pull over,
this is dangerous.” Then he adds, “And
it is dangerous, what with the economy the way it is.”
Often it’s those little added bits between the lines that
make me laugh. For example, he’s talking about television shows, and he says, “I’ll tell you what I do watch, though – you got a minute? – what I like to watch…” Just tossing in that “you got a minute?” is bloody brilliant.
I also like that he returns to certain lines, like the bit about the economy.
I love his bit about the rapture: “That rapture never hit us, thank god. I guess it got pushed out to sea
or something.” Then: “I knew it
wasn’t going to hit us like the day before because I made a random phone call
to Australia. They’re a day ahead of us, and guess what, someone picked up the
phone.”
And remember: “You
don’t play dead with a vulture.”
The two-disc set includes the performance on DVD and CD. The
CD is just a couple of minutes shorter than the DVD, but all that’s missing is
moments of the introduction and the closing credits, nothing from the actual performance
itself. Also cut are a few seconds before he comes back out to thank the
audience. This performance was filmed at Comedy Works South, in Colorado.
Whelmed…But Not Overly
was released on May 28, 2013 through New Wave Dynamics.
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