Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Comedy Albums
I seem to be on a comedy album "thing" these days. On Tuesday of this past week I dropped by the Paul Chato's electramedia offices in order to pick up a few copies of The Frantics' new "Enemy of Reason" comedy CD. And then on Thursday late afternoon, I popped into a used record store on the Danforth and ended up walking away with 3 comedy albums: "The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters", "Rowan Atkinson Live in Belfast" and "Victor Borge: Live at the London Palladium" -- all for $10.

I listened to The Frantics album this morning on the ride into work on my iPod, and it is a hoot, with a couple of stand out sketches: Dan Redican doing a monologue called "My Lovely, Lovely Body", and Paul doing another monologue entitled "Sex Book". The first is a hilariously excruciating description of Dan's past-middle age body parts, al said with a sort of perverse pride that had me stifling a laugh when listening to the sketch for the iPod while on my commute to work via TTC. The latter is a sketch detailing the life of a similarly past-middle aged man talking about not wanting to know about what's in various sex books, since he doesn't want to know what he's missed out on in all of his years of marriage. A chance browse of a copy of Maxim's at a dentist's office put him into a depression for a week

I don't really do it justice here, but it is funny. Another stand-out sketch for me is "Magnum Weekend", featuring Rick Green as a character who finds that the choice actively live his life comes into sharper focus by having a gun "tickling his uvula", and a piece called "The Saturn Way", where a car salesman with an extremely annoying personal sales technique interviews for a job at a Saturn dealership. The interesting thing for me with that last skit is that it is changed substantially over the version that I had seen which came before the version on the CD. In the version I saw the interviewee, told that he hasn't got the job, uses his annoying sales technique on the interviewer until he does get the job. I guess the thought was that while that was inherently funny, it lacked a good ending, but I prefer the manic intensity of the version I saw over the one captured on CD, even if the latter ends with a crowd-pleasing "boot to the head", a phrase that The Frantics essentially own.

Will have to see what potential comic gems await on the vinyl records I picked up. Am particularly looking forward to hearing the Rowan Atkinson record, as I have been of his acerbic style since first hearing him on a "Secret Policeman's Ball" record many years ago, (which is another record I'd like to track down again). My interest in Jonathan Winters is more to do with the fact that Robin Williams considers him a major influence, and I am curious to hear something other than just a short skit or two on a comedy retrospective radio show. Ditto the Victor Borge album.

Guess I'll find out soon enough when I get around to "ripping" the records in order to have them in MP3 format for listening to on my iPod.