The PERAs Tour
Cain's Ballroom
July 29, 2025
It happened almost automatically. Joe Pera, the reigning king of grandfatherly comedy and host of cult sleeper hit Joe Pera Talks to You, was onstage at Cain’s, and asked for a volunteer who was over 35 and “sad about something.” I, for better or worse, have a Toyota Tacoma that has an undercarriage problem, and also love Joe Pera, and so I allowed my hand to shoot up and when called upon allowed myself to say, “my Toyota Tacoma has an undercarriage problem.” Eventually, after deliberating among other similarly plagued over-35s, Pera invited me onstage to cold-read his new script for his video game “Sky Harbor Bus Driver,” about an airport shuttle driver in Phoenix, Arizona attempting to find love.
And so as you read this review, reader, please bear in mind the unfortunate fact that I sort of, kind of, unintentionally, uh, intentionally, became part of the show. Objectivity is now out the window. I can only write to you now as a strange sort of religious convert.
Pera’s opener, Joe Pera Talks With You collaborator Carmen Christopher, delivered a jagged and jarring set compared to the docile Pera. Christopher’s comedy is funny yet bleak: Jokes about therapy and his relationships with his family members were both uncomfortable and hilarious, like his reading an entire text exchange with his family about where to go for Mother’s Day, which ended with his mother making fun of him for having a nut allergy. “Honestly,” he told us, “That’s my bad.” His set was strong and kept the crowd laughing, especially when Christopher pointed out which jokes weren’t getting laughs.
While not totally sold out, the majority of the seats were full of loudly passionate Peraheads who relish his form of down-to-earth comedy, which balances working towards the lowest common denominator (beans! tomatoes! cum!) with consistently injecting complicated and funny ideas, like having that Phoenix airport shuttle driver read an entire Dylan Thomas poem while, under the spotlight, Pera loudly consumed a bag of pretzel twists. The show itself was delicious, juicy, and, if I may, earthy—like the tomatoes Pera constantly posts about on his Instagram account, if those tomatoes had stickers of the Ying Yang Twins attached to them. Pera has mastered his own sort of art, which is quiet and homey while at the same time modern and complex.
Pera’s incongruity is part of his power; he tells jokes that only he could tell, using a delivery system that feels like he’s handing the punchline slowly to you, as if it’s a pie he’s baked and is passing through a window. Much of his humor stems from the kind of person that the crowd imagines him to be. Given Pera’s down-home and meek demeanor, hearing him talk about orgasm is uproarious. Or take his joke about the movie Yesterday, in which he suggested that he might make a new version, in which he is the only person who remembers Bubba Sparxxx: “Imagine being the person who shows the world Ms. New Booty.”
The end of the show saw Carmen Christopher rejoining Pera onstage for 15 minutes of conversational meandering. At one point, seemingly on a whim, Pera and Christopher divided the crowd into halves and delivered two simultaneous sets. I felt lucky to be on the Pera side (Christopher was discoursing on the movie Eddington) and was privileged to hear Pera deliver the joke, “Did you know that if you bring a stripper an exotic fish, they’ll do anything you want?” After a pause, his face twitching, he added, “I’m just joking around.” Somehow, the overload of material being thrown at the audience made everything much funnier. We gave them a standing ovation.
Pera proves how slow and mundane a joke can be without sacrificing laughs; just because a punchline meanders doesn’t mean it fails to arrive. Ultimately, Pera delivers a comedy with a huge heart and an even huger appetite for media, stretching from anime and hip-hop to midwestern diners and PBS specials. Grab a bowl of beans and throw on Joe Pera Talks With You if you haven’t watched it already, and dare your sense of humor not to expand.
