The Joke's on Bush

Political comedy has really found its voice again this election year. The pitched battle for the White House has every satirist worth his salt sounding off – and working especially hard to be heard. Last week they started storming the airwaves via the first lefty talk-radio network. This week it's the comedy clubs through a national stand-up tour – one being launched in our fair city. Bizarro's PolitiComedy-a-Go-Go stars a "quartet of liberal wisenheimers" who aim to "reach out to voters and bitch about the issues all across the country from now until the first Tuesday in November." That's the word from tour mastermind Dan Piraro, creator of the newspaper comic Bizarro (seen in the Austin American-Statesman funny pages, sandwiched between Doonesbury and Ziggy). Fed up with "bidness as usual," the cartoonist decided to spearhead his own laugh-based liberal crusade and recruited a trio of politically savvy stand-up comics to join him: San Franciscan Michael Capozzola, New Yorker Jeff Kreisler, and Austin expatriate Brian Malow. Their comic crusade against the current administration (plus corporate fat cats, environmental pillagers, legislated morality, and other sizable targets) begins Friday night at the Velveeta Room.

According to Malow, the tour had its origins in the Wesley Clark campaign – gee, can you remember that far back? – as a form of support for the general. When his man dropped out of the race, Piraro realized that the tour didn't have to be for Clark, it could be against Bush. And "against Bush" he is, in no uncertain terms; his Web site for the PolitiComedy tour is ComicsAgainstEvil.com. In lining up professional funny men to accompany him, Piraro was able to turn to two guys he already knew, Kreisler and Capozzola, but finding a third comic with the right political sensibility and comedic chops had him stymied. Then Capozzola, who's known Malow for a while, sent Piraro to Malow's ButSeriously.com Web site. He liked it and offered Malow a spot.

They didn't plan to start out in Malow's old hometown, but as the team talked about clubs they knew that might be available in early April, Lone Star venues kept popping up. Piraro had lived in Dallas; Malow had played there recently. They were able to book two nights at the Dallas Improv, then two nights at the Houston Improv. And the Cheese Palace was open as well. "All this circumstance pushed us to start in Texas," says Malow. It was only after the fact that they realized, where better to begin bashing Bush than in Dubya's back yard?

Bizarro's PolitiComedy-a-Go-Go runs April 9-10, Friday and Saturday, 8 & 10:30pm, at the Velveeta Room, 521 E. Sixth. For more information, visit www.comicsagainstevil.com.