Carlos Alazraqui after the show. There's only one reason why he could be so funny. His material is written by…Fairy Godparents!!!
Carlos Alazraqui returned to Austin to entertain us with his musings, commentaries and best of all, his repertoire of voices. Returned? Yes, he was here earlier this year to introduce the Reno 911 movie at the Alamo Lake Creek theater; he said he really enjoyed that, it made him feel like a star. If you watch the show, he plays Deputy James Garcia but you wouldn’t recognize him easily as he’s usually wearing sunglasses and a mustache. If you don’t watch Reno, you will probably know him best as the voice of the Taco Bell dog 10 years ago; he does a series of jokes about those salad days. Carlos is most famous to me as a voice actor. Currently he is a character on at least a half dozen active cartoons airing on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network: Mr. Crocker of The Fairly Oddparents; Lazlo of Camp Lazlo; and Salty Mike on Squirrel Boy.
A recent contest winner hosted the evening. We had seen him before at Maria Bamford. He was still pretty good and had new material over his slacker lifestyle around Austin.
Then came Jim Hope to get the crowd going. This gentleman is currently a writer for George Lopez’s sitcom and he worked on Titus. He started off by hovering over Scott, going bonkers and trying to get Scott to shout the MC’s name while imitating a velociraptor. I felt a bit terrible, the front-row seats are great yet the goal of the evening was relaxing, not being pulled into the show. Scott was a good sport. Hope had other great jokes regarding his marriage, his daughter and a crazy conspiracy involving the Green Bay Packers being the real world power. Forget the Gnomes of Zurich or Colonel Sanders.
Carlos had his turn and he killed with imitations of Bush, Clinton, Gore, the Taco Bell dog, Dr. Phil, Steve Irwin, and a quick Q&A with Deputy Garcia. I especially liked his bit requesting retarded people being dressed better in public and yet they’re smarter than Goths. He also assured the audience that Texas would prevail against Oklahoma in their annual game, at least his bookie shared this optimism.
After the show, he did autographs and had a DVD for sale of a past performance in Houston around 2004. Carlos was gracious enough to let me have my picture with him (see above) and he did a quick quip of Lazlo and Mr. Crocker for me. I told him how my lawyer friends John and Mark love his show because policemen are sometimes the worst witnesses in court. He was really upbeat over his voice work, said it was a joy to work with people like Maria Bamford. Now I can tell the children in my life that I’ve met all those characters they’ve seen on TV.