Rich Hall
Rich Hall @ Nova 2
7:30pm, Sun 12 Mar 2006
This’ll be short and sweet: Rich Hall is great. He’s much better doing straight stand-up (as opposed to his character-driven stuff, like Otis Lee Crenshaw)… maybe that’s why he cancelled his other show, Levelland. And so this was a standard Rich Hall show – you already know what that’s like. Apart from the ill-informed Bill Gates rant, the only other thing of note was that the serenade didn’t go entirely to plan.
See, Hall likes to grab a couple from the front row and write a sweet (funny) little (funny) ode to them; this time, however, he asked his female mark her name:
“Okie.”
Hall’s disbelief was palpable. He persevered, though, enquiring as to her boyfriend’s name:
“Ernie.”
To his credit, Hall didn’t double over in comedic pain at this point. He asked for Ernie’s occupation:
“I’m a… uh… comedian.” (Yes, it’s Ernie from Elbowskin)
Needless to say, the serenade didn’t go that well. Still bloody funny, though.
It only struck me during this performance that Hall is like an American version of Billy Connolly – same sorts of insights, and (more noticeably) the same style of using “fuck” non-sexually, as punctuation. And believe me, that’s in no way intended to be a derogatory comment – just an observation.