John Mulaney’s new comedy album, “New In Town,” sums up Mulaney’s life as a young Asian child growing up with parents who are lawyers. Mulaney actually isn’t Asian, but as a child, the writer/comedian had squinty eyes and a jet black, bowl haircut that forced his best friend to go home and say that his new friend has no eyes.
The “Saturday Night Live” writer and producer touches on topics such as drinking so much he blacks out, getting a prostate exam so he can score drugs, and interchanging the severity of the words “midget” and the “N-word,” in which Mulaney explains that there is no way the word “midget” could be worse than the “N-word” because you never actually say the “N-word” when comparing it with “midget.”
Mulaney’s humor is very specific and observational in nature; it’s probably the reason why he is a successful television writer. What impressed me with Mulaney’s “New In Town” was the range of subjects he maneuvered through in the hour long concert. The smooth transitions between bits were so discreet that fans never once got confused of what he was joking about.
You really get a sense of what type of comedian, and person, Mulaney is as he touches on his childhood, the fact that people think he’s gay and a hilarious bit regarding Ice T and “Law & Order: SVU.”
My favorite joke on the album is when Mulaney references “Home Alone 2.” “I know that movie is like 17 years old but I wasn’t doing comedy then,” Mulaney said. It’s a true testament of how funny something is but the timing is so wrong that you still say it because it makes you laugh.
John Mulaney’s “New In Town” is one of the best stand-up concerts I’ve heard in a while. It won’t really make me want to watch SNL anytime soon, unless you can definitively tell me which skits were written by the now, grown Asian man.