ROB PUE: PUEGILIST (Comedy Records). $9.99. comedyrecords.ca Rating: NNN
True to the punning title of his debut comedy album, stand-up Rob Pue doesn’t pull his punches, and sometimes he even hits below the belt. Be prepared. Pue grew up a military brat on bases across the country. He’s not a touchy-feely kind of guy.
But the great thing about his act is that his persona feels authentic. He’s not going to succumb to politically correct notions of behaviour. It would rob him of his material, which is mainly angry diatribes about sex and gender.
What becomes clear on this album is that he’s an equal opportunity asshole. His joke about how women look particularly frumpy in the winter, hiding their bodies in Ugg boots, Lululemon tights and hoodies, might seem misogynistic. But then he lays into guys wearing skinny jeans (I won’t spoil the punchline) and suddenly, somehow, he’s less offensive.
Being “less offensive” isn’t the same as being sympathetic. We never get on his side – and he doesn’t want us to. When Pue performs live, he carefully negotiates the audience’s reactions. In person, his demonic giggle works. On audio, he sounds more smug and self-satisfied.
His longest joke is inspired by a news story about a snake eating a baby, which gets him to lay into trailer-park stereotypes in vivid detail.
There’s also terrific writing in the album’s funniest sequence, which begins by looking at pornography’s enfeebling effect on our erotic imaginations and ends in a (literal) blow-by-blow description of female and male genitalia.
In a bonus track, he expands his range to include race. It’s a serious and timely topic, but as usual Pue finds a way in. Why can’t white people talk about racism? he asks rhetorically. After all, he says, “We invented it.”
A quick, brutal line from a comic who enjoys saying the unsayable.
