Tourgasm

This last weekend the family traveled down to Ames, Iowa to visit my brother, Randy, at ISU. I hadn't been down there to visit him other than when we've had to move him down or move him back home. On Saturday night Randy and I caught the ISU stop of the Tourgasm comdey tour, which featured the comedians Gary Gulman, Robert Kelly, and Dane Cook.

I'd been looking forward to seeing this show ever since my brother told me about it a couple of weeks ago. I was a fan of the NBC show Last Comic Standing, for which Gary Gulman is most well known. He was one of the finalists on the second season and was also one of the best performers in the Season 1 vs. Season 2 season of the show and was also, in my opinion, one of the funniest performers on the show throughout its run.

The show started a solid 20 minutes late, no doubt in part to Gary getting really drunk before the show, but more on that later. The show started by having the tour orgainizer, Jay Davis, come out to introduce the opening act as well as doing a 15 minute stand-up routine of his own. I would have actually enjoyed a longer performance from Davis as he was genuinely funny as opposed to most organizers who come out and use tired and cliched bits to open up the show. He best moment was when he described how to get back at those guys who like to just hang out naked in the locker room of the local gym. The set up was great and the final punchline, involving an unoccupied bathroom stall, a leather belt, and some voice acting was fall out of your seat funny.

Gary Gulman was the first comedian up and he performed a 25 minute set. I had pretty high expectations for him coming in which were unfortunately not able to be completely lived up to. He was good, but not as good as I'd have hoped. The first annoyance about his set is that he resorted to using some of his material that was previously used on Last Comic Standing. Since I'd already heard it, it wasn't quite as funny. The second annoyance about his set is that he resorted to whispering a lot of the time which meant you'd sometimes have to strain to hear him. Lastly, the biggest annoyance was that he seemed off of his game throughout. He wasn't quite as sharp as other times I've seen him perform, but he owned up about 3/4 of the way into his set that he was quite hammered. This easily explained why he seemed off.

Robert Kelly was the comedian up and he performed for about 40 minutes and pretty much all of his set was unbelievably hilarious. I laughed the most and the hardest throughout his set and he was easily my favorite of the night. The good majority of his set dealt with fat people, how he dealt with being fat, and what it was like having a girlfriend and being fat. Seriously, Robert was one funny dude who rattled off hilarious crap at a breakneck pace. If I can find his cd online for cheap somewhere I'm definitely going to pick it up.

Dane Cook, the headliner of the show, was also quite the funny guy. His style was somewhat different than the other two in that most of his routine followed the pattern of setting the stage by telling a story or describing a situation and then ending the description with a really funny quip or way of handling the situation. With this style of comedy, the laughs weren't a continual stream like they were with Kelly, but when his stuff hit, it hit with a comedic brick and you wouldn't be able to hold back your laughter. Dane's performance ran a little over an hour and was quite energetic. It made me wonder how he did it night in and night out... although the tour is only for a month, so maybe he just gets loaded up on caffeine and other things to keep him going.

All in all, for my $15 (actually, my brother's $15 since I haven't paid him back yet), it was a great show and I'd suggest checking out the Tourgasm site and seeing if it's hitting your area soon. If not, there's going to be a dvd made using various pieces of the shows on the tour, so you could probably pick up one of those when it comes out. I'm pretty sure I will.