Free comedy on the net

HIT REFRESH -- The laugh download

MATTHEW PERPETUA offers three free comedy MP3s in this installment of his weekly column.

On a technical level, Hit Refresh isn't really about music so much as it is a column featuring MP3s, and the overwhelming majority of those MP3s happen to contain music. As a way of attempting to balance the scales, this week's column features selections representing an underappreciated form of audio entertainment -- the spoken-word comedy album.

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Patton Oswalt "The Dukes of Hazzard" (Sub Pop)

Patton Oswalt is best known to mainstream audiences as the voice of Remy in Pixar's new feature "Ratatouille," or for his supporting role as Spence on "The King Of Queens." But to comedy nerds, he's one of the most consistently brilliant and forward-thinking "alternative" stand-ups of his generation, and the ringleader of the successful Comedians of Comedy tour. Oswalt's second concert album may be his finest moment to date. His jokes and vignettes seem conversational and occasionally profane on the surface, but they are crafted with a poet's attention to descriptive detail and economy of language -- whether he's talking about a lonely middle-aged man eating a KFC bowl like a death row inmate, expressing horror at the notion of a 63-year-old woman giving birth or explaining the sublime homoerotic weirdness of Cirque de Soleil.

Right click to download here: http://tinyurl.com/33ggso

Buy it here: http://www.subpop.com/releases/patton-oswalt/full-lengths/werewolves -and-lol

lipops

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Paul F. Tompkins "I'm So Rich" (A Special Thing)

Though many comedy albums lose their appeal after the first or second listen, Paul F Tompkins' debut "Impersonal" actually becomes funnier on repeat plays, and the experience becomes less about hearing the punch lines and more about the nuances of his delivery. Tompkins' routines require precise inflections to sell his sarcastic asides and unexpected tangents, and he performs them with the poise and grace of a conservatory-trained singer. In this bit from the album, a riff on being wasteful with money mutates into an unbelievable admission that he is the grandson of a goat.

Right click to download here: http://tinyurl.com/2uos5y

Buy it here: http://www.aspecialthing.com/store/index.htm

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Scharpling & Wurster "Philly Boy Roy (Excerpt)" (Stereolaffs)

Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster's skits on the Best Show On WFMU usually play out like a battle of good vs. evil, with the former acting as the exasperated straight man to some form of corrupt, delusional creep portrayed by the latter. Wurster's recurring character Philly Boy Roy may be an exception to that rule -- though he's often ignorant and incorrigible, he's most often the unwitting stooge of his sinister son Roy Jr. In this clip from the duo's latest compilation album "The Art of the Slap," Roy relates an amazingly weird anecdote to Tom in which Roy Jr. cons his incredibly gullible father into believing that he has developed psychic powers.

Right click to download here: http://tinyurl.com/35yzuy

Buy it here: http://stereolaffs.com/slap.php

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Matthew Perpetua is the maestro behind http://www.fluxblog.org.