Kevin Nealon
Loony Bin Tulsa
June 12
Comedy clubs exist in their own little limbo between live theater and Instagram Reels. It’s a niche market where two-drink minimums still exist, human beings are expected to make other human beings laugh for one hour straight, and a specific type of person pays to be entertained and possibly embarrassed in real time, in real life, in front of other people.
The palpable desperation of some open mic amateurs I’ve seen scared me off the medium for some time … and I don’t love sitting in the room with the famous ones, either, generally. Before last week, I had not seen a live comedy show since 2009, when I reacted so uncomfortably to Demetri Martin talking to me from the stage that afterward he apologized to me on my way out of the theater. I also don’t love the Very Online Comedian tendency to seek virality for crowd work clips, something old-school comedians call hack, and I guess so do I.
But I started watching Saturday Night Live as a kid, when Kevin Nealon was in the cast and the host of “Weekend Update.” His deadpan, direct delivery—especially as the straight man to Adam Sandler’s various recurring news desk bits—did a lot for my understanding of the breadth of what a talented person can do with scripted comedy, that it doesn’t have to be all pratfalls and obviousness. When I saw he was coming to Tulsa’s Loony Bin, I felt compelled; if this comedian didn’t revive my interest in stand-up, nobody could.
“So well anyway, get this, and then I gotta wrap it up” elicited a perfect opening laugh. Most of the material came directly from Nealon’s current special “Loose in the Crotch,” released in January. He performed an impressively tight hour of jokes about Oklahoma being a flyover state, CVS self-checkouts, fatherhood, toilet seat covers, aging, and hiking with Caitlin Jenner. A couple of standouts: two convincingly sad stories about the loss of his cat and the loss of a friend, during which he was able to conjure real tears and drag the crowd along with him only to horrify us, in a good way, with the punchlines.
Nealon punctuated his set with fourth wall jokes—”This is taking forever!” he exclaimed about his own performance—ribbing the few people in the crowd sitting in the VIP seating, with tables that abutted the stage. “Why would anyone sit in the front row at a comedy show?” he asked, before calling crowd work “hacky” and then weaving it into his set here and there.
No doubt he benefits from the surreality of being in intimate proximity to a famous person, and even though much of his performance is available on streaming, it is different to see it unfold live in the same way that I don’t think anyone would argue Hamilton on Broadway and Hamilton on Disney+ are the same thing. He was exactly the old, Dad-ish pro I hoped he would be, and as long as I can sit away from the lights, he might’ve reopened a medium of entertainment for me I’ve tried to avoid for a long time.
And the feeling’s mutual: as Nealon exited the stage through the crowd, he got a partial standing ovation from the people across from me who told him he was wonderful. “No, you’re wonderful!” he said, shaking their hands. Then turning to me, still seated, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You’re alright, too.”
