Rob Delaney
Last night, right before Rob Delaney got on stage, it felt like the entire crowd was thinking: "Besides being good at Twitter, why do we know Rob Delaney? Yes, his tweets are amazing and he's a stand up comedian -- why do we follow him on Twitter and look forward to his ridiculous missives? Shit. We don't know."
It's pretty damn cool that Delaney has been able to make hundreds of thousands of fans just from his gift of blending wit, vulgarity, and absurdity into 140 character bursts. The packed room was eager to see what he looks like and hear what he sounds like.
Delaney in the flesh is a wonderful experience. He's a tall, hairy, handsome man who gets as much of a kick out of his jokes as the room does.
He isn't blatantly political or topical, but his set was painted by his views. Rob Delaney wants people to do whatever they want, with whomever they want as long as all parties involved consent to it.
Delaney's brilliance is his gift of making the lewd and the creepy feel heartwarming. Through a series of tangents, he covered his unending love and sexual desire for his wife, the conception of his child, masturbating in his car in a parking lot in the middle of the day, and sperm gargling - and none of it felt offensive.
He had nothing to sell, no projects to plug. It was clear that for Delaney, success means making people laugh until their faces hurt. He was having so much fun up there and everything he said seemed to come from his heart.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: I'm kind of a creep.
The Crowd: People who've never seen each other before; in groups of two, three, and four.
By the Way: Delaney shat on Miami online earlier in the day, but, he also admitted he hadn't seen more than the airport and the venue. Also, he admitted he'd let Shaq do sex to him.
