A computer screen will never do Neil Hamburger justice. A television screen will fall light years short as well. The rounded glass face can show glares from bay windows and overhead lighting, but without dramatic improvements in pixilated technology, Hamburger’s blinding hair gloss will remain one of the seven understated wonders of the world. You don t appreciate the fluency his comb-over has until you ve been seated down in front of him at a live performance. His hair care practices could keep Vaseline permanently in the black and on The World’s Funnyman, a new concert DVD out on Drag City Records, he looks as slick as a seal in a Vaseline storm downpour. It’s the way he should look. Perhaps it’s the down under playground that is Australia that brings it out in him, makes him even more of a show-stopper. You can be assured that when his hair has a precise viscosity, the Paris Hilton sex video jokes pop a little bit louder. The Michael Jackson gags are illuminating and the Ronald McDonald murder ballad segment where the fast food clown pulls out a vintage Colt .45, once owned by Wyatt Earp, from his enormous Wild West memorabilia collection to pump two bullets into his daughter in a burger-shaped pool takes on a kind of air that if you didn t know better, you’d think it was something Larry McMurtry had penned after a dalliance with Tarantino movies and alcoholism. It makes the lips smack. Hamburger’s tunnel vision toward the flotsam of ravaged, debilitated celebrity lives is a labor of love for a man who claims to have played 399 shows to the same number of people in 2005. The World’s Funnyman is a collection of show performances and features, including the aforementioned Australian show filmed earlier this year, entitled That’s Not Gold, That’s Dung! His medley of jokes about why God invented various things and people and the part about Courtney Love’s Cranberry sauce where he asks, Are there any green beans here tonight? are why we watch DVDs. Sean Moeller

How Neil Hamburger got by last week:

1. Frank Sinatra Jr. – That Face CD (Reprise)

The great Sinatra Jr.’s first album in many many years is one of the only musical programs in recent memory that has the power to make a 700-mile drive an enjoyable experience.

2. Pleaseeasaur – The Amazing Adventures of Pleaseeasaur DVD (Comedy Central)

I have been working with these folks since time began, and it is good to see that a major company has loosened up the purse-strings to allow them to fully realize their complicated vision.

3. Huggies Diaper-Wipes

I use these to clean the keyboards of truck stop coin-operated computers before I go on-line while on the road. It is amazing the amount of bacteria, fecal matter, and even tapeworms that can be found on a public computer keyboard.

4.Bostworld

My old friend Derrick Bostrom has created a fascinating website of “trash, treasures, oddities, and obligations”; if you are stuck using coin-operated computers as I am, this one will eat up every penny in your pocket.

5. The drinks at the Starlight Lounge, Waterloo, Ontario

I performed here recently and the bartenders always go out of their way to make sure that the drinks are memorable, not only in the quantity and quality of alcohol included, but in the presentation: miniature flags, umbrellas, and decorative fruit on the rim, all help to give my on-stage drinking an air of professionalism.

Neil Hamburger
Drag City Records

Neil Hamburger illustration by Ally Ritchie