ANDY KINDLER has spent his life onstage attempting to ward off the lowest common denominator in entertainment -- and what thanks has it got him?
While fellow stand-up comics appreciate his meta-take on their business, audiences may recognize him from his recurring role as Ray's friend Andy on "Everyone Loves Raymond" or for his regular appearances on "The Late Show With David Letterman," where he does film and TV previews, field pieces and stand-up. But thus far he's remained something of an outsider, never achieving the kind of outsized success of comics such as Chris Rock or Garry Shandling -- and maybe that's not so surprising.
For one thing, there's his incessant challenging of pop culture's sacred cows. Tonight, Kindler makes his debut on "Lewis Black's Root of All Evil," the new Comedy Central show that transforms two comedians into dueling prosecutors, each advocating a chosen cause.
"I thought the show was perfect for his brand of psychosis," says host Black. "It's a different take on stand-up."
Kindler's first victim? "American Idol."
"What I object to is that it's held up as this cultural icon only because it's popular. Sometimes things can be a guilty pleasure, but with 'Idol' everyone talks about it like it's a real thing; they argue over who's gonna win. . . . There's no laughing at it." As for Simon Cowell, here's Kindler's take: "I'm hoping that enough people will dislike him that we reach critical mass . . . and he will go away into the woods."
For another, Kindler offers a kind of post-modern take on comedy, having over the years absorbed so many tropes, conventions, counter-conventions and meta-analyses that for some it's an acquired taste. It's a form, Kindler says, evolved out of "commenting on how hacky [certain comedians] were, with their Jack Nicholson impressions . . . it became fun to make fun of the process."
It also comes out of a tradition of comedy deconstruction that dates to the '50s and the original Mad magazine (Kindler's father was a friend of Mad's founder, Harvey Kurtzman). In post-adolescent reflection, Kindler "realized the deconstruction thing had been going on forever and that Mad was a parody of comic books of the time."
