HITCH UP THE MULES
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Using slides to illustrate our displaced priorities and materialistic mind-set (including a hilarious series in which he parties with a Clinton look-alike), Mulrooney hearkens back to the pioneer days, when trying to live past the age of 40 constituted the only life-style. In the show’s sharpest segment, he asks randomly chosen audience members to call out their occupations in the midst of a pretend Indian attack on a wagon train. As he shouted for help, we learned that the brave reinforcements sent to save us were a sales representative, a contingency management coordinator, and the governor’s press assistant. We’re doomed, I thought, but fortunately the fourth person was a nurse.
In short, we’ve specialized well beyond the need to live till tomorrow–we’ve mastered survival but lack reasons to live, and we’ve got too much time on our hands. “How silly life gets when we don’t have to fight for our lives,” Mulrooney says. (But I’m not sure there–I don’t need to hang glide or bungee jump to taste mortality. Here you may be skirting death just crossing the street.)
Combining Jay Leno’s commonsense reductionism with Chicago-style irreverence, Mulrooney delivers his loosely knit material with verve and, well, style. He’s gone beyond simple survival to make us laugh–and that’s not an irrelevant life-style choice.
