Ok, so his actual stand-up material is pretty much on par with your average whiskey-ed up stoner metal bass player ten minutes before closing on a Thursday night ("Some people call me homophobic, and I guess it's true, because getting FUCKED IN THE ASS is way up there on my list of fears. Hic."), but Artie Lange's comedy career isn't actually about comedy, it's about tragedy, which is always funnier anyway. Ever since his brief and tumultuous run on sketch-com dreckfest Mad TV in the late 90's abruptly ended with a coke bust and a public firing, Lange's been limping through life with an ever-escalating series of addictions to bear - hard drugs he claims to have beaten, but there's always booze, smokes, gambling, and a bone-deep sense of self-loathing that manifests itself in the kind of inappropriate rockstar-brat behavior that frat boys and truck drivers encourage and adore almost as much as naked teenage tits. Toss the success and money that wended his way once ol' Artie landed in the Jokeman's vacant seat on the Howard Stern show a cuppla years back, and you've got it, the perfect recipe for a disastrous, vomit-fueled, Belushi-esque ending. Oh, it's gonna happen, Jack. The only questions are when? And will it be funny?

If  Lange's new performance DVD, "It's the Whiskey Talking" is any indication, the answers are soon, and...well, yeh, probably. Maybe. One thing's for certain, this wobbly slurfest serves as a great rehearsal for the abyss.

The main attraction here is a 45 minute stand-up performance, taped last year in Tempe, Arizona. Lange, wearing crumpled cargo pants and a beer stained sweatshirt, stumbles onto the stage with JD and water in hand, and proceeds to do three things over and over: Yell "Fire!" (part of his much-loved AC/DC tribute from the Stern show), announce "I'm drunk!" (well...yeh, we figured that), and rant about "fags".  He's got a  real 'thing' about gays, and he just goes on about it forever. He does tell a pretty amusing story about shitting his pants at one point, tho. Ha ha! The drunk motherfucker shit his pants! That's entirely indicative about the level of humor we're talking about here. It's not funny-funny, it's stupid-funny. But hey, a laugh's a laugh.

Artie's dumb fat drunk guy routine works because it's real. Whether he really did say "Hey nigger, pass the ball!" while playing street-ball with nine of his blackest buddies, as he claims here in a l-o-n-g one-note anecdote, is beside the point - even if he didn't, you just know he WOULD have, and that's close enough to provoke a shake of the head and a snicker. It's also pretty fitting that the entirety of his act lasts less than an hour, with at least 10 minutes set aside for sipping whiskey, because real men - the kind that inhabit Artie's woozy world - don't like having to think stuff up all the time. They just like to yell and swear and burp and get back to the bar as quickly as possible. "Material"? Strictly for pussies, man.

Ah, but the main show isn't even the good part. The real meat of the matter is in the extras. There's a fantastic "backstage pass" documentary that tells you all you will ever need to know about Mr. Lange. Thrill along with Art as he gets lost on the way to a Jersey gig. Watch him gobble down a hot dog and a large coke before the show ("pre-show calisthenics", he deadpans). See him belch out the same handful of gross-out stories to an eager audience of...dozens, who crowd around him like cavefolk at feeding time in the middle of a mid-sized sportsbar, and then stagger along as he retires to the 'green room' to drink away another two hours before the next, even dizzier, 10 PM show. Stick around, and you'll see him do the same thing at another club a month later. Only this one has a free buffet. Stuffing his face with roast beef, Artie looks at the camera with glassy eyes and says, "I been in show business for ten years. I think I should have more money."

If this were an uplifting kinda story, that would be the turning point, the moment of clarity when Artie gets it all together, baby, turns his life around, and makes a billion. But this is not an uplifting story, so he just drinks more, then weaves his way to the stage, screaming "Fire!" like a soused mental patient all the way. If you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got. Even James Hetfield knows that, man.

Conversely, there's also a short film here about an amateur soft-ball league called "Game Day" written by Lange. He stars in it, too, and it's funny and witty and sharp, and shows all the promise that every other moment of this whole affair lacks. It kinda makes you wonder - who's the real Artie Lange, the quick-witted, incisive comedy writer, or the belligerent third-stage alcoholic?

I'm gonna bet on the drunk. If Artie somehow avoids dying, then "It's the Whiskey Talking" will remain a sorta-funny-but-kinda-creepy party tape, of interest mostly to hardcore Sternophiles, loudmouth college assholes, and freakshow fans. But if he does finally succumb to the grape's wrath sometime soon, then this will, easily, become the most beloved comedy DVD of all time. Premature death does wonders for a comedian's career. Either way, if you wanna see something that'll really make your liver quiver, grab the nearest bottle of bottom shelf hooch and belch along to Lange's greatest shits.