Dane Cook fans have it their way

Headlining consecutive two-hour comedy shows at Madison Square Garden can leave a man woozy.

Such was the case with Dane Cook, who might’ve forgotten where he was Sunday while playing to a capacity crowd in his nightcap performance.

Fans began tossing hats onto the theater-in-the-round-like stage, and the now-superstar stand-up dropped two of the caps onto a stool.

One problem: Cook placed a Boston Red Sox hat over a New York Yankees’ one.

Cook, a Boston native, playfully said to the New York City crowd, “All right, all right,” and switched their order.

That was about the only instance when Cook gave the fanbase what it wanted.

Cook performed 120 minutes of his routine,
and used new material throughout. With three CDs worth of sex jokes, situational humor and stories about his family, Cook threw the crowd a curveball of new punchlines.

And his fans weren’t disappointed.

His style resembled that of his previous works, like his debut CD “Retaliation,” which once had cracked the Billboard top five.

Cook, 34, ranted about the ineptitude of TiVo, referring to it as ‘Tito’ to degrade the television-recording system for taping the wrong shows.

From there, the effervescent comic went into detail about how inadvertently watching the History Channel provided him a feeling of deja vu, as if he had lived through such events as the American Civil War. (Cook said this was something his psychic could confirm.)

From war programming to advertisements
to help needy children in impoverished nations, Cook was all over the place. Those ads, by the way, Cook said, are worthless. Instead of the kindly old man trying to procure money, Cook suggested swapping him out with an aggressive fellow, someone who will pressure the American public into giving up “what is it – 15 cents a day?”

An hour later, Cook raced off the stage, only to pop his head out from the tunnel and return for a swift, five-minute encore.

And after that, he was gone – boom – like a phantom.

Christopher A. Vito can be reached at christopher.vito@temple.edu.