Reviews
By Ken Carlson
There are so many parts of our life that are described from left to right. You start here, end up over there. You pick up a book and read it from left to right, unless it’s from a language that was originally chiseled on stone tablets, or you like to read using your car’s rear view mirror.
If you ever listen to sports on the radio, especially football, you’ll frequently hear the announcer describe the colors of the teams’ uniforms, the conditions of the field and how the offense is ‘moving from left to right on your AM dial’. Obviously he’s tailored his commentary for people who haven’t purchased electronic equipment since 1978, and stoners to whom the concept of lateral motion is mind-blowing.
Today we’re going to look at three recently released comedy CD’s from the perspective of left - to - right. Now, where many politicos would have you believe right is another word for conservative, likes monarchs who ruled by a divine right; and left is a word that denotes awkward, evil, or homosexual, like Randy Johnson – for our purposes, consider the left to be traditional modern stand-up and the right to be more of a free style, offbeat method.
Chad Daniels is from Minnesota. Back in 1998, he got his start at an 
open mic at Minneapolis’ ACME Comedy Company. Busy Being Awesome, his newly-released CD, is solid and aggressive and I highly recommend it. He takes on old people and fat people in a Bill Hicks kind of way, but gives it his own smart ass voice. His material has punch and takes the smart road less travelled as the riff below indicates when redneck fans asked if Chad Daniels was related to their patron saint, Jack Daniel’s.
Fan: “Are you related to Jack?”
Chad: “No, Jack Daniel’s has an apostrophe in it.”
Fan: “You mean he followed Jesus?
Chad: “Yeah, that’s what I meant. He was one of the twelve apostrophes. Why don’t you go color... Like an apostrophe would ever follow Jesus. They’d have to give up all their earthly possessions; and, hello, their main job is to show ownership! Every time I tell that joke, an English teacher gets his wings.”
DJ Hazard, is a veteran of Boston’s comedy renaissance of the 80’s. The range in his act is unparalleled. Rarely do you see a performer 
exude such warmth one moment and be outright sinister the next. Such is the image of a hulking figure with a shaved head who used to work in a mental asylum. Really.
Man of Hazardium is a compilation of his past twenty years’ work. It’s bits are comparable to Bobcat Goldthwait’s I Don’t Mean to Insult You for laughs and use of shock, but his style is quirkier, more surreal, more individual to him, and you must take into account is DJ’s use of songs [like his anthemic cover tune, “Untie my ankles in the morning”] which, while very funny, change the pace dramatically.
“If you’ve got a dog, give your dog a first name and a last name. Then when you take him to the vet...”
Nurse: What is the patient’s name?
DJ: Bob Carson
Nurse: And your name?
DJ: Fluffy...There’s a moral to that story. You have to fuck with people! Because they’re out there fuckin’ with us! Next time you’re shopping, stop by a Radio Shack and ask, ‘Hey, you got any of those things that plug into other things?’ See what they come up with. It could be something good.”
Rick Shapiro’s Unconditional Love is not for people who enjoy wholesome good natured fun. It’s more of a demented tour of 
random rants on a level I do not claim to fully comprehend. When you have tracks with titles like “I Sucked Dick for Heroin” and “The Leonard Cohen of Dick Whippers” any warning you could place on the packaging from the Surgeon General, warning of profanity is extraneous.
Shapiro has the rant patterns of Bruce and Carlin, but then turns uncomfortably way to the bizarre right. For those who like their comedy bluer than blue and their anarchy immediate, there are some marvelous moments where his street corner rants draw blood on pretentious writers and useless consumers.
“KMART!! There’s a wilderness of shitheads in there. ‘Can I get the $3 microwave cheaper without the door?’”
“STAPLES!! People who work at Staple or Kmart, you know what happened to them as kids? They got their heads smashed into a garage...I almost worked at these places. I was going to be one of them Kmart people. Good thing I became a male prostitute to gay men for seven years or else I never would have pulled out of that shit.”