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ePaper created 2016-03-27, 04:02:35 | version 1.33.0
L istening to his sophomore album, Don’t Sioux Me (following 2008 debut Strip Solitaire), it’s not hard to imagine that Rob O’Reilly probably did all right in the usually-harsh environs of middle school. In this hypothetical scenario, the young ladies dig him because he possesses bad-boy (willing to say filthy and/or “wrong” things) and good-boy (charming self-deprecation, silly voices) qualities in practically equal proportions, the tougher dudes don’t pick on him because he can smart-ass his way out of any situation, and teachers can’t help but laugh when they’re supposed to be disciplining him. Having recently moved from New York City to Los Angeles, the 26-year-old host and producer of the Moving Arts Theater’s monthly Hand Shucked show is actively positioning himself to capitalize on acting roles emphasizing his boyish looks and sense of humor. If you took away sex, farting and racial differences, O’Reilly would have next to no material, but his lovable-goofball delivery pulls off what could otherwise be well-tread, predictable territory. A story about his professor using the phrase “retarded ejaculation” in class, much to O’Reilly’s delight (and no one else’s), turns into a gag about his own orgasms that involves jazz hands. Elsewhere, while exploring society’s double-standard view of male versus female masturbation, he gets the biggest laugh from admitting that his girlfriend’s seen him do the deed while having sex in order “to work [himself] back up” and then becoming embarrassed when no one in the crowd will admit to doing the same. Elsewhere still, while engaging in some crowd work, he points out an audience member’s shirt, which reads “I Love SD” (meaning San Diego). O’Reilly muses about what else “SD” might mean before realizing, when the crowd has already made the joke for itself and started laughing, that the easy punchline was “sucking dick.” He then goes on to point out how he came to the slow realization, which makes it even better. It’s no fault of O’Reilly’s material, but one major downfall of Don’t Sioux Me is its shoddy recording quality. More than a few tracks are awkwardly cut — listeners can hear applause abruptly stop, bits were clearly edited to include only the funniest parts, and so on — and the volume is far too low. So low, in fact, that it forces the listener to continually up the volume, especially if the listening experience is occurring in a car, which can frankly be pretty terrifying if the next disc in the player is anything beyond a bearded folkie strumming an acoustic guitar. But much like O’Reilly himself, his recording quality will only improve over time if he keeps at it (or employs the proper technicians). On the other end of the less-rewarding side of his material are his one-liners and puns. At one point he brings a guy onstage to clang a coffee-can rimshot every time he reads one of his Twitter-born zingers. Mostly cheesy, these occasionally earn a laugh, but when a performer’s onstage helper gets as many – if not more – chuckles as your material is getting, it might be time to retire some of the one-liners from the act. Immediately following those, O’Reilly launches into a three-minute, 10-part Native American pun joke that’s equally head-shaking and admirable if only, much like a relentless David Letterman or Family Guy gag, because it refuses to die. And yes, the album derives its title from this bit. Calling a comedian “likable” is kind of a lukewarm compliment, nearly equivalent to calling music “listenable” in that could be construed as a bare-minimum-level achievement. But O’Reilly is immensely likable in a dorky way, and that’s very likely helped him earn his appearances on Comedy Central, America’s Got Talent, Last Comic Standing, The Tonight Show and being named one of Funny Or Die’s “30 Comedians to Watch Under 30.” But likable only goes so far, and if his material didn’t show promise, he wouldn’t still be doing this after close to 10 years. With time comes experience, and it seems clear he’ll make his way to a place that relies less on fart jokes and more on the insightful humor that rears its head in O’Reilly’s material more often than not. v HQ TRADE MAGAZINE APRIL 2016 104