Raoulduke1845

When I heard last year that Louis C.K. got a deal for an HBO show, I was ridiculously excited. He was (and is) probably my favorite stand-up comic going. When I heard about the show format a few months ago, I scratched my head a bit (I originally heard it was going to be skit comedy in the vein of Chappelle's Show or Taco Bell Dana Carvey) but I had faith that whatever he did would be funny. He had, after all, been one of the most consistently funny stand-ups in the past ten years, from his Dr. Katz stuff to his HBO special and the many stage performances I'd seen in between. I will admit that I have not been fully satisfied with his first two episodes. The writing is uneven and a bit base and the acting is fairly poor; I've gotten a few laughs, but not the usual C.K. laughs per capita. That said, I still have faith because I've been through this before. When I first saw Curb Your Enthusiasm, I hated it. It took a couple of episodes for Larry and I to hit it off, but we did and now it is one of my favorite shows. Same could be said for my experience with Chappelle's Show, The Office (both American and British), and even my favorite show of my adult life, Arrested Development. Louis C.K. is of the same comedic caliber as Larry David, Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais, etc., and because of this, I have faith that the show will hit its stride and I won't miss a minute of it when it does.

I finally watched this movie after watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about 50 times and reading almost all of Hunter S. Thompson's books. I have to say that while I enjoyed the movie, most people won't. Unless you have a pretty thorough knowledge of HST's work, it won't make much sense, and its comedic value will not be enough to make it worthwhile. However, if you have read FNL on The Campaign Trail and Strange Rumblings in Azatlan, then the movie will probably be of interest to you. One area where this film is far superior to FNL in Las Vegas is in its depiction of Oscar Zeta Acosta, the attorney who is the basis for Carl Lazlo here and Dr. Gonzo in FNL. Acosta was actually a prominent civil rights attorney in the 60's and 70's, especially in the Chicano community in Southern California. He also was a notoriously hard partier by most accounts. This movie does a much better job of capturing his odd duality than FNL does, and Peter Boyle is quite sharp in the role - interesting to watch for those of you who only know him as the father on Raymond.