10.0: Essential
9.5-9.9: Spectacular
9.0-9.4: Amazing
8.5-8.9: Exceptional
8.0-8.4: Strong
7.5-7.9: Very good
7.0-7.4: Not brilliant, but nice enough
6.0-6.9: Has its moments, but isn't strong
5.0-5.9: Mediocre; not good, but not awful
4.0-4.9: Just below average; bad outweighs good by just a little bit
3.0-3.9: Definitely below average, but a few redeeming qualities
2.0-2.9: Heard worse, but still pretty bad
1.0-1.9: Awful; not a single pleasant track
0.0-0.9: Breaks new ground for terrible
Cover Art
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David Cross
It's Not Funny
[Sub Pop; 2004]
Rating: 6.5

The devastating paradox of David Cross' pre-recorded comedy: Is it funny that everything Cross says is nauseatingly smug, yelped out in smarmy, supercilious prose? Or is David Cross just a giant fucking asshole?

That Cross is such an immensely unlikable live performer-- condescending, defensive, arrogant, patronizing-- is both his greatest asset and his most crippling flaw, and it's that conflict-of-interest that makes him such a polarizing (and compelling) comic. Ultimately, Cross has somehow manipulated self-satisfaction, the least funny of all post-collegiate states, into a perfectly valid comedic persona, leaving it up to his audience to sort out their guffaws from their grimaces. And there are always plenty of both.

Having signed a contract with Sub Pop, liner-note-repped for The Fiery Furnaces, stunt-reviewed for Rolling Stone and Spin, toured with rock bands, publicly mocked Staind/Evanescence/Scott Stapp, and acquired a perfect pair of black, plastic-framed glasses, David Cross has inadvertently embedded himself in the contemporary indie scene, amassing wads of useless cred and granting hipsters even more reasons to be annoyingly sarcastic over cans of PBR. It's Not Funny conceals bits of comic gold (on fresh fathers who complain about the trials of paternity: "Try talking your girlfriend into her third consecutive abortion. That takes finesse! You're just inconvenienced"), but Cross' onstage persona, unlike the genius of Mr. Show, is also stupidly tiring, all balls-swinging swagger and brainy pseudo-superiority.

Recorded in January at Washington, D.C.'s The Improv, It's Not Funny (oh, and the knee-jerk critical reaction to pre-emptive album titles? It's not funny) sees Cross faced with a responsive-if-feisty crowd. As with 2003's Let America Laugh, Cross approaches all hecklers with genuine, undisguised disgust. When Cross is questioned on a bit in which he glibly suggests that dogs are smarter than women, he pauses briefly to ask, "You don't believe it? You believe that I didn't do a series of tests? You're right to not believe it, because I'm gonna go ahead and admit that I do not believe what I just said. It is what is described as 'a joke.'"

Cross' material has been progressively skewing towards the political, and, for better or worse, the post-9/11, where-we-are-now theme persists throughout most of It's Not Funny. Some of Cross' terror-talk is supremely well-played, but a lot of his material also seems tired and curiously dated, particularly since It's Not Funny was only recorded four months ago. Cross' fuck-off snarkiness may be a welcome antidote to the nauseatingly maudlin faux-sincerity perpetuated by men in public office, but is it still clever to snicker about the futility of the color-coded terror system? Everyone already gets that announcing an "Orange Alert" is stupid. Same goes for the call to secure duct tape and plastic sheeting from your local Home Depot. 36 episodes of Saturday Night Live later: Um, hee-haw.

Cross, like most Americans, remembers how, in the weeks following 9/11, a big, throbbing wave of convoluted friend-of-friend free-associating plowed through the U.S. Everyone immediately removed from the explicit devastation of Ground Zero struggled for the appropriate entranceway into earnest empathy, noting second cousins in Hoboken or that friend whose plane got re-routed through Ft. Lauderdale. In some ways, that kind of blind, desperate grasping was perfectly understandable-- curling your fingers around one lone tragedy (or near-tragedy) is a lot easier to swallow than attempting to reconcile yourself to a gaping and anonymous mass grave. Still, many New Yorkers (in impeccable New Yorker form) found America's faux-brotherhood annoying, scowling disgustedly from behind their paper surgical masks, rolling their eyes, and snorting at sobbing newscasters in Phoenix. The behavior of both sides has already been well-explored, but Cross still opts to launch into a half-cooked skit about how employees of Vegas' New York New York casino may have "felt it a little deeper."

Cross successfully lands some giggly barbs (riffing caustically about the sobbing overweight woman in Accounts Receivable, with a "Hunky Fireman" calendar and stack of Dilbert cartoons), but his over-indignant NYC pride/national irritation still reeks of Georgian transplantation. Subsequently, it's hard to find his defensive posturing funny: Cross may be joking, but it's still clear that he wants to own the tragedy of 9/11, like all New Yorkers who spent hours re-routing their morning commutes or trying to forget the sound of a plane crashing into a building full of people. The problem is that his plea-for-possession-masquerading-as-a-joke ends up being far too self-serious to be even a little bit laughable.

Still, in the end, it's impossible not to appreciate Cross' political tirades, particularly since precious few independent artists seem to have the balls/gumption/awareness to tackle what is easily the most salient and divisive conflict of the new millennium so far. Comedy has always been politically brazen where music is meek, and Cross is unrelenting: His high-speed, Michael Moore-ish indictment of the Bush administration's manipulation of public fear is both convincing and entertaining, while his whispered mockery of Bush's misappropriation of "freedom" and "liberty" elicits loads of knowing sniggers.

Anti-war proselytizing aside, Cross lobs plenty of other, equally legitimate (if disappointingly predictable) darts at the hypocrisies of the American government, and at the general idiocy of Creationists, racists, homophobes, Republicans, people with children, Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond, electric scissors, fundamentalist Christians, the rich, and Fox News. It is, for the most part, standard white liberal disdain-- but sometimes funnier, and with lots more cursing.

-Amanda Petrusich, May 14th, 2004