Rob Corddry at UW HUB
I went to see Rob Corddry at the UW HUB (Husky Union Building) last Saturday and had a couple of observations worth blogging about.
For one thing, he’s incredibly witty and intelligent. Even more than you’d think from watching his hapless persona as a correspondent on the Daily Show. He took Q&A from the audience at the end and handled some very strange events from the audience during his presentation. The “flag guy” would have thrown me off my stride, but Rob handled it with great resilience!
The fallout of his being so witty and intelligent is that his style was a little unexpected if you were (as I naively was) expecting Rob Corddry the correspondent — second fiddle to Jon Stewart. He was a bit more in-your-face than he is on the show, and it took a bit of getting used to. Plus, he swore a lot more.
Ironically, I noticed this right away in the first few minutes of his program. Lots of cussing. I don’t have a “big problem” with this, per se, but was still unexpected since you don’t see that side on the show. Like the difference in persona, it took a bit of time to get used to.
So what’s ironic about that? Well, in the Q&A section, some poor woman asked the question “you’re so funny without it, why do you feel the need to swear so much in your comedy?” to a parade of college-students yelling “boo” and “sit down” and other such less insightful suggestions. The next questioner even turned the comedy on full–bore by prefacing his question with “you’re fucking awesome, Rob” or something to that effect.
Maybe I’m just getting old. I felt for the woman, both because she was berated and beaten down by the over-enthusiastic college crowd and also because I agree with her. Rob Corddry is an hilarious comedian, with a fantastic, quick wit. And he swears more than he needs to.
