Feelin' Kinda Patton

They Say...

Review by Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide

"America is like a giant retarded trust fund kid"; "I was late to an ether frolic"; "Angie Dickinson could suck..." well, that last line's better left for Patton Oswalt himself to finish. Let's back up. An acerbically funny standup and underrated comedic actor, Oswalt finally gets his own album with Feelin' Kinda Patton, and there's a good chance Wal-Mart isn't stocking it. Speaking too quickly for your kidneys to process the laugh pain, Oswalt puts a pincer through the strata of American society, skewering everyone from the President and his curious motives, to decadent Hollywood producer Robert Evans, to gumpy Midwestern Fashion Bug workers naïvely laying '80s pop/soap opera discard Michael Damian behind the Tilt-A-Whirl. "That's the one thing I like about George Bush," he says in "Come On Apocalypse." "I really think he can get us into the Apocalypse." But while the Prez definitely raises Oswalt's hackles, his Bush bit only sets up a description of why it'd be so great to buy the farm during such an event. As he says, it's a better way to go than getting eaten by fire ants, right? There's a bit of David Cross in Oswalt's style, mostly in how effectively both use the F-word, but also in their common ability to weave hilarious cynicism through a jumble of personal experience and mundane pop culture events. But Feelin' Kinda Patton really gets going whenever Oswalt vaults off the usual comic fodder -- '80s hair metal, porn, hippies -- into bizarre flights of disposable culture surrealism. His recollection of an old Asti Spumante ad becomes an invitation into the twisted sex life of a frustrated midlevel professional; Robert Evans is the anchor for a meta-analysis of 1970s Hollywood Babylon. Not everyone's gonna get it. But for those who do, it's at least as funny as King of Queens.