Zack and Stella....fuck fuck fuck

You're a fucking piece of shit.  You suck.  God you're dumb.  Why are you reading this?  What's wrong with you?  Stupid audience.

Mmmmm, delicious insults.  They make for awful art which is why I'm surprised two comedy dvds I recently watched featured comedians insulting their audience.

Zack Galifinikas: Live (2006) and Stella (2008) are both an hour long and they both feature comics being mean to their audience.  Maybe I'm a little old fashioned at the ripe old age of 29, but it seems rude and....well....mean. 

Zack's dvd is half stage show and half garbage, and garbage is being nice.  Zack has good and witty material when he can be bothered to perform the material.  The dvd is a mixture of an "interiew" with his "twin" brother, Zack without a beard, and footage of Zack driving around in a VW van doing nothing.  He can't even bother to be funny while "travelling." I shoudln't be surprised since he doesn't try to be funny while performing his show.  He hams it up a lot for the cameras, insults his audience in what is supposed to ironic (and people actually laugh!  By yelling profanities at his audience Zack is saying that words don't have power.  I respectfully disagree.)  He lies around the stage floor for a bit, flubs his lines many times, and generally avoids doing his routine.  When he does his act, he's fucking brilliant, why he chose to muddle his act with what I'm sure he thought was inspired brilliance while stoned, but is actually shit in the day of light, is a mystery to everyone and I'm including Zack too.

Stella, starring three of the guys of the 90's sketch comedy show "The State" and "Stella" tv show is like watching an ameteur troupe at your local college, maybe slightly better, maybe not, and this surprises me because I love the State and generally whatever those guys make.  I'm a fan of their movies, of the tv show Stella, but this was an uneven performance going between insulting and good (never great or genius but good).  The show got off to a slow start which made me want to turn it off, had Michael Ian Black insulting the audience (irony doesn't extend to vulgarity) and was generally lackluster.  The performance picked up steam and they got more orginal and state-like until they showed a video, basically an extended Stella clip.  Even though the video was funny, I think that's laziness on their part even though other reviews say that the video is a staple of their live act. 

And regarding both the comics propensity to swear, Bill Cosby is right, swearing by a comic is laziness and cheap.  I never thought I'd dislike swearing but when that's half of or most of your show, you've ceased to have anything to say and get off the stage.