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Pauly Shore: To Be 56, Fading & Funny (Live Review) 

The IMDb Portrait Studio At Acura House Of Energy 2024
Pauly Shore visits the IMDb Portrait Studio at Acura House of Energy on Location at Sundance 2024 on January 19, 2024 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for IMDb)

Pauly Shore
Jan. 4, 2025
Boca Black Box, Boca Raton, Florida


To understand the power of persona, one must only consider that Pauly Shore could put an off-the-cuff stand-up set in a strip mall club that mostly hosts tribute bands in Boca Raton, Florida, on sale on New Year’s Day and sell it out four days later. No massive tour machinery, no long walk-up promo or built-in following for regularly scheduled comedy, just a man, an off-kilter brand and the power of the Weez at $60 a ticket.

More intriguing, though, watching a facile mind honed growing up in the belly of Los Angeles’ iconic Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard is Shore’s ability to surf the crowd’s energy. Because this wasn’t big ticket show business at work, but an open portal to a comic riffing and just working out. Following a handful of local comics with less-than-artfully over-flanging geriatric, Jewish and various shades of sex jokes, Shore took the stage.

Ruminating on many of the themes that made his original character the Weeeeezle, a grating stoner ingratiator amalgamating pieces of Bill and Ted from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” Cheech and Chong and surf-nik Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” such a touchstone in ’90s MTV culture, Shore struck a chord with the fans who were largely pubescent when he invaded their living rooms at an MTV mainstay. Asking questions about life, doing qualified crowd work – “Have we got any gays?” – and creating a space where their inner adolescent could be unlocked, the 40-to-60-something audience gut-laughed with recognition.

But Shore packs a genuine sweetness to even his most off-color material. Perhaps it’s the reality of being babysat by Whoopi Goldberg, Louie Anderson and Sam Kinison that allows the 56-year old TV and film star to access what could be controversial with the innocence of someone who came to this sort of material as a child. Regardless of how he comes to talking about vibrators, sex on Saturday sex, bong water, his films or knowing from watching his films to save his money, he underscores everything with gentle self-awareness.

It’s startling – talking about being a landlord and showing up when the pipes break, or millennials taking his order having no idea who he is – how easily Shore laughs at the irony of the situation. Whether Buddhist zen or just pragmaticism tempered with a gummy, the self-compassion adds another layer to what is now aging Boomer/Gen X humor.

“Encino Man,” “Bio-Dome,” “In The Army Now” and “Son-In-Law” made him a king of a certain kind of B movie, as well as a staple on FM radio morning drive and late-night network talk shows. He knows this, delivering on what people remember. It allows him to bring a pathos – and dash of bitchiness to the close – of talking about his quest to star in the Richard Simmons bio-pic he’s began working toward with the Sundance debuted short “The Court Jester.”

If the paying customers came to remember their youth and laugh at the stoner/loser humor that made the slightly scruffy performer their hero three decades ago, Shore gave them what they came for. Even more profoundly, he found moments to offer – without being obvious – genuine insight into being an aging cultural touchstone who still has a soul, strives to ply his craft and can pull up and deliver a shaggy dog performance that included bringing his dog Buster out onstage.

To be in the pocket of an audience and flow is no simple thing; to be Pauly Shore in Boca, seemingly riffing just to get up onstage and work out, it was a reason to celebrate things once loved while refusing to become a bad caricature of what was. In that ability to laugh at all the craziness in a life dug in and lived, Pauly Shore reminded people there’s no shame in loving youthful things – even as we grow up and grow old.

NOTE: No cameras, phones or video was allowed during his set.

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