Went to see Nikki Glaser at the D.C. Improv. Hit up the fabled ~*Shake Shack*~ which is conveniently a block away, beforehand. Dude. It was good. The service was so efficient which is almost just as good as the food. They even have a little water fountain and EASILY ACCESSIBLE WATER CUPS alongside the condiments. This is my socially anxious, hate-to-ask-for-anything-extra dream. The stools were very high. Not sure how I felt about that. Made me feel a little physically insecure. The burgers were > Five Guys but < Good Stuff Eatery. I got a chocolate malt and that was to die for. The fries were shit though. They tasted like McCain’s fries.

Got to the Improv at 6PM as the doors were opening, and the place was already half full. Nikki is popular. Got the weirdest table ever by the bathroom. BUT THEN, in an act of flannel covered magic, we are sitting there, idly drinking our overpriced beers, killing the 90 minutes or so before the show actually starts, when Doug Benson goes to take a piss. WHAT. I want to… frame… the moment where we all awkwardly froze and starred at each other, then slowly asked,

Is that?

Doug Benson?

Backstage?

No going to take a piss?!

I guess he could have been dropping a deuce, I don’t know what Doug Benson is capable of. But he was encapsulated in his own cloud of weed smoke like Pig Pen and chewing on a straw. Yes, he was wearing a plaid flannel. Yes, he looked high as fuck. He’s also the first celebrity I’ve ever seen that looked exactly like how I thought they would. Same size, same face, he just looked like Doug Benson.

I forgot the opening comic’s name but he was local and adorable and weirdly enough made fun of Salvadorans while I sat with Salvadorans. Who mocks Salvadorans? The suggestion was Salvadoran women turn potato-shaped once they hit middle age, the veracity of this is for you to decide.

Then was, Oh-my-fucking-God-You-Poor-Bastard, Tom Brady. Tom Brady looks like a small-ish, hipster-ish white boy. If asked to describe him by a law officer, I would draw a blank. Tom Brady was apparently abandoned by his Indian father and named Brady after his single mother’s ex-husband. Now he’s Tom fucking Brady. Dear lord. Not going to lie, I was not sure what to do with him at first, because your first instinct is to go with sympathy, not empathy, the productive kind of sympathy, but SYMPATHY. Look away from the homeless guy on the corner, uncomfortable, make it stop, sadness. He used his absent father for a lot of his material, and I’m just sitting there illuminated by the fluorescent ‘restroom’ sign as earlier made famous by Doug Benson’s possible stream of urine, thinking fuckfuckfuckfuck. But then he broke me. It’s like he takes you into such a deep, dark, depression you start hallucinating the light and just go with it. Like being emotionally choked unconscious. And then he’s just hilarious. And you’re laughing at childhood neglect and Indian racism. The line is so thin.

Nikki Glaser. Dear God, I don’t have enough words for how much I love Nikki Glaser. She is the cool babysitter who invites her boyfriend over while your parents are gone but berates him if he beats you at Street Fighter. I think her stand up was roughly 70% IUD based. It was like, half stand up, half live diary entry. She managed to create a very intimate, conversational atmosphere for a sold out… stand up show… in a windowless basement. It was impressive. I still haven’t seen her stand up special, Perfect, it premiered the weekend before we saw her, and I didn’t want to spoil anything, I’m curious how similar the vibe is, because I’m not sure how her live would translate to television. The friendliness was crucial given how much she talked about her vagina. Like one woman show level of vagina talk. HILARIOUS VAGINA TALK, but vagina talk nonetheless. She told a joke about her and her friends’ girls week devolving into a drunken shame circle over who had the floppiest shit. It was TOO FUNNY and TOO REAL at the same time. The way she’s told it, I was crying laughing, but also crying-crying because it was palpable how distraught they were. Her Comedy Central show is like that too, funny as hell and… brazenly vulnerable? She said she’s good friends with Tom Brady, which seems kind of apt, because they both have that kind of Louis C.K., make an art out of how uncomfortable the human experience thing going on. Which is kind of the best.