Comedians aren't supposed to be happy, just the opposite, but Dane Cook is the Disneyland of comics: He's the happiest, most uncomplicated place on Earth.
He's Seacrest-psyched, boy voted most likely. Cutest. Funniest. Coolest. For Cook, this is no ironic pose à la Andy Kaufman; it's a whole insufferable ethos, integral to the rise of his career. He's become huge by asserting that the comic mind does not come from alienation and restlessness but from adoration and social connection ? the comic as your instant-messaging best pal.
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To the question, "What happened to stand-up?" Cook might very well be the depressing answer: It put product in its hair, dumbed itself down and became as eager to please as a trainee at a TGI Friday's. And still it got itself a series, "Tourgasm," which ended its run on HBO last month.
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"There's so many things that I want to let you guys into my world about," is the ungrammatical sentence with which Cook greets his fans at the FleetCenter.
They're screaming like he's Justin Timberlake, and maybe he is. For what is demoralizing is the swagger in the face of such vanilla material, the total absence ? like Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch ? of self-loathing.
In Cook's act there is no war, no class divide, no crime, no fear, no news, no world. There is only solicitation, the "so many things that I want to let you guys into my world about."