PicoBlog

Hello! Apologies on the REPLY ALT lag lately but folks… I have gotten myself in way over my head here. You’d think the hardest part about writing a book would be… you know, writing the book. But no. It’s actually the thousand and one things you have to worry about after that—the jacket copy, the audiobook, press, merch, events, etc. And on top of that, I thought to myself hmmmm you know what I should do in the middle of all this is release a second book. For fun! So I did that last month and those orders keep coming in! I’m mailing them out as fast as I can send them dammit! Everyone at the post office hates me! Thanks for the kind words about it if you ordered one. If you still want one, I have some more copies coming in very shortly.

So, yeah, I kind of feel like a one-man book publishing machine over here but maaaaaan, I’ve got some good, fun things planned for this fall. Aside from the book itself (out 10.26.21 for more info visit sellout.biz), I have a ton of cool related shit to guilt you into buying. So, if you want to buy said cool shit, I’d advise putting some money aside each week in what you can call your “Dan Ozzi fund.” Not a lot. Maybe just $200 - $900 each week, and by October, you should have plenty available to afford my wares!

Also, I have been doing a lot of No Plus Ones podcasting this summer. Basically David and I just gripe for an hour and it’s actually a lot cheaper than going to therapy. This week we griped about the L*mp B*zkit revival. Sorry!

Here’s a plug that’s NOT about me if you can believe it: Laura Stevenson has a new record coming out in a few days and it is phenomenal. I can’t think of a song that evokes a more visceral reaction out of me than the opening track. It makes me feel like I’m suffocating. Want to read a lil profile I wrote about her in SPIN? Well, great news. You can. Hmm now that I’m thinking about it I just remembered I have another profile due to SPIN like yesterday whoops better get on that huh.

Hey wanna hear a cool podcast? I was a guest on Yasi Salek’s Bandsplain and professed my love of Green Day for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. Uhh wake me up when September ends? More like wake me up when the dang podcast ends! Ha ha jk jk I have not slept in three days. And since I’m plugging Spotify podcasts all willy nilly, you gotta listen to my friend Kim interview Laura Jane Grace for her Best Advice podcast. Lots of great advice in there, namely: Dan Ozzi is a genius and we should all listen to him!

OK OK here’s today’s topic which is not music related but also fuck it who cares…

Like most 30-something comedy-fan dipshit losers, I am a big fan of the show I Think You Should Leave. If you follow me on Twitter, listen to my podcast, or have spent more than ten seconds around me in person, this is not news to you. I was such a big fan of the first season of the show, in fact, that I asked one of my favorite bands, Murder by Death, if they’d cover the “Bones Are Their Money” song and, amazingly, they said yes.

The recently released second season of ITYSL took some getting used to. I think I’d grown so accustomed to the vernacular and characters of the beloved first season that my brain was somewhat hesitant to allow that world to expand. But I’ve now watched Season 2 five times (haha what have YOU been doing with YOUR summer??) and I am finally ready to put all of the Season 2 sketches in order of My Official Ranking. Because, really, there’s no more appropriate way to appreciate any artform, especially comedy, than to confine it to a strict categorical order!

Now, keep in mind that this is just one guy’s opinion. But also keep in mind that this one guy’s opinion also happens to be the correct opinion. So, in case you see any other rankings out there, just know that this is the best one. Maybe bookmark it or print it out or something. OK here we go...

(Disclaimer: I don’t know what any of these sketches are actually called so I named them myself. In other words, I don’t know what any of this shit is and I’m fucking scared.)

A time-filler follow-up to a sketch that didn’t really need following up. Be honest: You don’t even remember seeing it, do you?

Very bland and forgettable. It felt like the setup for a visual gag that never came. Much like you can’t write a gun into a scene if you’re not gonna shoot it, you can’t mention huge turds if you’re not gonna show em!

I don’t know why so many Season 2 sketches take place in an office, but here’s one of many. A lot of setup that never really pays off aside from Tim Robinson saying “Juuulie.” 

Another office setting. If I’m not mistaken, this is the longest sketch in the ITYSL catalog (nine minutes!), and maybe it’s my ADHD-addled brain but I get bored halfway through it. The funniest part is actually the recurring throwaway gag where Robinson screams for the woman to HOLD THAT DOOR HOLD THAT DOOR!! and then walks away at a casual pace.

Although the season-opening hot dog sketch was one of my favorites (see below), I’m not sure it needed a follow-up, though it did give us the line, “You sure about that, that’s why?”

While I do normally find the humor in forcing absurdist and gross sentences to come out of the mouths of child actors (including the girl from fucking Once Upon a Time in Hollwood!), that’s sort of all there really is to this one.

I genuinely believe this sketch was an elaborate excuse to slap Brandon Wardell in the head.

Heidecker returns to play the asshole boyfriend character, just not as funny this time around. He’s no Paul Bufano.

The funniest part of this sketch is the name Jamie Taco.

This sketch has such a strange balance in that there are two separate gags going on at once—the depressed old man among 12-year-old girls in the Claire’s ear-piercing video, and the side bit of the guy WHO KNOWS ALL THIS ALREADY! Gotta give this show props for ending an entire season with a title card that says Thank You for Choosing Claire’s. Fucking bold.

