Russ Meneve: Stray Doggie Style

by Dylan P. Gadino

Delivering concise jokes, at times, with an air of faux misogyny, it’s like there’s an understated, snarky frat boy inside Russ Meneve. Joke by joke, bit by bit, he lets a little sneak out, constantly minding himself, however, never allowing his act to topple over in a sloppy mess of misdirected vulgarity.

For Meneve, ill-colored interjections – about his grandfather fisting his grandmother or how he ate so much Chinese food that he “shit a cat” – are punctuation marks for his consistently brilliant comedy. He is matter of fact about everything, which helps make his premises believable and prevents him from overselling himself.

He sets jokes up quickly and punches them through with great ease. And then he gives the audience just enough time to prep for the next setup. And on it goes through Stray Doggie Style in a glorious, well-paced collection of Meneve’s best bits.

Recorded at the North Jersey native’s five main performance spaces in New York City – Carolines, The Comedy Cellar, The Improv, New York Comedy Club and The Laugh Factory – Stray Doggie Style is as diverse as it is funny.

Meneve deftly swerves from quirky observational stuff (veterinarians cost more than a human doctor) to esoteric pursuits – “With all the chaos and the freak random disorder, isn’t it amazing how absolutely perfect that seam is that runs down your nut sack?” – to doing this kind of bait-and-switch thing, like when he asks the audience their favorite sexual position: “I like when a girl is on the bottom— rock bottom. She’s strung out on drugs, she’ll do anything for a dollar.” Regardless of his attack, the results are almost always positive.

In addition to the more than 50 tracks on the album, there are a few short audio/video extras worth checking out, like a track that finds Meneve stringing his dirtiest material together just to annoy a woman who refuses to laugh. Hint: listen long enough to get to the Terry Schiavo joke. There are also two stellar segments from Comedy Central’s animated series, Shorties Watching Shorties, where Meneve’s jokes are put to fast-paced cartoon sketches.