Joel McHale’s Friends And Acquaintances Make Us Laugh

Joel McHale, best known the star of NBC’s sleeper hit Community and host of The Soup on E!, was technically only the host of Friday night’s Just For Laughs event at Chicago Theater, but audience members left satisfied that they received the equivalent of a full set as he performed stand-up in between a night peppered with short sets from six of his “friends and acquaintances.” He began the evening with Weiner jokes (“who wants to see a picture of my dick? Stranger; send.”) and ended the night kicking off Father’s Day weekend with a segment about his young son Eddie, including a light-switch costume that took us full circle back to the dick jokes. Of course there were a few requisite Ryan Seacrest rips in there, too.

The night had nowhere to go but up after Joel’s first “friend,” former Mad TV writer Brooks McBeth took the stage. McBeth demonstrated the fine line between laughing along with your host and scrunching your face in confusion or offense. Sexism and racism is such a common theme among comics, that it’s easy to forget how difficult it is and that some make it look so easy. Granted, funny is objective, but his closing jokes about his Irish-Asian ex-in-laws felt more fitting for an 80’s shock act and left the crowd relatively quiet.

The good mood recovered quickly with performances from two comics with ties to Conan O’Brien. Shane Mauss, a frequent Conan guest, gave a seemingly effortless set and was even able to make an edgy joke about the Japanese getting their superpowers from radiation (“We can call that myth busted.”). Conan staff writer, Deon Cole, was the highlight of the evening. We met Cole in the same theater last summer where he was a memorable part of Conan’s “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour.” Joking about being the “only minority” in the room and that he only comes to Chicago to go to Harold’s Chicken, he shared with us with his classic tales of Black His-Stories.

K.P. Anderson, head writer and executive producer of The Soup, kept the night rolling through the half-way point with a humorous take on family life, and Indian/Canadian comic Sugar Sammy delivered fresh quips on dating and, well, basically just being both Indian and Canadian at the same time.

Aussie Tim Minchin, who was in the midst of a sold-out five-night stand at Lincoln Hall, was the final friend and/or acquaintance of the evening. He took on the difficult form of musical comedy, and aced it. With a tight, hip suit, dready blond hair and raccoon eyes, he serenaded us with a racist song on piano, that turned out to be not so racist after all.

Miraculously, all these laughs were barely packed into 2 1/2 hours, with Just For Laughs proving that there wasn’t room for anything else.