[ATTENDED: October 6, 2021] John Mulaney
We don’t see comedians very often. We do like to go to some of our favorites, but we’re unlikely to go to an unknown at a club or anything.
John Mulaney, on the other hand, is hilarious and has made S. and I laugh and quote and requote some of our favorites lines of his. Recently our son made some kind of reference to one of Mulaney’s jokes and so I thought maybe we should go see him. After all, he was doing an outrageously long run of shows at the Academy of Music in Philly–14 shows in 12 days!
Recently, Mulaney had made headlines for doing all kinds of questionable things. He and his wife got divorced, he wound up going to rehab and then started dating someone else with whom he is now expecting a child. Normally that kind of stuff doesn’t really interest me, but it proved to be a huge part of this routine (especially the rehab, which he entered in December 2020 and exited I guess in February).
We entered the venue which was a “no phones” place. This was fine, except that our tickets were on the phone. So I had to lock my phone in a bag. I was worried that this would be a huge time suck on the way out, but I carried the bag with me and then on the way out they demagnetized the bag and off I went.
He referred to the fact that he was about to have a baby and jokingly announced that this baby was going to have a hard time since it had already garnered “mixed reviews.” Hilarious.
But much of the set was about drugs. I knew that Mulaney wasn’t “kid friendly,” but nor was he cringeworthy. But some of the comments he had about drugs (so much drugs) made me glad that our teenager wasn’t going to run out and try everything that Mulaney talked about.
The three of us laughed a lot. Like, in tears, a lot. And yet a lot of it was the kind of stuff that you had to wonder if it was okay to laugh at. Mulaney mines the last few months (and his time on drugs) for laughs.
My understanding is that this show is a kind of dry run to test out his material–to see what works and, it seems, to get things off his chest. It’s obviously that some of the jokes wouldn’t work later down the road on a filmed special. The jokes about desperately needing to sell T-shirts–Philadelphia T-shirts– was really funny but obviously doesn’t work elsewhere.
A lengthy segment was devoted to the intervention. On the surface it seemed like a celebrity name drop segment, until you realize that, yes, of course that’s who his friends are. He did some impressions of some of the people, but I can’t tell if they were supposed to be good (his voice is too perfect to bother with impressions) or were just kind of fun for him. Like the one with Pete Davidson and Robert DeNiro . (He is worried that he will be recognized by everyone in rehab, but when he realizes that no one know him, he gets a bit upset).
Because his stories of his debauchery were horrifying and hilarious. And his tone of describing himself in that state was side-splitting, The stories about his drug dealer are too funny to be true. At our show there was a girl of 12 in the front row and upon finding out her age, it gave him pause–a little pause–before he plunged headlong into very bad behavior.
It wasn’t all drugs, which was good too. There was a bunch of other topics covered–is childhood is ripe for plucking and it was all outstanding.
The best comedians leave you laughing and then realizing you can’t remember any of the jokes you were laughing at. And that’s how this was. Although I do remember that the for the last segment, he read an interview with “GQ.” He told us that he was high on cocaine when he did the interview and he read it in a calm questioner voice and an intense and high Mulaney voice. that took place right before he entered rehab — according to Mulaney himself, he was riding a cocaine high while on the phone with the interviewer. Reading the interview it’s hard to imagine, and yet his interpretation of it was rolling-in-the-aisles funny.
I’m really curious what this show will turn into when it is finally on TV. Can’t wait to see it again.
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