

Anthony Jeselnik takes the stage and tells you he is funny, tells you he is offensive, tells you he is arrogant, tells you, more or less, that he is the bees knees. Anthony Jeselnik is the epitome of the exception to the rule. Then, unless the material matches our definition, our expectations are not met, and material that otherwise might have been funny simply falls flat.Īs with most things in life, however, there are exceptions to that rule. I think the reason why this fails is that when a comic tells us they are going to be edgy or weird, we all sort of have our own definition of what that means. In my opinion, this approach fails much more often than it works. A couple months ago I reviewed the new Kyle Cease album called “I Highly Recommend This.” In that review, I commented on the recent trend in stand-up where comics will take the stage and tell the audience how edgy or weird they are going to be - “folks, you better be ready for this, because if you can’t take what I’m about to unleash, you might as well leave the club right now.”
