Greg giraldo fun for stand-up fans I Am Comic

If you adulation standup ball -- I mean, absolutely adulation it -- again I Am Banana is a awry must-see.

If all you apperceive about it is that you are consistently allotment of a admirable audience, again abundant of I Am Banana ability as able-bodied be in Esperanto, but it's still account a look.

Put calm by an ex-journeyman banana called Jordan Brady (whose own mother describes him as a "hack") and hosted by a down-at-his-heels ex-A-lister called Ritch Shydner, I Am Banana is a blowzy accumulating of soundbites from added than 100 alive comedians, best of them respected, some vilified (Carrot Top, Carlos Mencia) some transcendently ablaze (Louis C.K.).

Their observations, rants and space-cadet free-associations (hello, Tommy Davidson) generally assume random, admitting the doc is afar into categories like hecklers, the Internet and the alley (including the abhorrence that is the "comedy condo").

Almost admitting itself, however, I Am Banana eventually reveals a adventure abundant like that in the arch doc Seinfeld: Comedian. Shydner was already a Johnny Carson-favoured son. In the '90s, he abdicate and affronted to anti-depressants. In I Am Banana -- in amid interviewing added comedians in 88 account than Jay Leno has in his career -- Shydner decides to try a few aching accessible mikes. It is like watching an age-old Wade Boggs beat at a T-ball and miss.

His arc is interesting, and ultimately redeeming. Beyond that -- although I Am Banana sprawls from mid-West road-stops to New York's Ball Cellar and Catch a Rising Star, to L.A. institutions like the Laugh Factory and Improv, to a Jeff Foxworthy amphitheatre appearance -- the cine is abundant like demography a camera into the auberge lounge at a ball anniversary at 3 a.m. It is chatty, abundantly unguarded, and every so generally you charge subtitles to hear.

Comedy aficionados could account for hours over things in I Am Comic, including:

- Carlos Mencia's appreciative acceptance that, yes, he is a antic bandit (he likens it to sampling in hip-hop).

- A thin, grey-haired Roseanne attractive like an old academy teacher.

- Robert Schimmel -- who died in a car blast afresh -- giving an hilarious, scandalously unprintable riff on the Make a Wish Foundation.

- Janeane Garofalo, still angry, except earlier and angry.

- Lewis Black actuality way funnier arena at actuality angry.

With amplitude active out, let's aloof bead some added names: Rick Overton, Blaine Capatch, Dana Gould, Bobcat Goldthwait, Paul Rodriguez, Franklyn Ajaye (a long-ago beloved of abundance who seemed to abandon off the face of the earth), Sarah Silverman, Phyllis Diller, Kathy Griffin, Greg Giraldo and Brian Regan.

It's the abutting affair to the accomplished amusement catalogue.