Recently AmericasComedy.Com sat down with the very talented comedian Joe Klocek. Gracious enough to give us a second interview, the comedian talked about his hopes of performing on the Craig Ferguson show, his new CD, and how he became one of the most gifted off-the-cusp performers on the comedy circuit.

TB: How did you come to decide you would do comedy for a living?

JK: It was all an accident, honestly. I was working as a cook for a restaurant, living with my girlfriend. She  cheated on me, and I was heartbroken. People would ask me at the restaurant, “How are you doing?” I would start to tell them, and they would start to laugh. I couldn’t figure out why they were laughing! I felt like I was dying!

There was a waiter there who said: “Hey, I’m a stand-up comic, you should come do an open mike with me.” I went, it was the Holy City Zoo in San Francisco. I didn’t know what to talk about, and he said: “Talk about what you’re feeling,” which was pretty good advice to take to heart early on.

I talked about my girlfriend and people laughed. It was bizarre. I told people “I’m heartbroken, and here’s why,” and they were laughing. It was also a high. It was like: “That’s cool, look what I made happen. I made people laugh.”  Early on, it felt like I got all the best advice, by accident, not by design. “Talk about what you’re feeling, be honest, and even if you feel like shit and they laugh, smile like you meant it.”

I think that’s pretty common for most comics. When I was young I never thought I wanted to be a stand-up comic – it never occurred to me.

 TB: Even if you weren’t a comedy nerd from infancy, there must be some comedians whom you like what they did and how they did it. Are there any names we would know that you admire?

JK: There were a lot of local guys I remember watching. Some have moved on to bigger and better things, some aren’t around anymore. For me, I feel like it was backward. I can remember watching my dad, laughing at Johnny Carson’s monologue and the comics. I remember thinking: “Wow, that’s really cool.” I wouldn’t get some of the jokes because I was way too young, but still, the fact that these guys kept making my dad laugh – wow, that’s power, that’s control, that’s cool.  I remembered that. I really didn’t have stand-up comics as idols. But when I got into it, it was a crash course, as far as, “What are people doing?”

When I started, the comedy scene had just completely fallen apart. I started around 1992, 1993, and that was the end. The 80′s had come and gone, and comedy was shrinking, rapidly! The people I started with were telling me: “You guys are really coming on to a sinking ship.” But we didn’t know – that was something we had going for us, we were really innocent.  We had no idea how amazing it once was.

Now I’m looking around at people who are there. Johnny Steel was a guy I remember watching and thinking, “Oh my God, that guy is incredibly strong,” and just how good the show is. He would go up and suddenly, it’s ten times better!  I remember being in awe of that guy’s ability to do that. There were guys that were just leaving L.A. There were guys like Tom Rhodes – Dana Gould went on to be a writer for The Simpsons. He was very theatrical in his approach. I remember watching him thinking, “This guy really stands out. He’s really strong and centered. And crazy!” Greg Proops I thought was pretty incredible; the guy was just so smug and so smart, and he would lay into the crowd for not getting stuff!

TB: How do you guide your comedy ship, artistically? What do you try to achieve, is it self-expression? Is it just for the girls?

 JK: That is “the question!” I imagine if you could answer any of those big questions, that’s the day when you doing stop stand-up comedy, because that’s really what it’s about, is trying to figure out, “Where are the boundaries here? What can I do, what can’t I do? What am I interested in?” What I talk about now is different than what I talked about when I got started. How I talk about it is different too, I think.

What interests me is what I want to talk about on stage. You have to balance that between “what is the crowd’s expectation?” I find that lately, when I’m myself onstage, when I really feel like I can do what I want to do and the crowd is with me, generally, that’s happening at Previously Secret Information.  Because I’ve set up all the parameters of what I do and how I do it. I get to talk about what I want to talk about, and sometimes it can be a little self-indulgent. But remember, with a theater crowd, they will listen as long as you’re saying it well. You don’t have to give them immediate payoff. Comedy clubs I still love going to, but I feel like there’s an expectation that you have to work with. There’s a more narrow idea about what stand-up comedy is there.

TB: One of the things that come mind when people think of you is your ability to just go off topic, ditch the prepared material, and riff, and talk to the crowd, and it’s every bit as entertaining as the prepared material.  Is that something that you’ve always been able to do? Or is it something you’ve had to put a lot of effort into developing?

