Writers Bloc presents stentorian comedian and pitchman Stan Freberg with wife Hunter premiering a new series of CDs, Songs in the Key of Freberg. In the most recent installment — ominously titled Songs About Life — the husband-and-wife humorists look, listen and laugh at everything from the telephone company to Madison Avenue. They're joined by magician Penn Jillette, whose crabby, no-nonsense sleight-of-hand takes copious amounts of inspiration from Freberg, the éminence coiffe of American satire. Freberg has enjoyed a beautifully labyrinthine career; he coined the term “Grammy,” starred in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and voiced cartoons for Disney and Warner Bros. He's also responsible for beginning the practice of injecting humor into advertising — a double-edged sword to say the absolute least, but under Freberg's tender mercies, the cultural rot becomes less a lattice of decay than it is a Mandelbrot fractal of caustic yuks.

Fri., Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m., 2010

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.