Hamburger To Provide Cat Laughs
by NICK STILLMAN

If you frequently find yourself looking for laughs on the occasionally humorless Oberlin campus, the search will end this weekend. Neil Hamburger, the revered stand-up comedian and recording artist for Drag City records will be performing Sunday at the Cat in the Cream at 8 p.m.
While Hamburger’s live acts have come to assume mythic status, his records offer a decent idea of what to expect Sunday. Common themes are the disappointing nature of rap music and his ex-wife, told to what sounds like stone-faced audiences. Occasionally Hamburger culls laughs from the modest crowds (which are audible on record — usually heckling), but with great infrequency. The humor, or entertainment value, of his performance is to gauge just how un-funny a human can be.
Like no-wave punk music or minimalist art, Hamburger seems to deliberately mock his own trade, destroying definitions and boundaries in the process.

However, as his predecessors in other fields have found, not everyone understands the joke. To attempt to describe his records or performances is somewhat of an injustice. A good sense of listeners’ common reactions can be found on a modest website entitled “Eric Houg Critiques Neil Hamburger,” evidently the work of an amateur critic with a vendetta against the self-proclaimed “America’s Funnyman.” One response to Hamburger reads, “I only play material that I like or I think will be liked by my listeners. Absolutely NO Neil Hamburger.”
Another equally scathing comment reads, “I’m a sophomore at NYU and my roommate won’t stop playing that stupid Neil Hamburger CD. I mean it’s not even funny, it’s totally pathetic…I mean come on his own audience isn’t even laughing.”
The comment, buried at the bottom of the list, reading, “Dude, you’re totally retarded. Neil Hamburger’s sets are a deliberate joke. The humor is in how fucking bad the comedy is,” does little to offset the obviously baffled reaction Hamburger tends to draw.
Hamburger began his career as a recording artist with Amarillo records, releasing two hilarious singles, Looking for Laughs and Bartender the Laugh’s on Me, in 1994 and 1995, respectively. He broke through in 1996 with the release of his first full-length, America’s Funnyman, in 1996 on Drag City. Hamburger recently released two full-lengths in 2000 — Inside Neil Hamburger and 50 States 50 Laughs.
It will be exciting to witness what sort of reaction America’s Funnyman is able to induce from a notoriously tough and politically correct Oberlin audience. Hamburger is a veteran of the comedic circuit for over 15 years, however, and has likely seen enough rotten tomatoes that even the most ruthlessly humorless won’t challenge his poise and wit.

 

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