Mandroid

your gonna love his special. Its great nerdy and fun. He is very funny and I laughed while listing to this many times. I will recommend it to friends.

Incredibly hilarious. Chris Hardwick at his best. I've been a fan of his various endevours over the years & this Album surely didn't disappoint. Very witty, nerd filled comedy. The album contains several jokes that were cut from the Comedy Central special.

This is Exactly what I'd expect from Chris Hardwick, very funny and incredibly awesome! Can't wait to see him live again.

As much as I love his podcast and much of what he does, I felt this fell a little flat. He has a lot to offer us all, but I'm not sure stand-up (or this album as a representative of his stand-up) is necessarily his strongest suit. But comedy is extremely subjective, perhaps it just didn't speak to me.

I'm a fanatic for comedy albums. After playing some of my favorites to death (Norm Macdonald, Harland Williams, Jim Gaffigan, pretty much everything Louis CK and Dave Chappelle have ever done), I went off in search for more. I found some gold, some pewter, and some plain old garbage. Here are the fruits of my labors. CHRIS HARDWICK --> Mandroid Helmsman of the popular Nerdist podcast, Chris Hardwick has an innate pleasantness and a personal dismissiveness that's endearing. His material has been very thoroughly refined and distilled so that it's sharp and on point but also conversational. At least two of these bits I've heard before on a Comedy Death Ray compilation that came out six years ago, though, so it's a bit sad he hasn't come up with all-new stuff in the rather long interval. When he gets overly self-aware, the set stalls a bit (both tracks about being a nerd fall flat for me), but otherwise it's light, enjoyable, and quickly paced stuff that goes down easily and with a lot of verve. FOUR STARS TJ MILLER --> Mash Up Audiofile TJ Miller just doesn't have enough stuff out there. He has a DVD, but I prefer to listen to my comedy, being on the go as I always am. I've caught a lot of Miller on various podcasts, and I've loved his general aura enough to seek this gem out. He's got a lot of lunacy to his bits, but his goofy demeanor makes it super accessible. He runs the gamut as far as subject matter, and that makes the direction of his set unpredictable and more interesting. Plus, the CD contains some musical remixes of his jokes, a gimmick that I've never seen before. It doesn't work 100%, but it's still fun and infectious, like most of his comedy. FIVE STARS PAUL F. TOMPKINS --> Laboring Under Delusions I absolutely love Paul F. Tompkins. He's smart but not smug, and he applies his well-spoken erudition to topics all across the board, whether grim, crass, classy, or just plain silly. This album follows Tompkins' career choices from school to his life as a stand-up comedian and sometimes actor, with all of it tied together by Tompkins' intense fear of being yelled at. Perfectly organized and arranged, the set is very personal without being maudlin or dramatic, and of course, it's hilarious. Here's hoping he doesn't wait another three years to put out his next album. FIVE STARS DEMETRI MARTIN --> Standup Comedian Much like his very obvious influences (Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg), Martin's jokes come fast and loose and are based mostly on funny comparisons, puns, curious juxtapositions, and goofy over-analyzing/personification of common stuff. He rarely has any extended bits, preferring a rapid, conveyor-belt style of quipping. It serves him well. Most of his jokes work great, but when they don't, his style means the misfire isn't long remembered. Also, since he packs so many lpms (laughs per minute), his sets are almost always worth multiple replays, which is a huge plus for comedy albums. FIVE STARS KYLE KINANE --> Whiskey Icarus Like a lot of comedians, Kyle struggles with self-image, self-acceptance, and just plain old living in general. Most comedians try to churn that material into comedy gold, but it very easily can come across as desperate and sad. Not so here. Kyle's rugged delivery, well-spoken self-deprecation, and slippery insight into a misery that most people share makes the whole set seem like you're having a slightly buzzed chat with a philosopher who can't stand pretentiousness. He's a dark horse of a charmer with a wacky and invasive wit. FIVE STARS HANNIBAL BURESS --> My Name is Hannibal / Animal Furnace Hannibal has a very casual, friendly delivery that is polished without seeming over-rehearsed. He's got a ton of charisma on the mike, and his jokes manage to mingle just the right amount of intelligence with an equal measure of absurdity. He reuses a few bits from one album to the next, but they're both still A-list material from beginning to end, and it all has a high replay factor. I'm looking forward to more from him in the future. FIVE STARS BRIAN REGAN --> All By Myself Still one of my favorite comedians, Regan is known for both his squeaky-clean material as well as his exaggerated, almost cartoonish delivery. He's basically a giant kid, and the results are consistently funny. In an era where it's really tough to wring laughs out of a crowd without going blue, Regan stands out as an immediately likable, inoffensive presence that manages to hit killer bits off with impressive regularity. FIVE STARS NATE BARGATZE --> Yelled At By a Clown I'd never heard of Nate before this album. His slow-as-chowder southern drawl and passive, teddy-bearish personality both work for and occasionally detract from his set. While his material never really hits belly buster territory, it's genuinely amusing stuff, but mostly when he's actually trying to do typical set-up/punchline type bits. When he tells stories, he makes the amateurish mistake of having a dry, unremarkable chunk of exposition preceding the actual funny parts. This is exacerbated by his meandering vocal style. (I wish more comedians would take their cues from Louis CK, who has