JK: I think it was a necessity when I started going on the road. Booking myself into these horrible one-nighter gigs, and I’m going in as the opener.  I didn’t know it, but the opener is required to do thirty minutes in a two-man show. I’m like “Oh shit, I have about fifteen minutes of okay stuff,” so I would have to cover that by talking to them. In the beginning, my riffing was better than my material, because  I was desperate, and I had that manic energy and desire to be liked.  My head would just spin and spin and spin, I would spit this stuff out. Half the time the crowd was laughing at whatever weird crap that was coming out of my mouth.

After a while, that became more and more of my show. For along period of time I felt like my riffing was far better than my material. I felt bad about that, I felt like  I’m not a very good comedian with just these abilities. Most comics don’t develop that riffing skill until later on. I just took really shitty gigs, where you have to talk to them; you don’t really have a choice.  That helped me develop that.  Basically, it was a defense mechanism.

TB: You’ve got many videos on YouTube, but one of the most popular is you taking a heckler, giving him all the room he wants, and you still dismantle him like a new bicycle.

JK: (Laughing) I have so many feelings about that. I don’t think I watch that and get the same feelings anybody else does. Because to me it’s sort of nostalgic. I mean, there’s (George W.) Bush references in there, which dates it right away. Plus, I have longer hair.

When that video happened, it was the perfect confluence of  a whole bunch of things. And the fact that there was a camera running, that camera wasn’t mine. Somebody was recording comics that night. When I went on, they saw what was happening, and had the presence of mind to really focus the camera in. At the end when I got off stage, the guys asked me if I wanted a copy of that. I said “Yeah I want a copy of that!” That is lightning in a bottle, because you never capture anything like that on camera. But I also felt like that was the height of my abilities, in terms of riffing, I felt like I was indestructible at the time. I felt like whatever was going to happen at the show, there was no possible way it was gonna phase me.

All those instances just came together on that one night. You look at that guy, he’s skinnier than I am (which is rare), so I thought, “If this really  goes bad, he’s not really gonna be able to beat me up. I’m gonna be okay.” He was really, really drunk. I get  a lot of credit for that, but it was like stealing candy from a baby. He wanted to come on stage and I realized, “Wait, the Punchline always has a second microphone.” I was cocky, he was really drunk – sure, why not? Let’s do this! It just became one of those moments that’s really cool. I’m glad I got in on tape. I get e-mails from people all over the world about that clip.

TB: It seems like when I grew up, there was sort of a vertical procession of success as a comedian. You start out locally, you work regionally, you get on the Carson show, you get a sitcom, and die rich and famous. It seems like with modern times that changed. You seem to have to be you’re own press agent. There are these whole different types of media that didn’t exist, much less were in use back then.   What’s your take on social media?

JK: It’s good and bad. On one hand, without YouTube, there are many comedians that never would have gotten the exposure that they’ve gotten. They never would’ve been deemed right for Leno or Carson or Letterman. They never would have made it on network or cable T.V. One person said to me that YouTube and the Internet have democratized our ability to connect with fans. And that is true. People will find that clip and suddenly I’ve got a fan. I’ve sold CDs on the basis of that, I’ve had people come to shows on the basis of that. That is really really cool. And it’s incredibly cheap and easy marketing that I can control. All of that stuff is good.

The downside is that there is so much of it now! Everybody’s got a YouTube channel. Everybody’s trying to figure out how to get their link posted on such-and-such a website, so they can drive traffic to this and that. There’s so much of it you have to learn how to jump over the noise. I don’t know that anyone’s really figured that out. The way you jump over that noise, ironically, is network television!  They’ve made it easier to get attention, but people still – I’ve been trying to get on Craig Ferguson’s show. They keep telling me that I’m in the loop, they like me, I’m approved – this  has been going on now for almost a year!

I know that once I get on there, realistically the viewership is about a million people. If ten percent watch me, that’s about a hundred thousand people. If ten percent of them go to my YouTube clip, that’s ten thousand people. That means that I’ve spent a whole lot of energy and effort to get one percent of one percent of one percent of people to watch my clip.

TB: What is your next goal, or breakthrough moment that you hope to see?

