Originally Published February 11, 2011
It’s been a long road for LOUIS C.K. to bring HILARIOUS to the masses. The audio version of a concert film that made it’s debut at the Sundance Film Festival last year, the album was released last month following an airing of the film on Comedy Central. In all honesty, I’d never really dug much of what I’d seen from Louis in the past (television), but HILARIOUS has changed that – opening my ears to what so many others had been enjoying.
The observational humor presented on the album follows C.K.’s return to single life after a decade of marriage, and if anything, his age and life experience makes the material not only more funny – but completely true. He looks at bar whores with “the shirt, the skirt, and the boots” not as “the angels” that he did in his twenties, but as bizarre creatures that as a father, he hopes his two daughters will never grow up to become. On “Cell Phones and Flying,” C.K. discusses the phenomena of everyone having a phone on their person, when not too long ago, we were still dealing with rotary phones and hating “people with zeros in the phone numbers.“
“The Way We Talk (Hilarious)” is interesting on a personal note, as Louis takes on something that those who know me will recall as one of my gripes with the world – the words people use and overuse. While “Hilarious” is the word that really grabbed C.K. to dissect, he also takes on my most hated word: “AMAZING.” I hate hearing people call things “amaaaaaaazing” so much (those in musical circles are especially guilty), that I actually included a rant in a screenplay I’d written in which the lead character rips one of his friends to shreds for the overuse of that word. Hearing C.K. share his thoughts on the subject was enough to hook me right there.
There’s a moment on “Other People’s Kids” that Louis questions why he’s “such an asshole,” and it’s another thing that anyone in their thirties and beyond can relate to. As you grow up, you find yourself in situations you would’ve never imagined yourself in earlier in life. Watching how other parents raise their kids to be complete idiots, and having to associate with those same parents while having nothing in common… I do it all the time.
Do I feel a kinship between myself and Louis C.K. after listening to HILARIOUS? Perhaps. On the other hand, we may just be a couple of assholes.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