the ability to tell a long, involved story, and somehow still have nearly every line of it contain some kind of joke or humor.) Not bad for what I'm assuming is a relative newbie, but also not as good as it seems like he has it in him to be. FOUR STARS DOUG BENSON --> Gateway Doug I'll never give up on Doug Benson, but mainly because I think his podcast (Doug Loves Movies) is one of the most consistently enjoyable ones out there, and I'd say at this point he's given me three to four hundred hours of free entertainment just from that alone. I feel I owe the guy. That having been said, this is one of the weakest sets Doug has ever released. It doesn't have the honed strength of a batch of tried/tested/tightened material. Instead, it feels as gangly and loose as one of his podcasts, except without the guests there to riff with, Doug ends up sounding like he's just rambling stream-of-consciousness style through some random ideas. A few of the bits are winners ("No Smoking Rooms" & "Sober October" are my favorites) but overall the whole thing is pretty weak. He might want to reconsider his "release a new album every year" philosophy and work on building up an hour's worth of actual top notch material before laying down another album. THREE STARS MIKE LAWRENCE --> Sadamantium This album was a shot in the dark for me; I'd never heard of Mike before nor knew anything about his style. Essentially, he is trying to be another one of those comedians who bases most of his material on self-deprecation, like Kyle Kinane (see below). I've noticed more and more comedians attempting this shitck -- making themselves the butt of most of their jokes -- and while it can sometimes work (again, see Kinane), it more than often doesn't. It's a deceptively easy style to attempt, and unless you can add some unique pathos, creativity, insight, or character to your personal insults, it just comes across as lazy and uninspired. Unlike Kyle's gritty, trailer-park-ish delivery, Mike has a nasal, salivary twang to both his voice and his jokes. Some of it works ("Fallen Heroes") and some of it doesn't ("British Stuff"). It sounds overall like someone mingling old and new material at an open mike. Also, whereas Kinane's personal digs are charming because they feel genuine and unique (and often weirdly poetic), Lawrence's personal digs seem rote and uninspired. He seems to be using them for the sole purpose of getting the audience to like him, making them sound disingenuous. Although funny in parts, much of the album just felt like pandering to me. It's really easy to joke about being a nerd or a loser, but it's a lot harder to make that anymore interesting or special than all of the other nerdy losers out there who want your appreciation. THREE STARS MITCH FATEL --> Public Display of Perversion Mitch has officially lost me. I used to love his work. Even if it was one note (he pretty much talks only about sex), he still managed to find a freshness in it, mostly because of his on-stage persona: he does his stand-up as if he has just sustained some kind of mild head trauma, with a hint of a peach inspediment to his voice that makes him sound stuck in a desperately horny, adolescent limbo. Obviously an affectation, the voice still worked perfect counterpoint with his pretty risque and self-deprecating humor. That has changed with this album. Although he still has that vocal affectation, the self-deprecation in his jokes is gone, and now he's bragging about how his relative success on the comedy circuit has lead to all manner of sexual conquests: dating models and the like. The effect is a turn-off. Taking his persona from needy underdog to self-congratulatory top dog only emphasizes how stale, tired, and insincere his overall shtick really is. TWO STARS MOSHE KASHER --> Everyone You Know is Going to Die, Then You Are This is more than a comedian doing stand-up. There are brief sketches at the beginning and end as well as a few epistolary segments here and there in the middle. If the title of the album isn't a giveaway, Moshe tries to lean on the irony of mortality as both his opener and closer. It doesn't work, mainly because he doesn't actually write any jokes about it. He just reminds everyone they're going to die, as if the juxtaposition of a comedian being morbid is, in itself, supposed to be funny. It's not. Neither is anything else he talks about. The actual stand-up seems half-finished, with pretty much every track on this album feeling like it is all set-up with no punchline. ("Jewmany" is the most obvious example of this.) The other bits are either overwritten (his letter to Modesto) or lazy (he reads spam emails and then makes obvious jokes about them, which is something everyone has been doing with their friends since email spam was invented). Making the whole thing worse, Moshe's on-stage persona feels only a shade lighter than carnival barker. He's got the contrived, overly-polished patter of a used car salesman. Even if your jokes are weak, if you've got a strong, engaging presence it makes up for a lot. Moshe's slickness comes across as plastic and hollow -- like he lacks any kind of personality or presence at all -- and it totally deflates what little humor there is in any of the stuff he says. ONE STAR

after watching the special on tv i looke for this for months and the day this came out i bought it its hilarious and i can not stop laughing at this.

I follow a lot of Chri's podcasts and events that have to do with the Nerdist, and enjoy his wit and interviews, but I really think he excels most when performing stand-up. So even if your not familiar with his other work, and you are just a comedy fan, you'll enjoy this album. He has innovative material and great delivery.

I love Chris Hardwick from his Nerdist podcast so I knew he was funny, but I had no idea he was this funny. I listened to this on my motorcycle and was laughing so hard inside my helmet the people around me must have thought I was insane. Buy this. Buy it now.