JK: Like every comic, I hope that “this is the year” that something happens. But I also know that IF something happens, I have to create it. That’s a big reason why PSI had happened. I thought, “Okay – I need to create something that is mine, that I artistically control, and respect, and can turn into something that is a commercial success.”  That is the goal for PSI. I’m talking to all kinds of different people, we’re going to start a podcast soon. Hopefully that becomes the Joe Klocek vehicle. Short of that, I’m still making trips down to L.A. every now and again. Hopefully I get on the Ferguson show this year, that would be a nice feather in my cap. To have something that’s more recent – I look at my Comedy Central clip and it’s so dated to me. I think, “Wow, I’m not that same person anymore. It’s a good clip, but I need something a little more modern.”

TB: You mention Comedy Central, you had a very funny clip on Live at Gotham. Also last year you released your first CD, Life is a Joke. What was it like to put together your first CD? 

JK: Um, daunting. And yeah, I used the word “daunting.” There were technical aspects I was completely clueless about.  I did it because I talked to all these other comedians who had CDs, who were telling me, “When I’m on the road, I’m doubling my money.” I’m just like, “Wow, I need to just slap something together.”  My artistic side won’t let me just slap something together! I saw a comic just the other night with something he had just burned by himself and in marker wrote on the CD – selling them for three or four bucks.

It was a cool experience. I rented a theater at night, I did an hour and a half. Long story short, it was a lot of fun, it was scary. You’ve got all these moving parts going on, you’re not sure how it’s gonna turn out. The guy I hired to record was awesome, but it’s a little  scary. What’s it gonna sound like?  I don’t know any comic who likes the sound of their own voice.

TB: Are you doubling your money on the road with your CD?

JK: Some nights I am, it’s true! People see you , they like you, they want to buy your CD. I think it makes being on the road, for a comic, a good investment. Make a CD and put it together, because even if you drive an hour away, and you sell one CD for ten bucks, you have now paid for your gas. If I’m in a club for a week, and I’m selling ten CDs a night, and we’ve got four or five shows, you do the math. It ends up being lucrative. That’s also why the club, the assholes that they are, they sometimes enforce a “we need to charge you ten percent of what you made.” I think, “We wouldn’t be doing this if you guys just paid us. You’re making money off of us, now?”  You’re taxing twice.

TB: Did you have to scrap all the material that you used for the CD, do you still keep it fresh?

JK: It’s weird – the people who came to the CD show were my uber-fans. So the material that worked the best in front of every crows didn’t work so great in front of that crowd, because they had heard it. So what ended up on the CD was stuff that I don’t do that often. [The sound technician] talked to me and said, “We could ‘sweeten it,’” and I didn’t want to do that, it feels like cheating. I don’t want to go that route. It ended being this interesting collection of material. Some of it is stories that I do with PSI.  That’s the other great thing about PSI, it’s like, “Oh, I’m getting to do more storytelling on stage as a comic.”

It’s a very eclectic mix. There are jokes on there that I’ll do if I’m in a really good mod and I think the crowd is really with me. And there are jokes on there from earlier in my career that used to be my favorite mainstays, and now I don’t do that often. And I also realized this the other night: if you’re on stage and you have your CD to promote and you feel like you’ve done everything, it also ends up being a nice set list. The most expensive set list I’ve ever made!

TB: Thanks for your time Joe. Hope to talk with you again soon.

JK: No problem.

Klocek will be performing at the Punchline in San Francisco May 29 through June 2. To read more about Klocek visit www.StandUpJoe.Com. His new stand-up comedy CD can be purchased here, and on iTunes. 

Eddie Gossling’s Fresh Brewed could be a 1940′s production of Warner Bros. Studios. I suspect that if Eddie nicked himself shaving, “Red Ink No. 5″ would spill out onto the sink.

What I’m saying is that Gossling is a cartoon, and in the best of ways. Eddie has a manic energy, across which he stretches his high thin voice. And when he’s keyed into a particular point, that voice gets higher and more shrill with the bizarre vitality that comes with riding an insane tangent to greater and greater silliness.

Which is not to say he shouldn’t be taken seriously. Gossling is reliably hilarious without ever being predictable. Manic and mercurial, Eddie is a moving target, rarely taking a moment to slow down. One bit that does slow down examines how his inadequacy for mathematics prevented him from being an otherwise ideal candidate for a job at NASA. Grounded in the necessity for scientific exactitude, Gossling runs at lower RPMs to imagine himself “ballparkin’ it” in the aeronautics industry, to excellent comedic effect.

