Michael Showalter - 'Sandwiches & Cats'

[The led is one of several instances where I defended CAKE in Collegian. A lot of people just couldn't handle the humor. A lot of people are stupid.]

Before reading this review of Michael Showalter’s comedy album Sandwiches & Cats, flip a few pages forward to CAKE. I haven’t read it this week, but I’m assuming it’s about sloths/competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi/megalodons. Perhaps a few references to coyotes and the Internet. Regardless of the content, though, the style is quirky. If you don’t get it, chances are you won’t get Sandwiches & Cats.

Much like Showalter’s work in supremely hilarious projects like Wet Hot American Summer, Stella and The State, Sandwiches & Cats is a blur of the heartfelt, the socially aware and the deeply bizarre. It’s much more playful than, say, the work of Patton Oswalt or Zach Galifinakis, but still blends high- and low-brow humor in a similar style. Split between live jokes and studio-recorded songs, it’s a solid comedy album.

The album is not without a few clunkers, though, like the redundant ditty “We Had to Do the Show,” or Showalter’s album-opening anecdote about being mistaken for Screech (Although I can relate). Likewise, some of the later songs tend to overplay their sound and jokes, especially on “Sandwich Commandments,” which is a hilarious culinary diatribe up until Showalter talks smack on sun-dried tomatoes (They’re good, man!). Also, it’s a seven-and-a-half-minute-long rant about sandwiches.

But when Showalter is on, he is thoroughly so. Opening tracks “Screech” and “Coffee” slowly build up the mirth, like a car engine warming up. “Coffee,” a send-up of Starbucks, really amps up the laughter, which is further built upon by the bit “Wash Your Hands,” a monologue that breaks down men who wash their hands after urinating.

Showalter’s thoughts: “I do it, I wash my hands after I pee, but I do it out of peer pressure… I’m not going to get my hands dirty by touching my penis. My penis is clean. I wash it every day. It’s covered in two layers of cloth, sometimes three when I’m wearing snow pants… If anything, I should wash my hands before I pee [To which an audience member calls out ‘That’s right’ with a tone that implies his entire life has just been summed up]… and if I’m too lazy to wash my hands before I pee, then I should wash my penis after I pee.

“Then I was thinking who would need to wash their hands after they peed, and the only thing I could think of was a gravedigger who uses his [phallus] as a shovel… Wash your hands man! You have bits of dead Civil War soldier on the shaft of your dick!”

So that’s kinda deep.

Elsewhere, Showalter goes for more literary humor, combining adventure journalism with erotica (Lots of nature imagery. Lots of… other stuff) on “Erotica” and revealing his attention to “show, don’t tell” on “The Mountain” and “Lake Wasood.” On “The Apartment,” he reads a poem he wrote for his high school’s literary magazine, and it is terrible in such a way to provoke laughter from English professors, provided it doesn’t remind them too much of their own students (Hey, Dr. Grauke).

Closing out the album is a radio edit of “Erotica,” and it proves that Oswalt was right; G-rated filth is way creepier than real filth. But I can print it with a clean conscience, so here’s a quote to close this article out:

“I’m in the rare book archive at the Firestone Library, and Margery is holding my big, fat, crinkle-cut French fry in her hand. The air conditioner broke, so Margery and I have to blow on each other to stay cool. At this one certain point, my big loaf of bread slips into her oven mitt and we start making pound cake, kid.”