Michael Showalter Sandwiches & Cats

Michael Showalter is a cherished and adored name to a small audience that doesn't seem to be enough to keep him on television for more than a season. Many fondly remember Showalter on MTV's mid-90s sketch comedy gem "The State" or the hilarious cult classics he's worked on with many of the same writers and performers, such as Wet Hot American Summer and "Stella", his triple act with Michael Ian Black and David Wain that recalls everything from the Marx Brothers to Chris Elliott's "Get a Life". Perhaps the quintessential Showalter character was Doug, the feebly empassioned rebellious teen who was inevitably frustrated by how cool and tolerant the authority figures he tried to clash with were.

On his first solo comedy album, Sandwiches & Cats, Showalter begins, after an intro track that's about ten seconds long and is literally just a guy plainly introducing him, by casting himself in the same vulnerable and diminished kind of role he plays so well, describing his indignance at being mistaken for Screech. Showalter, not really a stand-up by training or inclination, is very funny when enacting dialog in the crazed, flustered, foolish manners of his sketch characters. Just as he made something magical out of Doug's defiant "I'm out of heeere..." by absurdly letting the last word linger and diminish woundedly, there is something inexplicable and perfect on this album when, describing a fixated Starbuck's executive, he finds just the right way to exclaim "Akeelah and the Bee!" repeatedly.

Indeed, Sandwiches & Cats is a strange comedy album, but frequently a very funny one. Like Showalter's film The Baxter, it is a relatively minor acheivement, but often it is a pleasure to wallow in Showalter's obsessive, idiosyncratic, minutia-laden thoughts. There are a few points where the indulgence gets overwhelming...songs with his band (the Doilies) where he repeats a mild phrase ad nauseum or preaches about sandwich construction for over seven minutes. For such exhausting silliness, however, there are completely unexpected and masterful moments here.

Erotica finds a pitch perfect, unholy union between adventure journalism, low key whistling, and yes, overheated erotica. Sandwiches & Cats is, overall, a surprisingly vulgar album from the Ivy League graduate. It is worthwile, as Showalter attacks his profanity with the enthusiasm of a kid first learning how to talk dirty and handles the tongue in cheek sex material with the naive enthusiasm of a teenage poet trying to tackle the world with words. The Apartment has Showalter critiquing his own embarassingly affected portrait of urban depression, written safely from the suburbs of New Jersey. Cats is a delicious validation for comics tired of the attrotious lack of respect they receive while actors and musicians get a thoughtless high regard even when they suck.

Sandwiches & Cats can, at times, be frustratingly pleased with itself and perhaps a bit too immersed in the minor schtick of Michael Showalter. Most of the time, however, it is quite amusing and it occasionally mines hilarity from odd places previously unexplored in mainstream comedy. Perhaps most refreshing is what the album lacks. Showalter leans away from formula, resisting pat punchlines and pandering. There are no trite riffs about the differences between genders or ethnicities, no bland television parodies, no intrusion of nuclear domestic family life. This is comedy that reads and writes and has strange thoughts all its own.