His style mixes well with his material. At some level, his intensity pushes his material over the top, and sells it. For example, when he imagines himself in conventional situations like nine-to-five jobs, it’s easy to imagine him straining against the bonds of professionalism. When he describes getting fired at his job and using a surprise glitter attack on his boss, (“What’d you do at lunch, blow a clown?”), the imagery flows naturally and believably.

But Gossling is at his best when he fuses his madcap delivery with material based in awkwardness, with just a sliver of creepy. This he does for his wife’s “benefit,” leaning into her ear at bedtime and whispering something disturbing in a voice reminiscent of Gollum in Lord of the Rings. It’s as troublingly hilarious as one could hope for, and it’s pure Gossling. And his rendition of a man-boy in a onesie, singing: “Baby likes to jig-gle it for mo-therrrr…” is as discomforting and wicked as it gets, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it out of my head.

Eddie has a light touch that makes his silliness go down easy. His performance is fast-paced and has a way of following illogical logic, corkscrewing from a bizarre premise off to an unlikely side street, without losing the audience. Improbable, but nonetheless enjoyable.

Mixing the dryly sardonic and observational wit of Bugs Bunny with the flaky screwball human failings of Daffy Duck, Gossling’s comedy is an adult-sized take from an inner child and is delightfully unexpected.

You can follow Gossling on Twitter @EddieGossling and read more about him on his website at www.Commedie.com. 

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Sarah Silverman is again raising eyebrows, tweeting mock “before and after” photos of herself, facetiously post-abortion.

The tweet making some people’s heads explode is actually two tweets. The first tweet, dated April 11th, included a link to a photo of Silverman, who has nearly three million followers (@SarahKSilverman), posing with “Family Guy” writer/boyfriend Alec Sulkin, thrusting out her belly to imply a baby bump. The tweet proudly announces: “It’s a burrito!”

The following day Silverman posted another tweet, this time linking to split-shot images of the pooched-put tummy photo, side by side with a flat-bellied Silverman, accompanied by the text: “Got a quickie aborsh in case R v W gets overturned.”

“R v W” being shorthand for “Roe v. Wade,” the landmark abortion and women’s rights law.

Early reactions varied, with one responder voicing her offense: “Totally tasteless. If that’s what passes for humor these days, I guess you’ve got comedian of the year on lock down.” Another respondent tweeted: “lmaoooooooooo.”

Silly joke, or sociopolitical statement? With no actual abortion having taken place, it’s hard to gauge whether the kerfuffle generates more heat than light. It is certainly more of the same from Silverman, who has challenged the bounds of public discourse and drawn media attention in the past.

With a polarized American election just now crystallizing, and with Mitt Romney all but assured as the nominee on the right, it’s hard to ignore the relevance of hot button issues like abortion. The move has generated some impact, with Fox News picking up the story under the condemnatory headline: “Sick Sarah Silverman Abortion Hoax.” Only time will tell whether events like these will make their mark on public discourse.

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Lisa Lampanelli is at it again. This time though, the tough-talking insult comic has turned up the heat on her already-spicy take on stereotypes. Her recent comments focused on Dayana Mendoza, Lampanelli’s fellow reality show star on Donald Trump’s The Apprentice on NBC.

Building on recent on-air kerfuffles, Lampanelli, billed as “Comedy’s Lovable Queen of Mean,” said during a recent radio interview, “I actually would love to see [Dayana] giving birth. She’s a spic! She’s going to do it fucking soon, anyway. She’ll be knocked up before the end of the week.”

Dayana, a former Miss Universe from Venezuela, took a less fiery tone in response. The Huffington Post reports that Dayana wrote in an e-mail to that publication on Friday: “I understand that it’s Lisa’s job to make fun of people for a living… If poking fun at me can help her sell tickets to her shows, no problem, I am happy to help her put food on her table. However, when she uses racial slurs, she is not only targeting myself but degrading an entire Hispanic culture.”

Hispanic bloggers and commenters on various blogs and news sites have vigorously rejected Lampanelli’s comments, calling her everything from “a jealous ogre” to “disgusting” and an “idiot.” She does have her defenders, with one Huffington Post commenter pointing out that Hispanic comedians use race in a similarly explosive way, and asking, “Apparently we can dish it out but when the jokes (sic) on us; we cry for the whole world to hear.”

Lampanelli has spent years telling risque jokes and joyfully celebrating/exploiting racial and social stereotypes. The comic has built fame and a sizeable fanbase with her caustic material, and has become a regular on several editions of Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts.

