This show is just amazing to me. He is just a disaster—but this is his doing—he
knows exactly the disaster he is making. A person could watch this set and
hold their head in their hands, groaning at all of the ways that he undermines
himself. Or a person could laugh themselves to tears—at one point the audience
takes over the show, asking him what a ‘fleur-de-lys’ is, cajoling him to ‘make a phone call’,
people shouting “Oh my god!” in dismay, and he just begins taunting them, singing,
“These neighborhood critics, they don’t know how it is!”
Toward the beginning of the show, he says that he just wants to read the audience
his stories. He’s a human being who writes stories and, sheepishly, he says that
he just wants to share them. He paints himself as the vulnerable, estranged artist—and
he says he’ll read one to you called The Gossett, or, The Slouch. Except he can’t:
because it has no words.
Many times he attempts to read stories or to find any suitable ones from his stack of
ragged notebooks. The one he does tell, simply starts off:
I am an avid sailor.
I like to race sailboats.
I’m a complete fruitcake.
I race.
I get on these crazy… boats.
I’m a complete snob, okay?
Don’t even try to approach me… at all.
I think there’s a temptation to make this into an Andy Kaufman kind of thing or
Reggie Watts—but I think those acts come off as impressive. Charlie dismantles
the entire show and the audience becomes unruly—as things proceed, they are talking
and heckling with increasing volume.
What a great accomplishment. To foment an unruly audience. To pleasantly mount
an insurrection against one’s self. How is it done?