Until last night I was one of Jeselnik's biggest fans. But no more. It was hard to forgive his chosen opening act, a chubby little woman named Kelly Ryan whose humor relied heavily on sophisticated concepts like "dick," "suck," "suck my dick," "I'll suck your dick," and "I was a whore." She dragged the audience through 30 minutes of warm-up with the very same material, word for word, that she was using in 2021! (Google her name and you can catch her whole act.) Finally she was gone, having made me laugh never.
Enter Anthony, looking older, thinner, more haggard and with a bright red nose. Either he had a bad cold or he was doing his W.C. Fields impression -- it was hard to tell which. He strode across the stage in his usual cocky manner, something I had always found endearing in the past. But not so last night, when many of his blatantly ironic and shocking punchlines seemed more mean-spirited than funny. Nevertheless, a joke about how he poisoned his little brother got a big laugh.
The raucous crowd seemed to love him, in part due to the venue's cash bar. The beer line was so long I never got near the front, so I didn't have a very good time. However my husband, stoned sober, did laugh four or five times, so it wasn't a total loss. Also, we had really good seats, so at least that.
Look for a polished version of the show, called Bones and All, sometime later this year streaming on Netflix. Hopefully by then the worst clunkers will have been edited out.
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