Check out some stand-up from Lampanelli here, courtesy of YouTube:

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Alysia Wood is sure of one thing: she’s no princess. But if she were, she’d be the one with the cockeyed crown, warts from kissing toads and the Fairy Godmother who can’t stop nattering about how her sister married a doctor.

The first thing I noticed about Alysia’s performance was her delivery. She uses her voice like a lion tamer uses a whip: there are times she’ll crack it sharply in the air to drive a point home or punctuate a punchline. Other times she’ll unspool it in serpentine loops to let it rise and fall to convey cartoonish absurdity. Several times I was reminded of Emo Phillips and Carol Burnett, with their sarcastic wonder or wide-eyed credulity.

She set the tone early on with some very unprincess-like topics, including drinking and quitting smoking. Clearly fed up with the inane advice people feel compelled to give quitters, I admired the way Alysia takes a particularly silly piece of counsel to task by hanging its premise on a different addiction (heroin) and following it to its illogical conclusion.

Her sarcasm becomes sharper and less subtle when it comes to dealing with frustration and rage. She ticks through some satisfying takes on the absurdity of contemporary methods to cool down, including counting to ten and punching a pillow (“works best when your boyfriend’s head is in it”).

One of her most deliciously dysfunctional bits comes when her mother points out that her sister is getting married to a doctor, with all the crushing, unspoken humiliation that comes from a lifetime of sibling competition. The tables are soon turned however when she learns that the “doctor” is revealed to be an arborist. This is where the Princess smashes the glass in her Magic Mirror, and turns on her family with one of the shards. For such a potentially powerful topic with an absurd twist, I felt like she could have made more use of this absurd twist, but the joke stands on its own.

She then takes on the theme after which her release is named. She takes a quick swipe or two at the contrast between her life and that of a princess, before exploring a longer, Disney-style song of a princess with low self-esteem and in need of therapy, to the appreciation of the audience.

After some unremarkable jokes about A.D.D., her cleverness reaches a high point. Pointing out the silliness of the memorable-yet-incomplete mnemonic involving 1492 and Columbus “sailing the ocean blue,” she added a wonderfully subversive verse to this well-known rhyme. Short and sweet, this quick hit left me wanting more.

Her take on paranormal entertainment pleasantly surprised me. She took a bitingly cynical approach to bursting the spooky mysticism of radio psychics. Her imagining of a psychic on a bad day scratched a wicked itch!

Alysia rounded out the show with an authentic take on growing up in a dysfunctional family. She finished with material on break-ups, drunk texting and her relationship with her father. This last topic brought a creepy energy to the dynamic of the presentation.

So in the end it is made clear, she is certainly no princess, more of a self-aware peasant girl with her share of problems. But on the other hand, what princess would have tales like this to tell?

Check out her album Princess on Itunes here.

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Josh Gondelman’s comedy album Everything’s the Best! is a pleasant and personal jaunt, with surprisingly twisted turns into self-deprecation.

The first thing I noticed about Gondelman was his demeanor. It was non-aggressive almost to the point of being the cliched “typical white guy” voice overdone by comics for the last twenty years, but without the hackneyed, overly vanilla obsequious downside that the cliche engenders. I found this persona refreshing, allowing me listen less skeptically to his material and I engaged his comedy that much more quickly.

One example of the synergy of his persona making his comedy more approachable was his arm’s-length relationship with his gym, which he insists on calling “James,” because “Gym” just felt too informal. Word play like this might not have withstood a more cynical presentation, but Gondelman’s credulity gives it a fantastic balance.

Another example is a bit Josh has that swirls in race and Asian stereotypes. Any take on race has an inherent propensity to veer into meanness, but his self-deprecating style is utterly devoid of malice, and left me free to take the joke on its own clever terms.

Did I say clever? Josh Gondelman is that. Whether cracking on his Jewish background or relationships, he plucked witty surprises from his personal experiences that impressed me. His take on having “the talk” with his imaginary lesbian daughter was brief, but had a lot of pop to it because of the sly thought packed into it.

One of the best things about comedy as an art form is how a good comic can take a specific, even obscure topic, and make it relatable and funny. Gondelman did this and did it well when he brought up minor league baseball. I admired the way he contrasted the idea of professional ball with the hand-to-mouth existence of many of its athletes, and he had great lines about how affordable the games are to attend.

