f13.net

So last night Jon Stewart was in town.  He did two shows (7 PM and 9:45 PM).  Thanks to camping Ticketbastard back in November when they went on sale, I was fortunate enough to go. 

The first 10 minutes or so were a bit slow.  Stewart apparently has to work up to his "pace" before he really starts going off.  The only real disappointment is that at the very start of his set, aside from making a few jokes about Chicago, he just recycled jokes from the last week of the Daily Show.  But, really, that was about 10 minutes.  Then he just started being funny, doing jokes I haven't heard him do. 

He dealt really well with people shouting stuff out from the audience, even telling an anecdote/joke about his Crossfire appearance when someone shouted "Crossfire!"  The gist of it was that after they ended the show, the hosts said, "Yeah, good TV!"  While he got a bit preachy he was also intensely funny, even when standing partially on the soap box.  He's actually a lot more "fair and balanced" than most people would think. 

At any rate, although his live stand up appearances are very rare these days, if you have the means, I highly suggest checking him out.

You lucky bastard, you.

Yeah, if you watch the Daily Show enough, for long enough, you will see he's a lot more fair than most would give him credit for. It's obvious he's more liberal than conservative, that much is obvious, but he makes no bones about haranguing the "left" when they do teh stupid.

And he's just that goddamn funny.

What he really hates is the news media, which comes through in the Daily Show, but damn...he goes off on the news media in his standup.  He did one bit about what he claims to be a true story.  He was watching MSNBC when the photos of the Hussein sons' corpses were shown.  On the ticker below, it said, "Beyonce no longer likes the word "Bootylicious."  The only person who could have made the punchline funnier would have been Lewis Black in an apoplectic fit of rage.

EDIT -- See, Haem, that's why you and SPT should move to Chicago.  You get the Cubs AND good shows.  :)

Oh good, he saw that too.  I saw the ticker saying that, though I don't remember if those crazy Hussein kids were on the screen at the time as well.

Ah, so that's where he's been. Tell him to get back to NY and make more Daily Show episodes and stop hogging him, ya bastard.

The only comedy venue in the area here is a goddamned injun casino. Tickets for Stewart were running like $75-150, same as Carlin, BB King, and a whole slew of people I'd like to go see, but not at that ticket cost, that's insanity.

Heh, I paid 100 bucks for two seats.  But it was worth it.

For $50, I'd at least consider attending. But $150 to catch someone that's on tv every night for "free"...no thanks.

Aren't tickets to the actual Daily Show free? I'm sure there's a few months waiting period. But it's the kind of thing you can form a vacation around.