Ah, the Somerville Theatre. It gives you beer; AltCom gives you laughs. Together, beer and laughs are dangerous—they can make you pee your pants. Bostonist narrowly avoided a very wet debacle last night as we took in the hilarity that was AltCom. When there are four comics and the first act is already making you giggle like a schoolgirl and cross your legs desperately, you know the evening’s going to end good—but hopefully not in a way that involves pee. Unless you’re into that, or whatever. In addition to peeing opportunities, AltCom 2008's Saturday night performance boasted a bunch of comedy high rollers: the Walsh Brothers, Morgan Murphy, Jim Jeffries and Patton Oswalt.

Myq Kaplan, one of Bostonist’s favorites from the Boston Comedy Festival last fall, emceed the show with Micah Sherman. They opened with the “Comedian’s National Anthem,” a silly song about airline food, wife complaints, and other typical comic fodder that tends to elicit more yawns than laughs at this point in comedy’s evolution. Fortunately, the anthem was not a portent of what was to come—the show was truly “alternative” in its comedic choices.

Charlestown’s own Walsh Brothers were the first act of the night. After some opening jokes about their new digs in LA, the brothers launched into the heart of their act, perfectly tailored to a Boston audience: lambasting the Fung Wah Bus. Noting that “The only product they have explodes,” the brothers proceeded to detail Fung Wah debacles in a multitude of hilarious ways. They described the “calendar of sad” created by Herald pictures of Fung Wah passengers waiting for ambulances or other transport after the rollover crash, and noted that their father warned them about the kind of “fancy driving” that keeps getting Fung Wah in trouble.

Just when you thought they couldn’t make another joke about the “third world city on wheels,” the Walsh Brothers switched genres, giving an overhead presentation of a possible ad campaign for the Fung Wah (which we keep mistyping as Fun Way—perhaps a name change is in order?). To seal the deal in their hypothetical pitch to the Fung Wah execs, the brothers launched into the Fung Wah theme song. Backed by a live band and dressed in jumpsuits and karate gear, the Walshes screamed, “Who needs tires when you can set the road on fire?” We definitely don’t.

More on the non-Boston-originating AltCom players after the jump!

Morgan Murphy didn’t have the same frenetic appeal as the Walsh brothers; her shtick was much more laid-back and self-deprecating, like “Was what I just said really funny?” She had an I’m-a-loser bit about her daytime TV obsession, which led to a Maury Povitch-inspired existential realization: Murphy wishes she had a reason as good as a cheeseburger for some of the guys she’s had sex with. We hear her on that.

Murphy lives in Los Angeles, which has allowed New York to become “a portal of hedonism” for her—as soon as she gets off the plane or bus (probably not a Fung Wah, sadly) in NYC she lets one-legged men feel her up in restrooms and does shots off of babies' bottoms. We're thinking this means she should be the new Fung Wah spokeswoman. Though she didn’t have any bus-oriented sales pitches, Murphy did offer up a genius idea of a different kind: we should get rid of all other holidays and just have twelve Halloweens. How can you say no to a holiday that allows for puns like “Scaryoke” and lets you say, “Sorry your son has spookemia”? We certainly can't. In addition to Halloween, Murphy looks forward to the Sex and the City movie, because she loves the pickup line (“I’ve got a pocketful of Viagra”) that worked so well on Samantha. She proposes her own counterpart for females: “I’ve got a purse full of the morning after pill, baby.”

If you think that crack is offensive, be glad you weren’t there for Jim Jeffries’ set. From cancer to coming in your face, there’s no topic Jeffries won’t touch. He escaped Australia’s “salad and sport” mindset to be considered a relatively healthy man in Britain. He’s a boozing man and doesn’t understand those who don’t drink. They don’t like the taste? Nobody does! Nobody’s going, “Oh, I think I’ll have tequila instead of pudding for dessert.” It ain’t the taste, it’s the effects. Jeffries also did a bit on his experience with “dick cancer,” which he says he’d much rather have than herpes: “if you get herpes, your girlfriend will kick you out; if you get dick cancer, she’ll bake you a cake.” After surgery to remove a tumor from his penis, Jeffries wasn’t able to “wank” for several weeks; when he finally had the chance, the… uh… results were impressive. He shot out “a baby without a womb” that had teeth and “scurried under the fridge.” We hope there are no pictures of that. Jeffries is also a fan of bum licking, to which the uptight Boston audience did not respond well. Maybe once we get our ass insecurities sorted out we’ll be able to appreciate some Aussie humor.

