Stand-up John Mulaney and I were born two days apart, and I have always assumed this is why his polite, reference-dense humor lands so perfectly for me. But if tonight's two nearly sold-out Paramount Theatre shows are any indication, Iâm completely wrong and you donât need to have experienced the 1992 presidential election through the eyes of a 10-year-old to appreciate Mulaneyâs wry âsweet idiotâ take on life.
âIf you were a kid when Bill Clinton was first released, it was the most exciting thing ever,â says Mulaney on his Netflix special The Comeback Kid. âWeâd never seen a cool politician before. He would go on MTV and have cool answers to kidsâ questions, like, âGovernor, whatâs your favorite food?â And heâd be like, âI donât know, fries?â And weâd be like, âYay! We eat fries!ââ Mulaney continues into this long-form joke, which lasts 12 minutes, explaining that he learned the piano chords to Clintonâs campaign song âDonât Stop,â âby Fleetwood Mac from Rumoursâan album written by and for people cheating on one another.â âHe let us know who he was right away,â he adds with good-natured skepticism.
A writer for Saturday Night Live for six seasons, Mulaney created the popular Weekend Update club kid character Stefon along with Bill Hader. Hader played Stefon, and Mulaney gained a reputation for adding last-minute changes to the Stefon cue cards in an attempt to make Hader laugh on live TVâwhich he usually did. Mulaneyâs joke descriptions of the pop-up clubs were ultra-specific and sometimes took a little time to unlock. In a 2013 interview with Graham Chittenden, Mulaney said, âThe rule with Stefon things was like anything you might have seen once. Youâd be like, âa Hawaiian cleaning lady that looks like Smokey Robinson.â Thatâs crazy but I do sort of know what that would look like.â
That same year, Mulaney left SNL to create a sitcom bearing his own name and starring both himself and human firework Martin Short. The show unfortunately tanked, but Mulaney continued to write and perform on his own, and in that mode heâs been able to tease out his dense humor and give it room to breathe. I rememberâafter a harrowing, stoned viewing of Synecdoche, New Yorkâturning on Comeback Kid just to regain my emotional equilibrium and faith in humanity. Let John Mulaney spool his weird good-natured yarn around you. It feels good.