One of my favorite bits of his involved a one-night-stand. Gondelman wrung this premise out thoroughly, extracting laughs from a number of unexpected places. While his self deprecating approach to his own physique didn’t hold any surprises for me, they were serviceable gags. What did hit me where I live were his takes on unsafe sex and the morning after pill. If his partner’s dry sense of humor is a true element in his hilarious chunk about their night of self-conscious passion, he may have found his soul mate; or at the very least, mine. That he was able to chart an effectively personal and charming path through this anecdote was an achievement.

His most fertile ground for comedy though, has to be his day job working with small children. The dangers in finding the funny among cherubic little pants-poopers would seem to be stumbling into the trite bubble gum of cute-kid comedy, but Josh manages to gouge out fresh material that avoids land mines of saccharine goop.

From children’s games that keep them on the same social strata like “Duck, Duck, Duck,” and “Cops and White People,” to kids who speak of themselves in the third person sounding like sports figures, his premises and their payoffs were strong throughout.

Gondelman’s Everything’s the Best! is an enjoyable and clever piece of work. It’s not edgy and it’s not mean, but it proves that it doesn’t need to be. It also proves that in the comedy world, nice guys don’t have to finish last.

For more of Godelman’s humor, follow him on Twitter @JoshGondelman and check out his website www.joshgondelman.com.

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“Be yourself.”

“To thine own self be true.”

These citations sound good enough in the abstract, but are they valuable in practical application? This could be Joe DeRosa’s thesis in his album Return of the Son of Depression Auction as DeRosa ticks off a litany of miserable personal failings, and makes them approachable and hilarious. Anyone who has ever felt like they could do a bit better in life will recognize themselves in the greasy, slightly-warped mirror that DeRosa holds up for all to see.

DeRosa opens with an admission that he’s never been in shape, confessing, “I don’t do push-ups, ‘cuz I can’t.” His confessions progress naturally to his diet and his pathetic weakness for fast foods, in all their oil-stained, pleasure-ridden glory. His bit about his abject powerlessness for KFC’s foods and the lengths to which he’ll go to obtain them are as cringe-inducing as they are side-splitting. The culmination of this chunk and what happens when his appetite and enthusiasm get the better of him had me laughing until my back popped. (Once your comedy album begins delivering chiropractic therapy, you know you’ve got something there.)

However, it’s when Joe recounts his foray into a punk band’s mosh pit that he reaches the pinnacle of the pathetic, forcing him to acknowledge that he’s not as young as he used to be. The scene he describes, where alcohol forces a showdown between ego and reality, is not to be missed.

In addressing hard economic times, he crafts an excellent piece about public television’s fund drives and how little he is tempted to donate. His whittling away of the value of their “gifts” is as good as any I’ve heard.

For my money, his sharpest and best chunk is about women and relationships, but in the most acerbic way imaginable. Let me just say this: if you can’t imagine watching a small child run face-first into a pole and find a way to whole-heartedly celebrate the ensuing impact and misery, I suggest to you that DeRosa can help you connect those dots.

Over the course of at least three tracks, he weaves toddlers, entitled hot chicks, Adrian Grenier and misguided fat girls into a common thematic tapestry, all in a heroic effort to lay bare the helplessness of anyone who has ever lost the upper hand with the opposite sex. It managed to be insightful and brilliant and delightfully mean, justly focusing all these qualities on villains we can relate to.

He breaks away from the scathing self-loathing to find a way to feel good about himself as an American (and to help you to do the same), pointing out the thoughtless, predominant view of Americans abroad and our own reflexive reactions to it. His visceral, devastating counter-punch to cliched, European condescension may be worth the price of admission all by itself.

He wraps up the album with a sharp description of a comedy phenomena he calls “selective hearing,” causing something to be heard during a comedy show that was not actually said. Sound complicated? It is, but DeRosa manages to get his point across with effective storytelling, using language, pace and road-gig examples that are surprisingly direct and funny.

There are any number of ways to judge the success of a comedy album, including the difference between the listener’s point of view and the comic’s, and the ease and hilarity with which the comedian closes the gap. For any stand-up, that’s a pretty fair yardstick. DeRosa’s skill is in using everyday language and an uncommon passion to connect those dots.

So if I were DeRosa, would I want to “be myself?” If it meant being this honest, sharp and funny – absolutely.

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