David Cross - Shut Up You Fucking Baby!
(Subpop)
Being the unabashed "Mr. Show" fan that I am, I find that I have a tough time really evaluating Bob and David's outside enterprises, in print at least. Come to think of it though, Scary Move 2 is pretty easy to judge. It was horrible. How you give talented people like Cross and Chris Elliott bupkis to work with, I don't know. I can perhaps blame the Wayanses for dropping the ball on that one, although how could I not have been won over by comedy gold such as the evil clown rape? However, Scary Movie 2 is easy to comment on; Cross didn't have a hand in writing the material. He was simply an actor. He said his lines, picked up a check, and vamoosed to the local foodrinkery for a latte and a bear claw. Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, on the other hand, is pure Cross, and therefore my critic's lenses are colored by my past enjoyment and the debt I own him and Odenkirk for bringing me not only laughs, but a wealth of in-jokes.
The ominous tone of my first paragraph shouldn't fool those who are like me though. If you eat up anything Cross does, from his brief cameo in the P.J. O'Pootertoot sketch from The Ben Stiller Show to his Aqua Teen Hunger Force's Happy Time Harry, then you should definitely buy this. There is no doubt in my mind that you'll enjoy it. However, for those on the fence, some of the following criticisms should be taken into account.
While stand-up comedy is tricky, and actually funny, thought-provoking stand-up is thus rare, apparently getting up on stage and asking the audience "Did'ja ever notice...?" is about as complicated as finding the neurochemical correlates of cerebral ischemia. For a neurochemist, that is. Anyway, good comedians are few and far between, and that's why I feel like a heel for saying something critical about Cross' album.
However, I suppose I must. Cross' earlier stand-up specials, his half hour one and The Pride is Back, were truly very funny. His act mixed political and social satire with an acerbic wit and a penchant to point out the absurdism of modern life. All things were kept balanced though; the commentary never over-shadowed the humor, and the humor never got too ridiculous so that the point was lost in the maelstrom of laughs. Shut Up You Fucking Baby!, however, loses the equilibrium that was so well-kept in the prior specials. Here virulent political screeds and anti-religious rants abound—long vehement tracks about Bush mishandling 9/11 or about the ridiculousness of the Promise Keepers or Ashcroft's insanity, and while I agree with all of Cross's sentiments, I don't necessarily turn to stand-up for this kind of off-the-cuff analysis, at least not without expecting a lot of laughs.
The problem I found, and perhaps this is idiosyncratic of me since I spend a lot of time reading left-leaning literature, is that Cross's simplified rants were too uncomplicated to draw me in. I wasn't learning anything new, as I do when I read something like This Modern World, and I wasn't laughing enough to really justify repeated listens. There are exceptions of course, especially the final track, which killed me. I do not mean this in a condescending way, but maybe those who haven't read what I've read will find this informative, and therefore worthwhile as both intellectual and humor material. However, it is really difficult to get past Cross' bitterness which seethes out of every word and really works against the humor aspect of the act. Sadly, the message overpowers the medium, which really bothers me because I know Cross can do better.
Overall, I will give this album a nine, which represents an average of scores, one high one for "Mr. Show" fans and a lower one for those only tangentially knowledgeable of Cross.
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