Nick Griffin’s ‘Shot in the Face’

I knew I liked Nick Griffin upon listening to his first track. Check that, I knew I was going to like Nick Griffin by the title of his first track: “Intro/I Hate People.”

He opens by asking, “How many of you get up two, three, four times a year and think ‘I’m gonna love people today’…Then you get on the road or go to a bank or go to a grocery store…and you think ‘fuck it not today.’” Has my adolescent angst and misanthropy ever been more perfectly expressed? I doubt it.

Griffin has made seven appearances on the The Late Show with David Letterman, as well as multiple others on Conan O’Brien and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He had his own half hour special on Comedy Central in 2008. His latest album which in conjunction with Rooftop Comedy is entitled Shot in the Face and will be available on Itunes, Amazon, Spotify and Rhapsody on April 3.

Griffin’s great strength is his ability to include himself in his most biting and hardest hitting jokes. He marvels at past generations for their bravery in World War II and Vietnam. As for his generation? All it comes down to for him is: “Starbucks, Prozac, and cell phones,” he says to the crowd in Columbus. “That’s our legacy. We’re awake, we’re depressed and we want to talk about it.”

In another assault on his ego, Griffin laments on his own divorce which came rather quickly after only three years of what we can only assume was marital bliss. He says, “We were supposed to be together until one of us died. I never even had a fever.” He wonders aloud that if he couldn’t stay married to someone who loved him, how is he ever going to find some one to date.

But this is not just a personal roast of Griffin the man. He has a keen eye for observational humor turning the plain into the absurd. Whether it’s meditating on the embarrassing travesty of bums making fun of other bums or the “failure as a human being” of complaining in a fast food restaurant. When speaking on the subject of Hummers and their owners who generally fall into the white suburban demographic he begs the question, “How tough is the parking lot at Abercrombie and Fitch?” Griffin uses all of these examples to celebrate our world by berating and exposing our shortcomings.

Griffin combines whimsical self-deprecation with a relaxed cynicism. It is not wholly a comedy that insults and abuses its subject matter and audience; instead, it is a comedy that shares frustrations and personal embarrassment. There’s an equal measure of mass enjoyment as well as a strange element of redemptive quality.

Shot in the Face will be available for sale on April 3 via iTunes, Amazon, RooftopComedy.com and other retailers. You can find out more about Griffin’s upcoming tour dates at NickGriffin.net.

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