TORONTO - With the price of crude going down all over the world, it's a good thing comedian Andrew Dice Clay is still going with his own brand of crude.
Although performing a rather short 45-minute set before a half-filled Massey Hall on Saturday night, the "Diceman" seemed in good form (and humour) most of the show.
As a few loyal followers demanded that the 51-year-old performer begin with his own notorious version of bawdy nursery rhymes, Clay instead opted for material revolving around the "a------ human being" and its obsession with technology, primarily the cellphone and laptop computers.
While some used said cellphones to record parts of the show, only adding fuel to Clay's fire, Clay got his biggest and earliest laughs by imagining how proud his father might have been when they received their phone.
"Go ahead Joey, tangle up the phone cord! Tangle up the phone cord, Joey!" Clay said before ridiculing BlackBerry users and text messengers.
Occasionally conversing with a man in the front row, Clay, wearing black leather jacket, matching gloves and removing rather large George Burns-ish glasses moments after sauntering onstage, then went into a routine involving his obsession with a paper shredder.
"If your idea of fun is going to Staples or Office Depot, it's game over," Clay said before mentioning how he ended up purchasing two paper shredders when "I don't even need one."
Later on Clay also chewed out ladies who created acronyms like LOL (laugh out loud) for chat rooms. "So are you doing that while you're typing? What's wrong with you?"
However, it was after the technological spiel that Clay seemed to give the fans what they wanted, namely material based around sex. But not before returning to the computer angle, noting how some men's idea of foreplay was watching a plump Brazilian woman's webcam and rapid-fire typing.
To state the obvious, Clay's schtick is not for everyone but he has crafted a following along the lines of Howard Stern minus the hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Clay has paved the way in some respects for the current crop of "shock comedians."
After mentioning how he could never figure out which Godfather movie he was watching and why Sonny Corleone used a garbage can and not a pipe in attacking a foe, Clay saved some of his more biting and cringe-worthy salvos for Las Vegas tiger-tamers Siegfried and Roy.
"You know that people who went to the shows, they were thinking, 'Maybe tonight's the night,' " Clay said in reference to Roy's near-fatal attack back in 2003.
Finally, after much hollering from a few in the balcony, Clay went into his handful of nursery rhymes about Little Bo Peep, Three Blind Mice, Jack and Jill and Hickory Dickory Dock with the signature "Ohhh!" at the end of each perverted piece of prose.
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