Bookery: Paul Scheer of Human Giant
Apr 9, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Brendan Kiefer
An admirable trait in a comedian is the willingness to curse in front of children, to deride their scruples, to mentally demolish them and to treat them as if age were no excuse for their pitiful, youthful inexperience or a ghastly lack of understanding. The only reason we done loved Will Ferrell's "The Landlord" was because Adam McKay's young daughter gets regarded as a craggy old lady with a drinking problem and a potty mouth. Jonathan Lipnicki was only cute because he knew adult things about the weight of the human brain and for having the spiky hair of an unnerving middle-aged real estate agent. (Lipnicki gets the mention because he's now blasted as someone who didn't translate that pipsqueak mojo into career longevity). Paul Scheer and the rest of his Human Giant cohorts - Rob Huebel and Aziz Ansari - create a wealth of hilarity at the hands of toddlers, a group that's been royally coddled since the beginning of time. They are not immune to being the butt of jokes or the subjects of scathing commentary. Human Giant, like the little people before them, have no sacred cows and are willing to goofily bludgeon all comers into the same kind of delirious laugh pudding as our old Canadian friends in Kids In The Hall. They wear fewer dresses and lipstick than the Kids, but just give them time. Scheer, one of the Sugarplums and a man with the second most famously formidable smile gap in television this side of Letterman, here reads of the less glamorous sides of celebrity life - the shockingly mundane details that not one goddamn person in the world should find of any free-reading interest. It's the regular installment of the Daytrotter Bookery featuring Scheer reading the supermarket tabloid column "Celebrities Are People Just Like Us." We hope that this is just one of many.
"Human Giant Official Site":http://www.thehumangiant.com
"MTV Official Site":http://www.mtv.com
