COMEDY REVIEW
For Gallagher comedy, you had to be there
By Chad Pata
While most entertainers of the '80s have blessedly faded into the sanctity of our collective memory, Gallagher has stuck like so much of his peanut butter and rice pie to our modern psyche.
Last night at the Blaisdell Concert Hall he proved why this is to a near-capacity crowd of Gallagher believers.
How does a man carve a 20-year career out of smashing things? Easy. He uses the sophomoric pranks to draw us in close so he can slice up the crowd with razor sharp wit. The wit is what keeps them coming back. As they say, the tongue is more powerful than the Sledge-o-matic.
The show began with his usual volleys of wrapped candy launched into the audience with his tennis racket. The sound of the crowd was the ohhs and ahhs of a Fourth of July fireworks display as Hershey's Kisses and Baby Ruths twinkled in the stage lights.
But the reaction was more like rabid fans clamoring after hundreds of foul balls flying into the stands. Now that the crowd was properly prepped, he let the dissection begin.
Crowd participation is key to his humor; he needs suckers to ridicule. When a local youth tried to upstage Gallagher, he was insulted within an inch of his life and laughed off the stage. The crowd roared, yet one by one people kept volunteering for the slaughter.
No one was free of his wrath. When one elderly man walking with a cane left to use the restroom, Gallagher escorted him, asking if he'd walk quicker once he had used the toilet. He targeted every ethnicity, a staple of humor here in Hawai'i; the only ill reaction came when he insulted the looks of Arab women, saying he understood why they wore veils.
Despite the small stumble, the rest of the show ran the gambit and really struck home. On lawyers, he mused, "In America if you ain't good at lying, a liar will be appointed for you."
For solving noise pollution problems: "Give all the houses by the airport to the deaf people."
Not exactly politically correct fare, but it has kept him and George Carlin in business for a long time.
He refers to himself as the Messenger of God and his fans look like disciples. In the first rows, known as "Death Row," people are outfitted in homemade Gallagher shirts, masks and snorkels and large garbage bags. They relish the splatterings from the stage like manna, like a honey-Spaghetti O's-marshmallow baptism.
Gallagher altered his formula here, adding things like poi, rice, kim chee and bamboo shoots.
His explanation of how to make Spam is a staple of his show. "The mystery being," Gallagher says with a quick smile at the audience, "is why it bounces?"
He then proceeds to bounce it like a child with a rubber ball.
At 3 1/2 hours, he is the Bruce Springsteen of comedy and summed up his show best with a comment about his younger days.
"Why is that things I want to do late at night sound so dumb in court in the morning?" he mused.
That's how the show felt, people doubled over with laughter while being brutalized and covered in a grocery store worth of smashed products. Within the moment it was bliss, but you do sound pretty stupid trying to explain it in the morning.
Chad Pata reviews of concerts and comedy shows for The Advertiser. You can contact him at chadpata@mac.com.
