Patton Rocks, Patton Rocks…

Comedian Patton Oswalt Says President Bush Acts "Supervillainy." If You’ve Got A Problem With That - Good.

originally published September 24, 2003

There's a bit in JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, the DC comic book written by Patton Oswalt, where reporter Marlus Randone, after watching Batman dress down Green Lantern and the Flash, writes in his notebook: "Batman = Mr. Hand. The rest of the world = Jeff Spicoli." That one panel sums up everything that separates Oswalt's comedy from that of the sitcom-chasing,

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"black people sure are different from white people" crowd: the omnivorous embracing of all aspects of pop culture, from geek fetish objects like Green Lantern to cult movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (and notice that the book's title comes from Elvis Costello's first album); the specificity, the ability to find the exact image or metaphor to make his point; and the fact that, unlike much of what passes for stand-up these days, it's actually funny.

Oswalt, a Virginia native, has become in recent years one of the best stand-up comedians in the country. Along with such like-minded comics as David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Silverman and Janeane Garofalo, Oswalt is leading stand-up out of the "Didja ever notice?" doldrums with humor that is more personal, more political, more esoteric and more daring. (And, in addition to writing the occasional comic book, he's a cast member on "The King of Queens" and has appeared in a handful of movies, including Magnolia and Zoolander.)

One thing Oswalt hasn't done is record a live comedy album, but he's rectifying that this Saturday at the 40 Watt Club. Though he lives in Los Angeles and is a fixture at L.A. comedy clubs, he chose Athens to record his first album for a very specific - and somewhat contradictory - reason: the audiences in L.A. are already Patton Oswalt fans.

Maybe it’s a masochistic thing - but probably also an ego thing - but I like the sensation of winning an indifferent audience over.

"Maybe it's a masochistic thing - but probably also an ego thing - but I like the sensation of winning an indifferent audience over," Oswalt says. "But at the same time, I'm going to Athens, where there are still people who've heard of me, or even if they haven't heard of me, they're kind of hip. I just want to be at least one foot out of my comfort zone, because I think that makes for slightly better and more alive comedy. But don't think that I'm not aware of the total hypocrisy of just going to Athens to the 40 Watt Club. If I really wanted to [leave my comfort zone], I'd go to Pittsburgh."

Oh yes, Pittsburgh. "As a friend of mine pointed out, Night of the Living Dead was a documentary," says Oswalt. In February, he was booed off-stage at the Funnybone in Pittsburgh for his anti-George W. Bush material. "I was chanted off the stage by 300 people, a sold-out Saturday night show. They literally chanted me -not booed, chanted - me off-stage, chanting 'Bush rocks!' Pounding tables, going 'Bush rocks,'" he says. "But that's the only time I really felt I was effecting any kind of change. Because finally I was in front of some people that maybe disagreed - it was like a real audience out there."

Oswalt's comedy, though only occasionally overtly political, is still rooted in the same sense of social outrage that fueled Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. This is obvious when he's comparing Dubya to Dr. Doom and Darth Vader, but in Oswalt's hands, even such material as an extended rant on Black Angus steakhouses ("Drop your pants, cuz here comes the gravy pipe!") becomes blistering social criticism: whether Oswalt is deconstructing Pasta Pot commercials or reality shows, he's illustrating for the audience just how fucked up our current culture is.

"I think with the reality shows and the Internet and web pages, everyone is starring in a movie now," he says. "Their experience has now become reality." It's that set idea of reality that results in incidents like the one in Pittsburgh. "It's not just that they have a set idea of what the show should be, they have a set idea of what my experience should be. They walk in already in their minds knowing - not believing, knowing - how I should feel about something. It's not even that they disagree with me or are offended - they think I'm fucking insane."

These responses to Oswalt's comedy have only intensified since the beginning of the Bush Administration and, especially, since the war in Iraq. "It is a great time to be a comedian right now. It's also a stressful and depressing time for me, only because of these unbelievable contradictions," he says. "There's kind of a learned hopelessness response, in that all this focus was put on trying to stop the war, trying to show people - 'What the hell is wrong with them?' - and then it just happened anyway."

Oswalt saves his sharpest barbs and clearest insights for Bush himself, who, oddly enough, inspired JLA: Welcome to the Working Week. "It had a lot to do with George Bush getting into the White House," he says. "Bush was so sure of himself. He was so 'I have no doubts, I don't think about anything twice, I say it and it's done.' It's a very supervillainy thing for someone to do. And it struck me how it's the villains in comics who are 'I have no doubts, I have no second thoughts,' with that psychotic kind of gleam, and the heroes are these tortured, dark, hunched-over people - they've changed positions. And that really seemed to be the way it went with us, where back in the late '60s and early '70s, the conservative right warmongers were these hunched-over, dark, angry people with the light sort of leached out of them, and the left-wing do-gooders were always happy and bright. Nowadays, people like George Bush are just big, happy, bright, smiling, fit, clear-faced, and all the left-wing people just look haggard and beaten and hunched over - it switched places."

As Oswalt has become a bigger fish in the relatively small pond of stand-up comedy, he has branched into other creative arenas which don't necessarily provide the comfort or instant gratification that stand-up brings, and he says this is a "do or die" time for him - and though he's talking about his career, one gets the feeling he's talking about this country as well. Things are only getting stranger (see: the California recall vote), and November 2004 is likely to be some kind of breaking point. Until then, Oswalt holds to a philosophy that has served his comedy so well: living for the moment.

"A few years ago, I was very much into the idea of having a body of work," he says. "But now I'm like, 'none of that shit matters - why not just have a really good life and treat the people in your life nicely?' Because there's going to be no long run. It's how you treat everyone in your life that's going to decide how you're remembered. There's no afterlife. You're not going to sit in the clouds and watch people read your books or watch your movies or argue about how fucking cool you are. Think of the torture that Jerry Lewis goes through now. He's going to live long enough to realize, 'Oh, my work's not going to be remembered.' It's not going to get remembered. Why don't you just enjoy your fucking life? You have the choice of being Dean Martin or Jerry Lewis. I'd rather be Dean Martin."

Gardner Linn

WHO: Patton Oswalt, MC Wondabread, Fairmount Fair

WHERE: 40 Watt Club

WHEN: Saturday, September 27

HOW MUCH: $10

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