So...there were two comics before Janeane came on. First was Reggie Watts, who did this incredible comedy out of songs that he built on one of those electronic sample looping machines, and also "stories" that he told. He had this very intelligent, dry, somewhat random and bizarre sense of humor, which Heidi and I both completely loved. He was really, really good, and everyone should immediately go watch whatever they can find of him, even if it's just on YouTube, because he's fantastic.
Next was Paul F. Tompkins ("Tompkins, point your rear end in the direction of the principal's office." "Awwwwww...peas!"), who was pretty funny, but had a very hard act to follow (see above), and was pretty distracted by music bleeding through the wall behind him from the place next door to Esther's Follies. His best bits were about the little snatches of conversation that you get living in a city and walking everywhere, he had some pretty good ones.
So, at long last, Garofolo! However, she was really struggling. She seemed to be actually depressed, because she spent the bulk of her time talking about how depressed she was, not in a funny, written comedy sort of way, but in a very scattered way that left everyone kind of uncomfortable. I was trying to figure out if she was doing sort of Andy Kaufmanesque anti-comedy, but it didn't really seem like that either, because she'd dig through her ever present notebook for material and do little bits of it, but that didn't really go over very well either.
So we're both glad we went to see her, but she wasn't on her game. Just as an aside, she is about 4'10" tall, which is visually just kind of a shock when she first comes out.
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