Skip to content
Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Werewolves and Lollipops

Patton Oswalt

Sub Pop · Album · 2007 · 54 min

A precise breakdown of fast food, politics, and the Star Wars prequels.

Listen on Apple Music(opens in a new tab)

Patton Oswalt turns cultural frustration into a spectator sport on Werewolves and Lollipops. This is the 2007 set where he introduces his critique of American laziness, specifically targeting the KFC Famous Bowl as a precursor to injecting a liquid lunch directly into the femoral artery. He applies the same logic to the federal government, comparing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to the Dukes of Hazzard escaping improbable weekly predicaments with a Waylon Jennings voiceover.

Recorded primarily as an audio release at Austin’s Cap City Comedy Club for the indie rock label Sub Pop, the album caught Oswalt at a transition point. He was newly married, fresh off a long run on the sitcom The King of Queens, and on the cusp of broader recognition with Pixar’s Ratatouille. The performance drifts from his fury over the Star Wars prequels, which he likens to replacing Angelina Jolie with a photo of Jon Voight’s scrotum, to a methodical dismantling of an impatient heckler. Reviewers at the time noted the recording as a career high, praising his exact balance of pop-culture minutiae and political anger.

The set list

5 bits

  1. KFC's Famous Bowls

    Mercilessly skewers the fast-food industry for piling all its fatty ingredients into a single container, labeling it 'a failure pile in a sadness bowl.'

  2. Killing George Lucas with a Shovel

    Rants against the Star Wars prequel trilogy and details what he would do if he traveled back in time to stop Lucas before they were produced.

  3. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as the Duke Boys

    Compares the administration to the Dukes of Hazzard, imagining Waylon Jennings narrating as they jump the General Lee over the Bill of Rights.

  4. Dealing with an unruly heckler during a birth control story

    Dismantles an interrupting audience member by modulating between highbrow, apocalyptic fantasy prose and blunt insult comedy.

  5. Restricting birthday celebrations to twenty per lifetime

    Argues that adulthood birthdays are unnecessary and proposes that anyone reaching age 100 should be legally permitted to commit murder.

How it plays

Tone
Cynical, scathing, absurd, subversive, and unapologetically smart yet scatological.
On stage
Geeky, amiable, unpretentious, and hyper-literate, balancing self-deprecating nerdiness with biting, scathing cynicism.
Pace
Masterful control over tone and pacing featuring dynamic quiet-to-loud variations likened to a Pixies song, eschewing traditional conversational transitions for rapid, sudden tonal shifts.
About
Fast food corporate absurdity, The Bush administration and political cynicism, Nerd culture and sci-fi franchise disillusionment, Aging, birth control, and birthdays, Gourmet culinary culture versus rock-and-roll excess

What the critics said

Met with widespread critical acclaim, hailed as a tightly written, seasoned stand-up masterclass that successfully merged highbrow intellectualism with unapologetic vulgarity.

In the room: An energized indie rock club crowd marked by vocal whooping, enthusiasm, and occasional drunken heckling handled directly from the stage.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: en.wikipedia.org, themoviebrowser.com, letterboxd.com, subpop.com, pitchfork.com, popmatters.com, allmusic.com, mcall.com, imposemagazine.com, freshairarchive.org, npr.org.

Backstory

Released on Sub Pop Records directly alongside Oswalt's mainstream breakthrough starring as the voice of Remy in Pixar's box-office hit 'Ratatouille', while wrapping a nine-season run on network television.

Details

Released
Taped
2006, 40 Watt Club, Athens
Runtime
54 min
Where
Sub Pop (album)
Director
Jason Woliner
Honors
Pitchfork (8.0/10) - Named Oswalt's magnum opusStylus Magazine (B+) - Described as a classic comedy album
Topics
Before
No Reason to Complain (2004)
After
My Weakness Is Strong (2009)

More from Patton Oswalt

If you liked this