Flak Magazine: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's Come Poop with Me, 12.02.03

Why isn't Come Poop with Me funny? This collection of songs and sketches starring the popular puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog features the writing and performing talents of Robert Smigel, Triumph's creator and voice. Smigel writes for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," he executive produced the underappreciated "The Dana Carvey Show" in 1996, and his "TV Funhouse" segments on "Saturday Night Live" are routinely the show's funniest bits. Triumph is the centerpiece of a number of classic remotes from "Late Night," including visits to a Bon Jovi concert and a Star Wars premiere, where he relentlessly mocked Lucas fans and "Livin' on a Prayer" lovers. Additionally, the new CD boasts celebrity guests Jack Black, Maya Rudolph, O'Brien, Adam Sandler (who is also one of the executive producers), and Horatio Sanz, among others. Still, the laughs are scant.

Come Poop with Me features 13 original songs, including "Lick Myself," a paean to a dog's ability to, in Triumph's words, "Sit on [their] own face"; "Bob Barker," a denouncement of the man who tells "Price is Right" viewers to get their pets spayed or neutered; and "I Keed," which trashes the musicians of the moment. The scatological, profane and sexually graphic content is notable because it's relentless. The clean version of this album is no album at all. As Triumph and "Stinky Faye" (played by Sanz) sing in "You Have to Work Blue": "You have to work blue, blue/ That's what you do/ Throw in a shit or a piss or a poo." Blue can be funny. Richard Pryor was known to work blue, and he was unbelievably funny. Chris Rock isn't shy about working blue when it suits him, and he's one of the funniest stand-ups out there. Sarah Silverman: hilarious. Come Poop with Me? Not funny.

As a purely aural experience, comedy is tough to pull off. Take Richard Pryor, for example. His albums are to comedians as the Anthology of American Folk Music is to Bob Dylan. But Pryor's recorded efforts pale in comparison to the live show, because he was a peerless physical comedian, using his face and his body to communicate character and to sell his humor. Once you see Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, the greatest stand-up film ever made, there's no reason to revisit it via the album, Wanted: Richard Pryor, Live in Concert. Even Chris Rock, whose métier is the cutting remark rather than the physical characterization of bums and hustlers from his neighborhood, is better seen than only heard. He paces the stage, staring down the audience, a coil of energy — you don't get that on the album.

Comedy albums that spring from studio sessions, where sound effects, music, and the familiar tropes of radio, TV and film are mixed together to create an experience available only on vinyl, can work. Spike Jonze was a pioneer in this area, but Monty Python and the National Lampoon made some fine comedy albums in the studio. Comics whose material is on the Quality Lit side do OK, too. Bob Newhart, Nichols and May, even Woody Allen, work on an album because their material is suggestive, and requires the listener to use his imagination to complete the joke. (Newhart sold millions of records by having conversations with people we could neither hear nor see. Arguably, his approach is better on album that it is live.)

Come Poop with Me uses no studio gimmickry, and it asks nothing of the listener's imagination. It's just one gross-out joke after another, on and on, for 74 minutes. If you've been waiting for the music industry's equivalent of Freddy Got Fingered, then Merry Christmas. Here are some samples (all sung) from the CD peeking out of the top of your holiday stocking:

Hey mister/ That's my mama you're shtooping/ Enter her gently/ For her hair pie is drooping.

Thanks to the vet there'll be no hard balls pounding against your back/ Just pure floppy skin hanging down from my love tree.

Now Old Yeller liked his golden showers/ That's how he got his name/ And Spuds bangs dogs that were put to sleep/ Then spews from his own shame.

Smigel's lyrics do all the work for you. By way of contrast, consider Howard Stern's radio show (do not consider the TV component). Stern will say, "Look at that guy's penis! What is that thing on it? Oh, my God, what is that stuff he's dipping it in?" The home listener must imagine what horrors have befallen the member in question and come up with a visual for the dipping material. It's as funny as you make it. Stern at least understands that if you're going to work blue, it helps to invite your audience to participate. (It's a nifty way to dodge the censors, as well.) Smigel wants you to know that his blue material is clever, so clever, in fact, that 74 minutes of it is necessary.

Come Poop with Me includes a DVD, which captures some of the songs as they were performed in front of a paying audience at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City. Here we observe O'Brien, Black, Rudolph, Sanz and Sandler, all looking as uncomfortable as they sound on the CD. It also features interviews with Vincent Pastore of "The Sopranos," Ben Curtis (the "Dell Guy"), and Jared Fogle (the Subway success story). Each is a crushing failure, chiefly because the interviewees are unwilling to play the straight man to Triumph. Their attempts to upstage him are painful. Triumph as the star of the show is the antithesis of Pryor: entrenched on a miniature stage before the house band, he is expressionless, and indifferent to moving his mouth when Smigel speaks.

Smigel might have known that taking a recurring character from a popular show and giving him a starring role in a satellite project is dangerous. He's an "SNL" vet of 18 years — hasn't he seen Superstar, The Ladies Man, It's Pat, A Night at the Roxbury, Coneheads, Stuart Saves His Family or Wayne's World 2? Smigel is a gifted writer, so let's hope that, after this, he limits Triumph's appearances to "Late Night" and MTV awards shows. And that "Ambiguously Gay Duo" screenplay? Probably perfect... insert Triumph's catchphrase here.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)