It pains me to say this because I think Sam Richardson is one of the funniest working comedic actors around (PLEASE watch Detroiters if you haven’t already), but this sketch seemed like a retread of his Season 1 “Baby of the Year” sketch, which I also wasn’t a huge fan of. (Actually, wait, is this a sequel? Are the Buff Boys the Babies of the Year? Will they be teenagers in Season 3? Are we watching Bart Harley Jarvis grow up before our very eyes??) I do love the phrase Troll Boy though, and the shot of Richardson drinking from a comically huge water bottle. And the way he punctuates the alliterative phrase Buff Boys. Ah shit, maybe I talked myself into this one. Maybe this one deserved to get more goosed up. OK, it’s too late to change it now but pretend I put this one at number uhh…. #12.

I wish Conner O’Malley had gotten more screen time this season. Aside from this and a brief appearance in the Calico Cut Pants sketch, he was a bit underused. He, of all people, was not meant to play the straight-man, which he does here. Again, please see his appearance in Detroiters, in which he was adequately used. The two best screamers in the game going at it:

One thing I love about ITYSL is that, even when Robinson does not appear in a sketch, everyone still tries to mimic his manic, combustible energy.

Some of the S2 sketches just sort of trail off, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I am a firm believer that not everything needs a hard resolution. This sketch, on the other hand, does the opposite and tries to stick a very tough landing with a risky punchline. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cringe.

Worth it for this shot alone.

The first half of this sketch is tedious and repetitive—making us sit through four full minutes of Robinson saying he used to be a piece of shit for essentially a ten-second payoff of him and his boys slopping up their steaks. But maaaaan, when they slop up those steaks though....

Nothing too complicated here. Meat and potatoes comedy. This sketch feels like it could’ve been written on the way to filming it and they just shot it without even getting out of their cars. (If any sketch feels most like it was filmed under pandemic restrictions, it’s this one.) But Rage Robinson is possibly the funniest version of Tim Robinson.

The real-life actor who plays Santa Claus, who plays Detective Crashmore, is named Biff Wiff. Biff. Wiff. According to this interview Biff Wiff did with my friend Vince, Biff Wiff’s name is apparently not actually Biff Wiff. That’s called a stage name. Anyway, I’m gonna be using the phrase “cosmic gumbo” for the next two years, min-i-mum, so thanks to Biff Wiff and apologies to my friends who have to deal with me.

(P.S. I’m combining the Crashmore trailer and AOL Blast segment into one here.)

Patti Harrison is hands down one of the funniest humans alive. She saved an otherwise meh Season 1 sketch with her brilliant delivery of very simple lines like “Santa brought it early!” and “Are we even gonna get anything now?” And she does more of that here with “And popcorrrrn!” and “I can’t stand bald boys” and… whatever the thing she’s doing in the screenshot is. Netflix needs to give her her own show ASAP as well pleeeease.

This sketch was a grower for me. After you get over the initial delight of realizing you’re getting a cameo from Bob Odenkirk (prayers up!), you start to wrap your head around what the sketch is. It keeps escalating, but never goes anywhere too wild. But we do get a lot of weird, quotable one-liners and offbeat vernacular out of it, ones which I’ve already found myself working into daily use. Triples is best! I will never be able to hear the words Nova, Roadrunner, or Barracuda again without thinking of it. Not that I heard them often, but still. I have also found myself habitually tapping my phone when I’m among people and saying, “Oh good, that Nova deal’s a sure thing now.” Yes, I’m that guy.

The hat reveal shot is probably the funniest use of camera focal range as a sight gag... ever.

As mentioned, Patti Harrison is a comedic treasure, and she and Robinson (sort of) appear together in this sketch. Two jokesters in their prime, just yelling about tables. Like watching the damn ‘95 Bulls of alt-comedy. Oh, speaking of basketball, I’ve been rewatching this SNL sketch a lot lately. One of the rare appearances by Tim Robinson. (Let. Him. Host.)

There’s a 30 Rock line I think about a lot in which Tracy Morgan says, “I once filmed a whole movie without ever getting out of my car.” Well, Tim Robinson does this whole hilarious sketch without leaving the couch. Truly proof that he could be a torso-less floating head and still make me laugh. This sketch introduced the phrase “Dan Flashes” to the world as shorthand for a shirt with a complicated design… maybe forever? Will we never again be able to see a shirt with a criss-cross pattern and wonder if the guy wearing it bought it at the Creek with his per diem?

If Season 1 was the mudpie season, Season 2 was the Season of Cumshot, firmly solidified with this sketch.

One thing I really appreciated about Season 2 is that it did not try to give people more of what clearly worked the first time around. No Focus Group guy. No Chunky. Hell, we didn’t even get another song a la the Bones Are Their Money. No, that would’ve all been too easy. So I do wonder if mayyyybe kicking Season 2 off with a sketch about a hot dog was Robinson’s very subtle nod to the show’s S1 fan-fave-turned-meme guy in a hot dog suit. Or maybe he just thinks hot dogs are funny. Either way, this is a perfect ITYSL sketch in that in takes a normal setting, makes it silly, then makes it full-on deranged, then just abruptly ends.

This has got to be the most expensive, most elaborate one-joke sketch in the show, if not sketch comedy history. The cost and preparation that must’ve gone into all these coffin flops… my god. I know there’s a piece about how it all came about but I don’t want to read it because I don’t want it demystified. All I wanna see is body after body busting outta shit wood and hitting pavement.

The first time I saw this sketch, I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Just a perfect premise, perfect costuming, perfect timing. How many Karl Havocs do you think we’ll be seeing this Halloween? And how many of those people do you think will get into the costume and realize there’s too much fucking shit on them and they can’t breathe?

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