My face hurts

Today my cheeks are sore from all the laughing I did last night. The Comedians of Comedy show was frickin' awesome. A sold-out, packed-in crowd of Emo's ate it up and in turn made the performers incredibly happy. Patton Oswalt complained asked how he could ever go back to comedy clubs after this. Despite being time to end, he ended up continuing for 15 more minutes. For a comedian, I'm sure it's hard to walk away from an audience that adores you.

MC for the evening was Eugene Mirman impressed me. I know him mostly from his association with other comics and as the Russian kid (Eugene) on Home Movies. Funny guy and I'll see him again later this week at the SXSW music conference.

Maria Bamford did some of her great older material with a couple new jokes thrown in. She was a little off, maybe a little tired. Not a huge surprise, she connected better with the woman in the crowd.

Zach Galifianakis killed. The crowd was familiar with him, probably some from his show at UT last year, and ate it up. It's hard to single out anything in particular, he was just on and connected with the crowd well. Did his normal one-liners while playing piano and his "characters", a few I hadn't seen before.

Brian Posehn did a great set, heavy on the geek, sex, and poop jokes which endeared him at least to the men in the room. He tried out a few new jokes which, while needing a little work, seemed to work well. Funny guy.

Patton Oswalt closed the show with an amazing set. He clearly ran out of newer material and pulled out older stuff (he's incredibly prolific) to satisfy the appreciative audience. I think he should record his next album in Austin. At one point he had a, well, not a heckler per se, but a guy interrupting him drunkenly shouting, "Retarded Chewbacca!"

Patton responded, "What?! I don't... That's the weirdest heckle ever. How do you even respond to that?" Then he tried to actually do a retarded Chewbacca which didn't really work but was funny anyway. After a bit more pondering on the whole situation, the drunk guy climbs on stage and puts his arm around Patton. Security approached but Patton was handling it okay and the guy wasn't angry or violent. Slurring mightily he kept saying, "This guy. This guy," while pointing at Patton. After security gently ushered him offstage, Patton cracks, "Ladies and Gentlemen, my publicist." Then, Zach comes out, staggering and says, "What am I, on stage or something?" Lovely.

I can't summarize Patton's act completely (though I totally fell in love with him because of it), I do want to touch on one bit at the very end. He sets it up by explaining that he flew his and his fiancee's parents to Las Vegas and they all went to a Cirque Du Soleil show. He'd never seen it before and was stunned to see all these red state folks loving, "The gayest thing I've ever seen! There's a hoop on fire and a tiger dressed as a butler and three clowns jerking off on a ghost. It's French and wet and on fire. Why do these conservatives love it?! Apparently this is the way for the gay people to make progress. Can we put on tuxes, kiss, and make a life-long pledge to each other? No faggot! How about I blow my boyfriend on this trapeze? Great! We'll bring the kids."

Soooo good.