David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. Michael Ian Black: “I Am a Wonderful Man”
Michael Ian Black’s a funny guy. I thought he was great on Comedy Central’s terrific if too-arcane-for-the-masses series “Stella” and, before that, “The State.” You can’t escape him on VH1’s “I [HEART] the (insert decade here).” (On “Ed,” though, I coulda done without him, as well as without a lot of the rest of the show’s random smugness.)
So I thought, when I heard that he had recorded a stand-up comedy CD (distributed by Comedy Central Records), entitled (ironically, just guessing) “I Am a Wonderful Man,” that I’d be vaguely amused by it, as well.
Well. Was Your Mayor wrong. As wrong as he was when he married his first wife. (In my defense, my first wife was pretty; I don’t even have that defense with Mr. Black.)
On screen, Black pretty agreeably essays a twit who thinks, egregiously, that he’s cool. When you don’t have the visual of his face transmitting his sense of irony, all you get, basically, is the twit, and a misanthropic one, at that. In “I Am a Wonderful Man,” Black’s trying to be a social commentator but he’s woefully incapable of combining his sense of humor with anything resembling actual insight. “The Daily Show” need not sweat any competition herein.
Let’s just put it this way: When the most nominally clever line in your set is, “When you find yourself blowing a strange Pakistani guy at an airport men’s room, the terrorists have won,” you’re probably right: The terrorists likely have won. At the very least, the comedians have lost.