Patton Oswalt: there’s nothing to say here, really, except that he’s damn funny, even when not saying anything. A tubby elf with a faux-hawk: can you think of anything more voluminous in hilarity? And he’s got witty comments to back him up! The set was a mix of new jokes and material from his album Werewolves and Lollipops. He started out with commentary on his figure, which he describes as “B-word fat,” or the kind of fat where you say “B” very distinctively. Oswalt demonstrated this effectively with a tirade about Belinda’s beautiful baubles, and followed up with a dream about bathing in Nilla wafers.

Aside from Nilla wafers, JetBlue is Oswalt’s new love, because they distract you from flying with buckets of cookies and salty snacks—as well as 50 channels of reality television. He theorized that these accoutrements drop your IQ enough to make you not care about the implausibility of air flight—and the total lack of effective safety equipment on board. Oswalt doesn’t think a “seatbelt and a floaty thing” will save anyone in a 35,000 foot drop, and he’s probably right. Oswalt also pondered turbulence, wondering why we all feel the need to look out the window when the ride gets bumpy. Is there something we’re going to notice or do about the turbulence? If we observe the proper phenomena, will we walk out on the wing to fix whatever’s disturbing our reality TV enjoyment and spilling our Doritos? Not likely.

In addition to watching reality television on airplanes, Oswalt has recently been re-watching all the Bond films. He observed in Dr. No that “they had Bond music before they knew what to do with it,” describing a hotel unpacking scene complete with punchy theme music. The joke demonstrated Oswalt’s skills in observational comedy and his effective delivery. Another comic mocking Bond theme music might have tackled the same topic unsuccessfully, but Patton took it all the way, imitating the Bond song and adding breathy exclamations like “He brought his own soap!” Really running with a joke and giving it all the right embellishments are what set Oswalt apart from other comics.

Oswalt’s grandmother won’t die, despite her family’s unhealthy habits of deep frying scotch, melting a Milky Way on top, and wrapping it in bacon. Patton theorizes that this part of his family has built up a “death tolerance” and that even the Grim Reaper doesn’t know what to do about it: “I’m not made of heart attacks!” He wondered whether, as in Highlander, the last grandparent gets superpowers.

Observing that Bush jokes are the easiest things to tell on stage these days, Oswalt gave the topic his own twist, describing Dubya fans from 2000 as “like Creed fans,” lamenting the downfall of their idol. He also compared George W. to the Velvet Underground, in that Bush thinks his presidency won’t be understood until 100 years from now. We just don’t get him, man.

Riffing on God, Oswalt described religion as necessary to protect us all from dumb, violent people. He theorized that cavemen came up with “the sky cake trick,” promising their violent brethren that a dude in the sky would give them cake after death if they behaved while alive. Impressively, the brutes bought it, and to this day, the lure of posthumous dessert continues to convince people they should treat each other well. Expanding on the religious theme, Oswalt described the New Testament as something that a bunch of TV writers would come up with during a late-night brainstorming session. When God became boring, they had to give him an interesting “hippie son” who “hangs with hookers and does magic tricks.” To punch it up even more, they killed off the son, gave him superpowers, and let him hang with a ghost bird. That’s the makings of a successful series.

We don’t want to give away Oswalt’s masterful closing remarks, but suffice to say they involved a delicious new twist on his old standard mocking the KFC Famous Bowl. If you missed him last night, head down to Providence Monday evening; he'll be performing at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel for a pretty affordable price.

AltCom was a pants-wetting success, and deserves to become an annual tradition. We’ll be there next year, with Depends on.