John Mulaney will perform his newest hour of standup at the Scotiabank Centre in downtown Halifax on Friday, Nov. 4 as part of his From Scratch tour. After a highly publicized and eventful past year, the comedian's latest title suggests he is embarking on something entirely new. So, in the spirit of looking forward, The Coast is looking back at some of our favourite Mulaney moments.
A 28-year-old man trying his best
During Mulaney’s first Netflix special, New in Town, he admits to being “one of the worst drivers [he’s] ever seen,” and admits to pulling off a vehicular blunder that had drivers passing by and looking in to his car “expecting to see, like, a 100-year-old blind dog, who’s texting and driving while drinking a smoothie, and instead they see a healthy 28-year-old healthy man trying his best.”
The Bread of God:
Mulaney, who was once Catholic, ends his Kid Gorgeous special by pulling back the curtain and sharing with the audience what it was like to grow up going to church every Sunday. The side-splitting moment in this routine is his uncanny impression of a church usher singing the psalms (not songs, psalms).
“You know,“ (Mulaney’s punchline, if he had one) “the usher who gives you the pamphlet and they all look like Marco Rubio, that guy will get up and sing into the microphone,” he says before launching into a monotone recreation of a tone-deaf church-going man, awkwardly delivering praises to God in the key of B minor. That bit is sure to unlock some forgotten memory in those who went to church growing up.
No more Toyota Camry
Every second sentence is a joke in this far too under-appreciated show Mulaney wrote and performed with comedian and friend Nick Kroll. Oh, Hello On Broadway features Nick and John as their characters Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, two elderly men from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In a flashback where the pair reflect on how much New York City has changed over the decades, OJ Simpson’s alleged crimes and famous low-speed chase in a white Ford Bronco are brought up—to which Mulaney, as St. Geegland retorts: “Can you imagine doing something so fucked up, there’s no more Toyota Camry?”
Nobody cares about you when you’re a kid
At about the halfway mark of his second Netflix special, The Comeback Kid, Mulaney, while lamenting about the fairness of grade-school tests, says: “But when you’re a little kid, you can’t say ‘I don’t know.’ And you should be able to, that should be an acceptable answer on a test. You should be able to write in, ‘I don’t know. I know you told me, but I have had a very long day. I am very small and I have no money so you can imagine the kind of stress that I am under.’
And as an adult, that should also be an acceptable thing to write on forms. Imagine writing “I am very small and I have no money,” on your tax return.
Horse in the hospital
Perhaps one of Mulaney’s more meme-worthy routines, his “horse loose in a hospital” bit captures the anxiety and tension people were feeling at the time with Donald Trump as president. Mulaney doesn’t say the horse by name, but uses this medical barnyard metaphor to speak about how inappropriate and terrifying it was to have a horse loose in a hospital.
Tickets for John Mulaney’s From Scratch are still available and on sale at ticketsales.com!