Kyle Kinane at the Comedy Club On State
Comedian and pajama bottom enthusiast Kyle Kinane spent the weekend at the Comedy Club On State, where he seemed so at ease with the crowd at the Friday late show, it was more like seeing a comfy local act than a comedian whose national stardom grows with every appearance. The local flavor of the show was certainly helped by the exceptional hosting from Madison fixture and former mayoral candidate Nick Hart, whose reserved set about racist Catholic mass shenanigans complimented Kinane’s sedate style perfectly. “Que the Fuck?” really would have made a killer campaign slogan, if only to see someone stick it in a Taco Bell window as a prank.
The same can’t really be said for feature Russ Williamson. Channeling Chris Farley so hard you could swear he was holding an SNL-themed séance, Williamson offered a near-endless stream of fat jokes to fill nearly his entire set. The guy’s body language—particularly faces—was hilarious, but that can only carry the fifth joke about food, or exercise, or not being able to see your dick so far. Williamson finished out his set strong with material on the impossibility of an angry pothead, the realities of Cash Cab in Chicago, and the shitshow of drunk girls at the club: all solid bits unnecessarily rushed by having a set top-heavy with self-deprecating fat jokes.
The frantic pace of the feature set was thankfully slowed by Hart, who served as a quiet buffer between bouncing cliches and the long-form storytelling that took over once Kinane had the mic. He started small, demanding to know who ordered a root beer and gin from the bar (or as he called it, a “junior high finger bang”), but quickly launched into a series of lessons learned as a “journalist of mistakes.” Lesson one: Don’t take take a cab through the Wendy’s drive-thru, unless you can find a cab driver who will be game to pretend that the food pick-up is some kind of high-octane hostage exchange. Also, be prepared to pay over $100 for a Frosty and chicken nuggets.
Kinane explained how convenient it can be to have a gay black friend—not only is it “a form of diversity consolidation,” but for those without traditional health insurance, they might offer the only honest opinion you can get about whether your balls are messed up or not. The bit wrapped up with an oddly political coda about the state of health care reform in America, which became a near-Shakespearean turn for what starts out as an off-the-shelf, dick-and-balls joke.
Kinane trotted out a few favorites from his album Death Of The Party, but most of the set seemed like the result of a year on the road spent developing material that seemed looser, more like grotesque parables than constructed bits. His closer was as much about finding kinship among the scary midnight Walmart shoppers as it was about finding the right clothing item to conceal a nasty case of poison oak. “Maybe no one is a hillbilly,” he postulated, further relating to everyone in the room. “Maybe we’re all just victims of exceptional circumstances.”
