Bogosian hits nail on the head

Alum's recording Pounding Nails more appealing than last night's performance

He's back. Eric Bogosian, OC'76, appeared at Finney Chapel last night for An Evening with Eric Bogosian, a rousing sequel to his previous two recorded releases Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll and Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead. The Obie award winning playwright has also authored two plays-Talk Radio and subUrbia -that he has translated from the theater onto the big screen. The performer is one of Oberlin's more prominent alumni.

Though he describes his career in film as "incredibly boring," he has also established a strong reputation as an actor in films like Under Seige 2, Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, and the aforementioned Talk Radio, a collaboration with director Oliver Stone that received strong critical praise at the time of its release. The praise was justified. For anyone unfamiliar with Bogosian, Talk Radio is a good place to start, especially since its manic protagonist-a contentious shockjock who gradually becomes disgusted with himself and his audience-seems to be modelled after Bogosian himself.

Still, his first love is theater. "Theater is essential to the ecology of being human," he has said. "The more dried-out and spastic human society becomes, the more we will need theater. And we will make it." Thus, Bogosian returned to his alma mater for one night to grace us with his thoughts on life, pop psychology and copulating pigs. But enough about the man himself-what about his work?

His latest release, Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead, is a typically abrasive attack upon the senses. Bogosian rants and raves at breakneck pace about everything from sex and drugs to aging and impotence. Certainly, his brand of observational humor should be famailiar to anyone who has bothered to keep up with the latest trends in standup comedy. But Bogosian sets himself apart from others in his field with his style and wit. To describe him as a stand-up comedian, however, would be inaccurate; he is more of a performance artist, along the lines of Henry Rollins.

Strutting the stage, barking at his audience with an awkward mixture of warmth and disdain ("You take everybody in this room right here, strip everybody naked, shave your heads bald, stick you in a cell someplace with one watery bowl of gruel a day, and it wouldn't make a flying fuck what you like!") and ridiculing everyone from himself to Phil Collins (an "asshole"), Bogosian's monologues are a unique combination of raw energy and bitter frustration.

He adopts various personas and tackles a wide variety of contemporary social issues, but, as he vows during a brief introduction, he spills his soul into the performance and seems to approach each monologue as some sort of cathartic experience. In this sense, his performance on this album-despite its reliance on material that he has covered before on releases like Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll-is alternately entertaining and powerful, taking listeners on a roller-coaster ride through the mind of a troubled genius.

Say what you will about Bogosian, the man is anything but boring. And on a good night, as proven by Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead, he can be downright amazing. But then, what else did you expect from a fellow Obie?