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PAUL KRASSNER
Irony Lives (Artemis)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes
Writer and former Yippie Paul Krassner continues his new career as a standup comic with another terrific CD, Irony Lives. The title comes from the intellectual floundering about that we experienced last year in the wake of 911, when nothing seemed funny and the "Death of Irony" was bandied about awhile. Paul corrects the rumors of Irony's demise and proves it is very much alive and hilarious.
In a way Krassner's become a standup pundit. Maybe we should call him an iconoclast; after all, his delivery reminds me of Mort Sahl (Remember Mort Sahl, Iconoclast? It started the tradition of political standup). Paul snickers at his own lines a lot but he has an engaging, matter of fact way of putting things. One of the best things about him though is that he does a lot of homework and offers lots of interesting factoids; you always come away from Krassner with a lot more than cheap laughs.
He had a lot of serious material to draw on this time, but Krassner's wit keeps the post-911 material from getting too maudlin. He talks for example of the hidden benefits of non-smoking airline flights - how they prevented Richard Reid from blowing up the bomb in his shoe. He muses about the National Guardsmen who wear jungle camouflage in airports which only makes them stand out more. "Maybe they should wear pale-blue uniforms with little airplanes on them," he says. Other gems include a couple of stories about his friend, the late Ken Kesey, and a riff on the subject of our ultra-Christian Attorney General, John Ashcroft, anointing himself with cooking oil before being sworn in.
The monologue isn't presented in one pass but as a series of four and five minute sections, perhaps to save us from material found on earlier CD's. Apparently Don Castellena, the voice of Homer Simpson did the intro to the show when the material was recorded last February, but Krassner didn't get the rights from Fox to use the voice. Obviously he never expected to and he explains the situation in his opening remarks, saying, "Imagine that, Homer Simpson is an intellectual property!" Go figure. However, no imagination is required to know that Paul Krassner is a treasure.
© 2002 - Rusty Pipes