Eugene Mirman – God is a Twelve-Year-Old Boy With Asperger’s

The first comedy album I ever listened to was my parents Bill Cosby LP. It was funny as a child and even then there was a certain edginess to what I appreciated. The first comedy album I ever bought was Lenny Bruce’s Berkley Concert on cassette. It changed the way that I looked at comedy – his cynical Jewish viewpoint, spot-on social commentary, and discussion of nearly forbidden and offending topics more than outweighed the dated references in some of the material.

Fast forward 20 years to Eugene Mirman and his offensively titled God Is a Twelve-Year-Old Boy With Asperger’s, recorded live at the Lakeshore Theatre in Chicago “(where Abraham Lincoln lost his virginity.)” Images of protesters holding signs like “America is better than abortion,” and “Don’t eat horses or have gay sex,” which are references to the bits, adorn the outside of the gatefold CD case. The cartoonishly drawn booklet contains praise from Sarah Vowell, Zach Galifianakis, and Patton Oswalt.

He opens the show, appropriately enough commenting on the smokiness of Chicago, saying “it’s a little Lenny Bruce out here, 1962, gotta to do all my dangerous shit, the stuff that challenges the status quo.” By albums end I’m convinced that Bruce had an illegitimate son or was reincarnated to remain an edgy Jewish comic.

Separated into 11 tracks he opens with several vignettes on people’s strangeness ranging from a guy in an elevator diverging from the “agreed upon stereotypes of people in Russia,” to a kid saying that Mirman dared him to eat a live fish (a bit that includes the phrase, “Build a time machine, jerk off into it, and send it to Hitler.”) His point of view and examples are both silly and insightful.

From there he moves into a bit about having his gas shut off because he has never paid his bill; they sent the bill to the wrong address for over a year. His response letter is really funny (and borderline offensive.) It is the first sketch in the larger theme of corporate ineptitude and heartlessness. Shifting into the real life results of such heartlessness he talks about how the bears have returned to Detroit because the city is so poor. But the crumbling city is just a segue into a bit about a bear and what you should do if confronted by one, “playing dead is a rumor that bears spread, I have no idea how they do it because they have no access to propaganda.”

Two brief interludes follow, the first a commentary on annoying banner ads. His ideas include the brilliant, “Should George W. Bush be Bill Cosby instead?” and, “Is Barack Obama black enough to be president?” with choices of “Yes he is,” or “No you dinnint.” Continuing with the political he raps about random abortion protesters at an Obama/Hilary debate and his imagined “politically ambiguous protest sign” that reads “Abortion, neither here nor there.”

He contrasts American absurdity with a Russian poll on Roma (gypsies) where all the choices are vaguely racist. He then runs through other poll questions, most political in nature with the same bias and delights us with his own slanted slant on questions from how to deal with race in America to how to deal with Israel.

In the title bit he talks about a book tour where he encounters a 12-year-old with Aspergers who yells about Mirman, “Why doesn’t he accept me as his God?” This leads to his realization that with the ritualized behavior and self-absorbed nature of the disorder that “religion makes sense when you realize that God is a twelve-year-old boy with Aspergers.” He then reads from and comments on the get to know you questionnaire from his class reunion, the material absurd and somehow both cynical and innocent. The highlight of the album is his experience with ****a airlines and their sadistic response to losing his bags, his second corporate condemnation. This is the only material that relies on outside help as it is in the form of a radio play. The album closes by his letter of response and the continuing aftermath of his lost luggage.

Though it ranges all over the place, the album feels cohesive. I belly laughed the whole time. Any offensiveness is blunted by a silly innocence in his delivery, existing side by side with a cynical (some would call realistic) perspective. Is the album for every one? If you have been to several Redneck Comedy tours you should probably leave it on the rack. However, if you always wondered what would happen if Monty Python were more Lenny Bruce in their approach, snatch it up, you will laugh your ass off.

Tagged as: comedy, New York, spoken word

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.