{"id":907,"date":"2016-09-23T15:39:20","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T19:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=907"},"modified":"2016-11-08T23:50:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T04:50:04","slug":"907","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/09\/23\/907\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release Roundup – Maria Bamford, Brian Posehn, Frank Zappa, and beccs"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMEDY <\/strong>
\n1. Maria Bamford<\/a> \u2013 20%<\/em>
\nAt the beginning of Maria Bamford\u2019s set on 20%<\/em>, she gives the audience a warning. Most people probably know what they\u2019re about to see, she says, but sometimes you\u2019ve been brought along by a friend and it\u2019s okay to leave. It\u2019s an acknowledgment up front that what\u2019s coming is a little strange. It may seem like a kind of throwaway introduction, but it pays off a few minutes later, when Bamford punctuates a routine comparing the impossibility of finding a mate to the unlikelihood of achieving her show business goals, which she has. \u201cHappy anniversary to my husband of one year and to show business audience of twenty-five years,\u201d she says, \u201cI love you far more deeply than the day we first met, and the fact the we all still have the free will to abandon each other at any given moment makes it all the more compelling.\u201d It\u2019s a hint of what it\u2019s like to walk around in Bamford\u2019s shoes. Every interaction with other people has the potential not just for mortification, but for personal annihilation. Everything good is ephemeral. Painting a ceramic dog bank as a gift for her parents becomes an eternal point of contention between her mother, who hates it, and her father, who hides money in it. As Bamford puts it, the bank is \u201cthe savory piece of gristle those two kids can tug back and forth over the course of their golden years.\u201d When she has a breakdown, a fellow comic brags to her that he\u2019s never missed a show, even when he lost control of his bowels onstage with a dangerous fever. \u201cYou\u2019ve gotta make those fuckers laugh,\u201d the comic says. That makes Bamford feel guilty, and she feels the need to explain. \u201cI guess I just\u2026 I was worried I wasn\u2019t able to think or talk and that might not be as funny as I\u2019d hoped,\u201d she says. Her world is bewildering and sometimes terrifying, like a funny version of Kafka. Voices and characters are a big part of Bamford\u2019s presentation, and have been for a while. But where you might have gotten one at a time five or six years ago, now they come roaring out unpredictably at different points during a bit. There\u2019s no windup \u2013 she gets into and out of them quickly, and there might be three or four in a particular train of thought. If all of that is too strange, she understands. But there are plenty of compelling reasons to stick around.
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