People hate this guy.  HATE HIM.  I remember being a big fan, just like you were...and you were, stop lying...right around the time 'Harmful if Swallowed', his debut comedy CD came out.  He was great.  I saw some specials on Comedy Central, saw him on Premium Blend.  The guy had an insane amount of stage charisma and power in his delivery.  The kind of comedian where you laugh at the delivery and then decide if you like the joke.  The most identifying quality about him was his hunger.  I feel that it is this hunger which drove his rise and his fall.

He turned myspace into his bitch, riding the wave of that website better than Tila Tequila, better than the All-American Rejects.  Better than anyone.  He must have spent 12+ hours a day promoting himself online.  Once he broke out though, he had so much momentum that he blew past the desired equilibrium for am American celebrity (think Ed Norton, Dave Chappelle, Jessica Biel) and landed face first into this ocean of resentment.  The sad thing is he didn't stop, he kept pushing.  He signed movie deals putting his face on posters everywhere from the sides of busses to bathroom stalls.  No one could escape the guy's fittingly oversized head.  So, naturally, people just ripped into him.  It's a shame, because it seemed like everyone forgot how much he made them laugh in the first place.  Ohhhhh but he stole jokes from other people, etc. etc.  I'm going to put that to rest on this entry by stating that that is a far more complex debate than anyone is treating it and his opposition is just too fueled by jealousy and hate for me to take seriously.

Last night I tuned in for a bit of his 'Isolated Incident' to cheer myself up after a mildly traumatizing sports-related incident.  It was a neat concept going from a massive Boston Garden special with thousands of people to just handful in a small club.  There was an intimacy and a silence in the room that really gave the material weight.  It just felt candid and real.  Dane Cook himself looked different.  Darker.  Buzzed his head and bulked up as though America was a playground bully and he had spent the last two years salivating over revenge.  The jokes were dark yet that same old energy was there.

I didn't get the chance to catch the whole thing last night so I hopped on YouTube this morning to see if I could find it.  No dice.  However, there is a six piece 'DVD Special' type deal that involves a sit-down with Dane and clips of all the stand-up he did leading up to the special.  I absolutely 100% reccommend taking the time to watch it.  The man has been through some seriously troubling times.  He fearlessly presents footage of himself self-destructing in front of an audience, tells of the impact of his friends attempted suicide and his parents' deaths within 9 months of each other coupled with the cruelest of hate mail meant to tear open those fresh wounds.  Throughout it all he owns up to his own shortcomings and missteps as both a celebrity and a person.  I respect that tremendously.  Maybe it's all just spin; the best answer he can give to shift that momentum and nullify the resentment.  You decide.  Here's the link to the first video in the series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJpqBJGlpQ0