Oddball festival down a few, but still comic

Small notices were taped to various surfaces at the Susquehanna Bank Center before Saturday night's Oddball Comedy Festival: "Amy Schumer will not be performing tonight."

She wasn't the only headliner from the festival website not in attendance. Aziz Ansari, Jim Gaffigan, and Bill Burr weren't scheduled for a number of shows on the 21-date tour, including the Camden stop.

The well-oiled crowd didn't seem to mind, though, because Louis C.K., the cynosure of the festival, was there and in fine form.

He delivered an anecdotal set that ranged from boyhood memories (about, among other things, the family dog that detested him) to the challenge of raising daughters in a highly sexualized culture (his imitation of a female model on an American Apparel billboard was memorably grotesque.)

Louis veered off on a number of absurd detours, such as a Masters and Johnson disquisition on rat sex (inspired by a New York subway experience) and what motivates babies to cry on airplanes.

Like most of the stand-ups on the generous seven-comic bill, Louis took some shots at Camden - his were just funnier. He considered it an "economic barometer," for instance, that on his ride to the venue, "people just walk out into traffic."

Louis' act was positively cerebral compared with those of the comics who preceded him. Sarah Silverman delivered a scabrous routine that linked empty sex first to physical deformities and then to the Almighty.

Like her attire (blue jeans shorts over heavy black leggings), there was something awkward about Silverman's stage manner. She apologized for the stops and starts in her monologue, during which she frequently consulted a sheet of prompts. "Sorry," she said. "I'm so high. Back to abortion . . .."

Shock value is a big part of Silverman's shtick. She's got a sweet, good-girl face (well, except for that shiner she was sporting Saturday night, which she tried to pass off as a basketball injury) out of which pours the most perverse, inappropriate, and smutty humor this side of Bob Saget.

She was followed by Dave Attell, who spits out gags like a nail gun. By the time the comedian warned the crowd that "things are going to get dirty," that filthy nag had long since left the barn. Attell, with his penchant for anatomical references, had already managed to combine cheesesteaks, Wawa parking lots, and homeless people into a vile scenario.

At one point during his set, a series of booms erupted from the direction of the Adventure Aquarium. "Either someone's taken out the bridge," quipped Attell, "or Jay Z's in town."

He also got laughs with the line,. "I know, this is Camden. You're all thinking, 'I wonder if my car is still there?' "

Many elements may have been missing from Oddball's visit, but what remained, in the locution of Art Carney's Norton, was "cherce."

@daveondemand_tv