Monday - Shane Gillis

My rich girlfriend paid $474 for tickets so far away I had to watch the show on the mini-screen. I felt the need to apologize on the way out, explaining that Shane is the "Top Guy" in stand up right now, I thought it would be better. Shane has not evolved much since his breakout "Live in Austin" in 2021. He is still funny but his material covers the same tired old ground: Isn't my Dad such an adorably ignorant Trump-loving Boomer? Aren't 16 year olds hot? Dude. We need Trump back at those debates, dude. Black guys are so much better at sports. Come on, dude.

He begged us not to record it but I did it anyway. How are you STILL talking about the 2020 Presidential Debates? Is your life as a rich and famous sellout not fertile ground to draw from?

I foolishly expected an hour-long set. Instead he did 15 mild minutes and then replaced himself with fat black lesbian Sam Jay. Women should not do comedy, period, so my date and I took that set as an opportunity to go buy a $20 burrito and do more Ketamine.

The Hollywood Bowl was beautiful, dreamy, but the seating arrangements were kind of retarded. It's set up so that you must negotiate with the disgruntled millennials in front of you every time you need to get up to pee. $500 tickets. My date was a 4'10 wasian wearing a way-too-short-skirt and stripper boots which made me extremely self conscious in the frat bro crowd. She wasn't tall enough to step over the chairs herself, I had to guide her.

The crowd was extremely male and Zillennial. 25-42. 10-20% of them brought girlfriends. All White, everybody. Actually, throw in a few braindead cholos in Hurley hats, because it is still, at the end of the day, LA.

Shane became drunker and funnier over the course of the night. He did another forgettable 15 and then introduced Ron White, Dan Soder, and Jim Jeffries.

Not a weak lineup, but Jeffries stole the show. I remember seeing Jeffries on YouTube back in 2012, 2015, and filing him into the "somewhat racy normie comedian throttled by IQ"-bin. He might be the only guy in that bin. He's got a thick Australian accent and says 'Cunt' a lot. He stole the show by being the only performer there comfortable enough to fill the arena with his presence. I guess being a "normie comedian" means you get to do stadiums like this often. He was bold and engaging, like a magician.

He led with a not-so-interesting bit about the Four Groups of People: hot women, hot men, ugly men, and ugly women. And how hot women have it so easy, if you’re “in group 1” and you’re having a hard time in life, the problem is YOU. I smirked at my date. As the bit went on though and inevitably arrived at the Transgender question it felt all-too-reminiscent of modern Chappelle: with the Ts and the Ls and the Bs and the Gs… Chappelle did so much tranny material from 2016 to 2024 he killed that subject for the entire genre. I met up with a fan of my blog after the show who said: “It felt like the kind of stuff I would have loved at age 21, covering up my mouth like ‘OH SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE HE SAID THAT!!’ but now I’m so far deep it falls flat." I agreed. And you could hypothesize that we’ve grown out of stand up, but I won’t. I am hopeful. I’ve got an entire week of these shows ahead of me. I know I’ll find somebody, something fresh. Someone will remind me why I once fell so deeply in love with this dying genre.

The highlight of my night was this: Shane returned on-stage to practice reading out his Roasts of Kevin Hart, off of cue cards, in preparation for the Roast of Kevin Hart.

Either he was drunk enough at this point to stop giving a fuck, or he’s much better at writing one-liner takedowns than he is at stand up comedy. He struck me as a supremely talented high school bully.

“Kevin’s so short they’re gonna have to lynch him from a Bonsai tree.” Hell yeah.

After this joke the late-20s blonde in front of us leaned over to her date and said something, and they got up to go. Lol.

Shane closed with a story (thank god) about being a 12 year old boy at football camp jacking off with his friends over this passed-out boomer’s corpse. It will definitely be in his next special, which I look forward to. He would have to release a few serious snoozers in a row to join Bill Burr in the “what the fuck how have you fallen so far”-tier of stand ups I can’t even motivate myself to look at any more. Shane's only 38, he’s got so much time. I think he should start pinning Chinese peptides, so he can be skinny, so he can write about that.

Overall rating: 7/10 - I did not cum.

The girl I brought, who is 21 and had never been to a stand up show in her life, left seeming unfazed, and expressed no interest in joining me for any other show this week.

So tonight I'm returning to the Bowl with a different girl to see an old favorite: Louis CK.