Opinion: Vince Hase is funny. Somewhere.

Vince Hase’s comedy album is pretty much how an editor tells you to go fuck yourself.

Hase emailed The Skinny with a copy of his performance and asked if we could listen to it and let him know what we thought. Since most people’s spell-checkers don’t recognise five hours of screaming, it was passed to me.

Now bear with me. This is going to be a bumpy ride. What you have to realise is that I didn’t find Vince particularly funny, but as a person, I actually quite liked him. I was conflicted as fuck. It didn’t help that his introduction letter was so sweet the Diabetes Association rank it somewhere between a jar of jam and 18 beers. This guy had put his heart on the line and I was being asked to wipe my ass on it.

He has his own website, which is a personal, heartfelt affair describing taking up comedy as a way of overcoming his crippling diagnosis of ADD. He talks honestly about taking up theatre and eventually comedy, to channel his condition into something constructive, and to finally have some sense of control in a world gone mad. His story is punctuated by punchlines and throwaway comedy, indicating a humorous slant on a serious subject, but leaving me feeling like I was watching an advert for cancer awareness with a laugh track attached.

Oh fuck. He donates money to the homeless and works part-time on a radio show offering words of inspiration to those who feel lost. He also produces a web comic that details his own crazy take on the misadventures of life, which is good news for people who like Kids Say the Darnedest Things and unfussy autism. Telling this guy his jokes sucked would be like taking a shit in an orphan’s chemotherapy machine.

His album is a series of sketches and impressions that his brain apparently didn’t know what the fuck else to do with. He cites Monty Python as his inspiration, which is probably something his sense of humour remembered halfway through a skit about a ‘psychic drive-thru operator’ and a suicide note. 

One of the cornerstones of comedy has always been, 'What if [INSERT FAMOUS CHARACTER OR CELEBRITY] worked in [INSERT WACKY LOCATION OR JOB]?’, taking the unsuspecting listener on a giggle-filled journey through a world where Christopher Walken works in a dildo factory. If applied correctly, this technique has a 100% success rate, as long as the part of your brain that suggests Three Stooges and Crime Scene Investigation also suggests when to fucking stop. Eight minutes into terrible Three Stooges impersonations, Hase may have scientifically disproved the existence of laughter. The entire album is a collection of funny set-ups that are either taken too far or just left burning in a bag on your doorstep.

Comedy is subjective; it’s not my job to tell you what is and isn’t funny. It’s only my job to tell you what Disney theme tune is best to fuck to (SPOILER: It’s Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers). Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean you won’t. Plenty of comedians have made very successful careers out of not being funny, as millionaire not-funny-men Carrot Top and Dane Cook can testify on their own private island where they hunt men for sport.

The fact is, funny or not, Vince actually got off his ass and did something about that thing he loved. Vince is effectively the Dian Fossey of artistic passion, where crazy voices and impressions play the part of uninterested mountain gorillas. If comedy was an event in the Special Olympics, Vince Hase won a fucking hug.

In a world in which cynicism, apathy and cruelty often form the foundation for stand-up routines, Vince stands alone as something pure. He aspires to a punchline that isn’t just ‘dick’ or ‘rape’ and reminds you of a simpler time where humour could be harmless whimsy and a universe where Del Boy falling through a bar was the funniest shit you’d ever seen.

Maybe we’ve all gotten too hip and self aware to appreciate Vince. It’s like a fish-out-of-water plot, where Vince has been thrown forward in time from the 1980s and staggered confused and naked into a comedy club and announced, “Hey! What if a doctor was teaching surgery to students and his assistant was Igor from Frankenstein and he actually didn’t know how to perform surgery... I think it would sound… something… like… this… WHY ARE YOU ALL WEARING LENSLESS GLASSES? Why are you talking about vaginas? Who is this ‘Bridget Christie’ and why is a woman holding a comedy award? OH MY GOD. YOU FINALLY DID IT. YOU BLEW IT ALL UP. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”

Imagine if this was The Walking Dead; five minutes into the zombie apocalypse most of us would have descended into darkness and despair. Shooting each other over the last box of Sugar Puffs and trying to work out how to stuff a fat person full of zombie poison. Vince would be the only one to retain a sliver of humanity; a sort of sad optimism in a world gone to hell. He’d keep us sane as death shuffled relentlessly towards us with his bouncy flights of fancy involving nasally-voiced dentists and misunderstandings over manure.

Sure, halfway through a skit about Chewbacca comically working in a Burger King drive-thru, he’d be eaten to death by Zombies, but you know… I think it would sound… something… like… this:

"HEY, I’D LIKE A HAPPY MEAL. A BIG MAC AND DIET COKE. DO YOU GUYS DO SALADS? *CHEWBACCA SOUNDS* OH HELLO CHEWBACCA, UM, DO THE SALADS COME WITHOOOH FUCK THEY’RE EATING MY FACE…OH GOD ARRGGHHHH…*CHEWBACCA SOUNDS* AAAARRGGHH... *faint Chewbacca sound*"

Fuck you, hipsters. Vince Hase deserves our appreciation. In a better, kinder world where we value bravery, honesty and innocence he’d get five stars, hard.

Two stars in this world.