I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: November 14, 2025] Blake Freeman

I have made a list of all of comedians from Taskmaster who I would like to see live.  It’s not everyone of course (some of them don’t do stand up and some I don’t think I would enjoy).  And then we started watching Taskmaster Australia and Taskmaster New Zealand, and I’ve added a dozen or so more to that list.

So I was pretty delighted that Aaron Chen announced a show at NJPAC–only ten days after Romesh Ranganathan.

Romesh didn’t have an opening act, so I didn’t know if Aaron would.  But out came an Australian comedian named Blake Freeman.  Blake has been living in the U.S. for about a year (with his partner).

He was very funny.  His delivery was calm but witty.  Talking about living in the U.S., he said the hardest part wasn’t having absolutely no professional or personal support network, it’s that we use Fahrenheit.

There was a very funny bit about him not being able to fight.  He said that he and his mates are open emotionally, and so they only fight when people can’t admit their feelings.  He had to break up a fight between his friends because one felt the other wasn’t opening up about his breakup, “You think you’re tough, well, connect with me like a man.”  After, he apologized saying his love language was touch.

Talking about therapy, and how the therapist wants you to take the tools you’re given and figure out he problem.  Imagine if any other service did that.  Your sink is clogged and the plumber says, “do you think this is an internal issue?”  Let’s use the Drano technique–do with that what you will.  He comes back a few days later saying there’s no wrong answers.  And you say, “I drank the Drano.”  And he says, Do you see how that might be self destructive?

One of my favorite jokes that I think about a lot is that he says his partner’s biggest fear is not failure now but not trying hard enough now which results in failure down the line.  She asked what his was and he said The dark.  Which is funny, but the follow up is even better.  It’s more about not knowing what’s in there.  There could be a man there.  Really there’s not anything much scarier than running into a man when there’s not supposed to be a man there.

Now I often think about The Man in that context instead of The Man, like fight The Man.

Great stuff. I enjoyed him immensely.