LoC Rest of the Best - Day 14 - Favourite TV Comedies
Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and voice actor. He is best known for portraying Spencer Olchin in the popular sitcom The King of Queens, voicing Remy from the film Ratatouille and Thrasher from the Cartoon Network original series Robotomy.
Oswalt first began performing standup comedy in the late 1980s or early 1990s, by his own reckoning. After writing for MADtv and starring in his own 1996 comedy special for HBO, he went on to garner notable roles in films and television shows. His most prominent and long-running role was as Spence Olchin on The King of Queens. His first starring film role was as the voice of Remy, the lead character in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille.
Oswalt's stand-up comedy covers topics ranging from pop culture frivolity such as comic book supervillains and 1980s glam metal to deeper social issues like American excess, materialism, Mesopotamian cuneiform script, foreign policy and religion. He also discusses his atheism in his stand-up.
In 2004, Oswalt released a comedy lbum entitled Feelin' Kinda Patton and later that year a longer, unedited version of the same performance entitled 222, both through the United Musicians collective, and a stand-up special, No Reason to Complain. He is also on a split EP called Patton vs. Alcohol vs. Zach vs. Patton with Zach Galifianakis and is featured on two Un-Cabaret compilations, "The Un & Only" and "The Good, the Bad and the Drugly". On July 10, 2007, Patton released his second CD Werewolves and Lollipops on Sub Pop records.
In 2004, Oswalt put together the Comedians of Comedy tour, made up of modern alt-comics Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford. The tour performed at smaller, more intimate indie rock venues instead of traditional (and expensive) comedy clubs. The Fall 2004 tour was documented in a 2005 film of the same name, and was followed by a six-episode Comedy Central series based on the Summer 2005 tour. This tour featured special guest appearances from comedians such as Blaine Capatch, David Cross, Bobby Tisdale and Todd Barry. Subsequent incarnations of the tour have included Eugene Mirman and Morgan Murphy.
In 2004 Patton's stand up material was featured on Comedy Central's animated series Shorties Watchin' Shorties. That same year a stand up DVD called No Reason to Complain was released. Oswalt appeared several times as a "lawyer" on Lewis Black's Root of All Evil. In the episode Ultimate Fighting Vs. Blogging, he argued that the popular influence of the blogging has been evil, and, in his closing argument, he performed a rick roll on the audience. He also provided the stand-up comedy for the closing ceremony.
On February 28, 2009, Patton recorded his third comedy album at the Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University in Washington D.C. It premiered on Comedy Central as Patton Oswalt: My Weakness is Strong on August 23, 2009, and was released on DVD August 25, 2009. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Personal thoughts:
I’ve known about him when the first list came around and thought he was funny enough to be on the list, but man, I recently listened to a full album (My Weakness is Strong) and everybody in the car was laughing very hard. It was easily the most popular comedy album I bought for the trip, and it was in competition with Louis CK and Paul F Tompkins (the Tompkins album was not all that popular, but part of it was the sound, as we were driving in a loud car and Tompkins sudden switches from very quiet to loud were distracting). In fact, the driver was worried we were going to have an accident he was laughing so hard.
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Topic: The Rest of the Best (Read 49002 times)
