Well... I do find the "s-hit list" and "Can I say...(blank)?" stuff that Tom and Jon do hilarious, but I, personally, have a pretty terlitty terlett mouth, especially when I get wound up, and I find the sort of vernacular Patton uses to be just "amped-up conversational." It's exactly how I would talk with my friends and (some of my) family when babbling animatedly about some subject or other.
I wonder, though, if there's not another more serious aspect of the particular tone that Patton and others (David Cross?) use in a lot of their bits - so much of the underlying premise of so much of their material is incredulity at the state of modern life, and it seems to me that it naturally leads to expressions of gob-smacked amazement laced with anger, in a "
WTF??!?!?!?" kind of way. Is the nature of the material, i.e. "the state of the world" (if you're taking the general tack that there's a lot of crappy stuff worth getting worked into a lather over), part of the equation here? Context, too, seems important in determining the level of letting loose. Obviously, he knows how to rein it in for radio and Comedy Central specials; and while engaging in policy discussions in a classroom, think tank, or at a dinner table might require and DESERVE a certain level of restraint, getting drunk and riffing about these things to an also possibly drunk audience in a club seems like one of the places you ought to be able to let it all hang out a bit more.
I've certainly heard my share of (and been guilty of) gratuitous and downright lazy and bothersome profanity, but I haven't felt that what I've heard from Patton Oswalt (and in fairness, I haven't explored too deeply beyond the "officially released" records themselves, and to my chagrin, I've never yet seen him live, so I could be missing something) is anything but natural animated expression.
Can you tell that I'm having a seriously boring Sunday afternoon?
