"Does comedy help people to deal with controversial issues?"

"Sure it helps! That’s like asking a plumber if removing clogged faeces from pipes helps people deal with a fetid stench."

"Is it just me, or is George Bush the worst President in the history of the United States?"

UPDATE: The video went dead. It showed the comedian Neil Hamburger saying that line, listening while the audience cheered and hooted anti-Bushily, and then saying: "Which makes it all the harder to understand why his son, George W. Bush, is in fact the best president we’ve ever had." Ha ha. I love that.

"[Neil] Hamburger’s sets of hackneyed, setup-and-punch line jokes with a side of the bitter are built to bomb..."

"... and rely on pop-culture references that are either too soon for good taste (look for some Michael Jackson jokes on his current tour) or stale going on oblivious. (Who else is still talking about Smash Mouth in 2009?) Yet this rumpled husk of a comic also proclaims his adoration for good old showbiz and laments its decline, especially when he interrupts his shows to scream at audience members who egg on his pitifully out-of-date shtick."

(Clips at that link illustrate the technique well.)

Were you at Neil Hamburger's show at the High Noon Saloon last night? We were. Let this fuzzy iPhone pic prove it:



Or did you make it to "RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space"? We missed that unfortunately, but had a lot of fun laughing at Neil Hamburger and his painfully bad jokes — and JP Inc. and his theme songs for TV shows that don't exist.