Philip Fibiger

I saw Janeane Garofalo at the Wiltern theater on saturday night with Emily and our friend Steve. She was really funny, the performance was pretty loose, she was trying out new material. I haven’t seen many comics live (Paula Poundstone when she came to Cornell is the only other one I can think of), and the show met and exceeded my expectations. The opening act was Zach Galifianakis who has that show Late World on vh1. He was great, doodling on the piano and telling stories and one-liners, and finished his show up with a fabulous dance number, doing the robot.

It could have been perfect, except for the woman sitting next to me. She cackled like a high-pitched hyena any time either comic opened his or her mouth, which was followed by a snort and then some bizarre wheeze. As if that wasn’t enough, she’d then repeat a few words from the joke, often not the punchline or any remotely funny part, and then snort and wheeze again. It was funny for the first half hour of the show, and then started grating on me.