Have You Heard of Christmas?, Joe

In general, I really, truly hate this shit. But I don't want to spend my entire review on that, because... I don't know, because it's Christmas, and it feels like all the hatred I experience should be pointed inward, toward the self. It'd be pretty rotten to expend any of that hateful energy toward other parties, especially someone who is just trying their darndest to make us laugh. I didn't laugh once, is the thing, but ya know, maybe that's just my fault. If it isn't, we can just pretend it's my fault, since it's the season for joy and kindness, and all that jazz.

I don't even know if I'm quite there in explaining, even to myself, why I didn't think it was funny (if that's even my responsibility, who knows). It's complicated, and I don't want to speak without really giving it some thought, since I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression. Give me like 500 words to try to explain it? Is that okay? Thanks for sticking with me.

Might be easier to start by explaining what it's not. It's definitely not that I'm offended. That would be easy, but it's not that. There is comedy that I'm offended by, but it's usually comedy that seems hateful toward groups of people. Say a well known comedian insists on making jokes about trans people because he's transphobic, and uses his extremely popular platform to crack jokes at trans people's expense. That offends me. Matt Rogers is not that, obviously.

Maybe we can think about the "is it funny" chart in two dimensions. There is the x-axis (funny to not-funny), and the y-axis (liberal to conservative). There are, of course, all kinds of hacks in the not-funny/conservative quadrant, and very, very few in the funny/conservative quadrant (if any?). Then there is the funny/liberal quadrant, which, cool. But it's important to not forget about the not-funny/liberal quadrant. This is Ilana Glazer-grade unfunny. This is where you find your Saturday Night Live, basically. Just because you adhere to same ideals as I do doesn't make it inherently funny. I fucking hate trump, for instance, but performing a skit in which the premise is "gee this trump guy sure is stupid" is, like, the lowest fucking form of humor.

There's one mention of our former president on this album, but that's not what I'm trying to explain here. I'm more so talking about the sex jokes. I'd say that about 50% of Matt Rogers jokes boil down to "isn't it so FUNNY and EDGY that this joke is RAUNCHY?!" There's a bit in which Rogers sings about lubing the sleigh to make it move quicker, and then the reindeer finding out that the lube works well for sex with each other. There's no other layer to the joke besides "haha can you imagine? reindeers? having sex?" This kind of joke happens over and over.

The best humor subverts your expectations, and I guess that's the issue here (maybe). Matt Rogers is a liberal guy, and I assume his audience is 99.9% liberal. Matt Rogers is a publicly well-known and open and proud gay man, and I stand with Matt Rogers against all forms of tyranny and hate and discrimination. But the thing is, that's his audience too. We are all totally open to discussing formerly taboo topics such as sex. Nothing about this is shocking. There's no subversion. There's nothing clever about it. "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if it was the Little Drummer Boy, but dirty?!?!" I'm mean, I guess, theoretically, but you have to actually do something to make it funny. Figuring out that "drum" rhymes with "cum" does nothing for me. It's like Matt Rogers is under the impression that he can take all the jokes we made in fifth grade and consider them "funny" because he's an ADULT singing the jokes in MUSIC made for PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.

I have the same issue with RuPaul's Drag Race, if we're being honest here. Lots of sex puns on that program, and most of them make me cringe so fucking hard. Maybe the implied acronym made from "charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent" was edgy in the '90s, but this is 2023. Shit just seems rote at this point. I'm not even saying that any of this necessarily has to be funny. But the thing is, Matt Rogers promotes this album as a comedy album, and so the expectation is that it will be funny. Note I wasn't saying the same thing about Ana Gasteyer's album this year, since she specifically indicated that it wasn't supposed to be a comedy album. "I would think it would have to be funnier, if that were the case" I think were her exact words. Hint hint.

Based on the votes in this year's holiday poll, obviously there are people who disagree with me about this guy and his humor. I am very happy that I have friends who find merriment and mirth in the idea of a comedian yelling the word "SEX!" over and over. 

I'm not satisfied with my explanation on why I disagree, but before I cross Ts and dot Is, I want to talk about the stuff that I did find funny. There were some good bits sprinkled throughout the album, and though they did not make me laugh, I thought there was enough potential in these ideas that they are worth mentioning. First, I'll say that the last third of the album was a lot better than everything leading up to it. I liked how "Rain on Christmas" was able to mine humor from acknowledging privilege, which is a tricky needle to thread. "I Don't Need It to Be Christmas at All" was surprisingly serious, which I thought was well-placed at the end. Okay, not that serious, but definitely more, I don't know, heartfelt than the rest of the too-stupid jokes. And "God's Up to His Tricks!" was by far the best song on here. Something about the juxtaposition of Rogers' overly-cheery attitude and his singing about how god is a "freaky daddy" who kills your dog and gives your mom cancer really landed well.

Extratextually, I enjoyed a couple things. One, I enjoyed MUNA's supporting role on "Everything You Want" (or at least one of the MUNAs, at least). It was a good joke to have a serious artist on a joke song, even though it also makes me wonder if Rachel S. has ever listened to Matt Rogers' podcast, Las Culturistas (I do not think that she has). I also appreciated the joke that you only get if you watch on YouTube—each song has a "visualizer," and most of those visualizers are just Matt Rogers doing dances by himself in a cozy Christmas den. I might not think it's necessarily funny, but I am a man who appreciates commitment. Plus, let's not forget to mention that this is more or less completely a CILO album, but one that breaks the fourth wall and acknowledges the fact that it's wall-to-wall CILO. I dig that meta aspect to it.

I don't know, man. I don't know if I'm satisfied with this review. I don't think I have a good enough handle on what I think is funny or why, and I'm wondering now if maybe I should've known this wasn't my type of album and just skipped the whole thing. Like, I feel like I'm just setting myself up again for the people who are overly enthusiastic about this unfunny shit to assume I'm homophobic or something. That's too easy of an answer, beyond being not remotely true. But, like, note that not too many straight musicians are getting treated to overly verbose half-explanations on the blog as to why their art sucks shit. Right? So this is me wondering, too, what exactly my responsibility is here. Does my responsibility to stand as an ally supersede Matt Roger's responsibility to make me chuckle even once? Are those ideas mutually exclusive like I hope they are, or are they intertwined? I don't know.

From my vantage point, saying that I fucking hate this album is the only true way I can prove that I don't discriminate. I don't care about your race or creed or gender or sexual preference or anything like that, if your comedy is basically what SNL would be if it didn't have censors, then I need everyone to know that I do not find you funny.

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5