Dark, hyper, and a former network television star with his own sitcom, Christopher Titus is a hard one to place. He’s the first one to say the world is going to hell, and yet he landed a deal with a major network that lasted three seasons, even when molestation and suicide were some of the edgy topics covered. Harder to classify is his standup comedy, which seems fairly normal at first, but then sneakily creeps into the world of the one-man show with heavier topics and more fully developed characters than you’d expect to find in a comedy club setting. While his debut CD for the Comedy Central label looks intimidating at two discs long, it is worth its size and there’s a natural break in the middle that sorts his act into two distinct parts that were previously hidden. Take this show in on a television special or in person and you might not notice that he leads with his left and finishes with his right since the transition is seamless and invisible. Disc one earns the listener’s trust with familiar topics like parenthood and the Bush Jr. administration, covered in an especially cutting yet fairly standup fashion. Titus’ viewpoints might be unique and his delivery is amped up more than most, but the pacing is comfortable and the numerous laughs ramp up accordingly. Disc two crawls into some truly dark territory as the comedian covers his eye-opening and draining visit to Iraq, priests who face molestation charges, and his father’s numerous heart attacks and eventual death. Titus deconstructs his inner nihilist across the routine as disc one’s disgusted and damaged comic who is “pretty good at finding funny in a dark place” turns into disc two’s gripping and surprisingly sentimental storyteller trying to cope with a world gone wrong along with the loss of a reckless father. He idealizes his brutish dad after he’s gone and sees all the caring through the cracks in the man’s gruff exterior. There are uncomfortable pauses and even more uncomfortable insights along with the high laugh count which equals disc one. The second-half would be a lot less effective if it wasn’t for the first, which is a concern since The Fifth Annual End of the World does require a good chunk of the listener’s time to show its true worth. Carving out the time is important since this strange mix of painful, poignant, and very funny sticks to the bones when consumed correctly. – David Jeffries