Pat Dixon: Goodbye Forever, Fatty

by Tom Keller

If you didn’t know better, you might mistake the title of Pat Dixon’s newest comedy CD, Goodbye Forever, Fatty, as Dixon suggesting he’s grown up from an awkward, pudgy former version of himself. You’d have taken the hook. When, seconds into the album, you find out it’s actually the thing he always says after a good blowjob, you’ve been properly briefed for a mischievously hilarious set that keeps the audience off balance and on edge.

It’s not comedy for the faint of political correctness. Dixon gleefully pushes the envelope with playful ragging on women and observations like how most Christians treat the Bible the same as an online licensing agreement— just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” But the material is too well-written to be ignored, and Dixon masterfully manages never to lose the crowd where lesser comics might.

In fact, Dixon flexes considerable crowd-control muscle, actively seeking out feedback and addressing it with the confidence of a man who’s done it many times before. He takes control of a rowdy bachelorette party, unflinchingly cuts down a man’s love of country music and pokes fun at a woman who says he’s generalizing about her gender by saying, “Yes, I am generalizing…and you’re taking it personally.”

When a mere mention of Barack Obama draws boos from the crowd and a subsequent joke gets lukewarm laughter, Dixon brings down the house by tagging, “It’d be funnier if you guys didn’t make a rally out of it.”

While the laughs are dying down after one particular joke, an audience member can be heard yelling, “Yeah, baby!” It sounds almost involuntary, the kind of rise that Dixon can coax without you even realizing it. Another night, another crowd won.

Buy Dixon’s album here.