Right, so I had a ticket to see Ricky Gervais's Out of England Part II show at Carnegie Hall for the NY Comedy Festival. I was bummed that the tickets went on sale earlier than they said they would, so the best seat available was on the first tier, seat 8, row 57. Since the auditorium is round, seat 8, I knew would be way off to the side, and row 57...I wasn't sure I'd see the stage at all.
When I got there, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't row 57, but box 57. So actually, I ended up in row 3, seat 15, which was a great seat even if there were two rows of people in front of me.
The opener was Todd Barry. Ricky's rich enough, he could probably get whoever he wanted to open, except Robin Ince who won't travel with Ricky anymore because it makes his hair fall out. Ricky can get whatever he wants, so I'm sure he even picked the pre-show soundtrack because it was fantastic music, and Ricky's such a DJ at heart, he's playing songs on his blog now.
Todd Barry was hilarious. He was only on like 15 minutes, but he kept people in constant laughter. It was a clean set, too. He's a New Yorker, so he talked about New York food and trying to find apartments and smelly deodorants.
After he got off stage, a video came up of Louis C.K. (who co-starred in The Invention of Lying). I'm not even going to tell you what he said because it's really gross and there might be people reading this with some dignity left in them. But I will tell you that the video ended with footage of Ricky barfing into the toilet multiple times. I could tell this wasn't going to be a clean show. It's weird that Ricky's standup is so divergent from the personality you hear on air (I've listened to tons of episodes on his XFM show). He TRIES to come off as a bad person for a laugh.
Anyway. I tried to guess what Ricky'd be wearing. I bet it would be a black t-shirt and drawstring black pants, possibly black jeans. I was right. It was black jeans and a black t-shirt. Who does he think he is, Neil Gaiman?
He came out to an overwhelming applause and screaming that made him lose his composure slightly. Then he regained it and said "You lucky people. You've got tickets to see a legend. Pardon my french, but you lucky mother fucker."
Ricky said in his blog that it was supposed to be 95% new material, but I'd heard lots of variations of this material before, not in his standup, but in his podcasts or interviews.
He had an entirely new set of fat people jokes, which is what he started off with. He went on to talk about people who give charity gifts in other people's names as Christmas presents. This joke was clearly inspired by a conversation with Karl about giving an African family a goat for Christmas. Ricky blatantly stole the comedy right from Karl's lips! Tisk tisk.
Speaking of Karl, he did talk about him a few times, much to my delight. There was a part where Ricky wanted to make comments on the Book of Noah. He's done his criticism on Genesis in his Animals tour, but this time, it wasn't about Creation. It was the Noah Book--Bible for Kids version. So it was a critique on this particular book, not so much on the story itself. This book had been given to a much younger "Rikki Gervais" for good attendence back in Sunday School. The drawings look like they're done by an 11-year-old with crayons (it was on the slideshow). The drawing's definition of evil is pulling someone's nose. God calls it wicked and decides to destroy the lot of them. Karl said it sounded like God was gay, having an overdramatic hissy fit. When Ricky said that all those animals couldn't be in one giant boat because they'd eat each other, Karl said "But when you're in a crisis, everyone pulls together." Brilliant.
He also did a story about telling old people perverted jokes when he was drunk and one about drink driving (which he's gotten in trouble with the press for at previous shows), and finally the 5% that was lifted from a previous tour: Animals are gay. He has a book (and showed us the slides) about how there are "gay communities" in every species. He showed us the drawings of various species of gay animals having sex and read the introduction that said "The evidence is compelling." The punch line of course is that none of these drawings are PHOTOGRAPHS, so there is no evidence. At one point, he laughed at the pornigraphic animal drawings on the slide show and said "In Carnegie Hall!"
Then he was off the stage with a big round of applause, only to come back in a tuxedo along with an expensive piano. Is he going to play the piano? No!
It's Elmo! When Ricky was on Sesame Street, he fell in love with Elmo. (Watch the 2 minute clip here). They chatted a bit and then they sung a duet! Can you believe this? I mean, I know that Ricky could sing when he was younger because he was a singer in a pop group, but he can still sing really well! Oh, it was great and completely unexpected.
Ricky: I fuckin' love you, Elmo
Elmo: What?!
Ricky: I said I love you.
Okay, you can watch the whole song here:
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