Misch Masch

LENNY BRUCE is dead. George Carlin has sold out to the interests. Mel Brooks is out of ideas. Robert Klein is all washed up. Woody Allen doesn't do much stand-up anymore. Where can you go to get a few uncorrupted laughs?

One alternative is to pull up stakes and head to the Borscht-Belt. You can always be assured of a few side-splitters when the boys go into their Jules Podell/Copa routines. Or how about those uproarious "tough audience" anecdotes. Or those "my wife, my kids, my dog" segues? Guaranteed a few guffaws.

Hoo-hah. But if you are in the market for some laughs that aren't spelled with two f's, then maybe you can pick up a couple for free when David Misch plays the Nameless Coffee House.

The difference between Misch and about every other comedian around today is that Misch isn't a comedian at all-he's a lyricist. When he jogs on stage with a couple of guitars and one-liners flying, you're not sure if you are going to hear a twenty-year-old Henny Youngman or a nervous Pete Seeger. But be patient. Misch fuses comedy and song and comes up with some of the funniest lyrics since the days of Tom Lehrer.

Don't expect him to belt out anything as simple as "the Catholics hate the Protestants and the Protestants hate the Catholics." Between the surrealistic "song of trunks" and his ode to overdue library books, Misch seems about as far removed from the mainstream as a comedian can get--and still be funny.

He's at his best when he rouses the local clientele with his cynical "Somerville." This interesting piece of nativist humor, which served as a national anthem for half the audience, featured some deliberately snappy lyrics:

Somerville, Oh Somerville,

Where sub shops grace every hill

Where at night the stop-lights change from red to

green and back from green to red

A wondrous place where branches hang from every tree

And people go to work and then back home.

Alas, a full hour of Misch doesn't go by untainted. Here and there he slips up and tries to sneak in an old Jack Carter re-tread like "I was once so poor I used to walk into a restaurant and play for an omelette--what a tough crowd that was." Misch was fortunate enough this night to have a shill blurt out a well-timed "If you're funny enough--any egg will crack up," to obscure the dreaded silence. But he'd do best to refrain from the clinkers and stick with his own fresh material. In a comic field sorely needing new humor. Misch seems to have his own little monopoly of laughs.