Eugene Mirman

He stands on stage and sounds like a friendly middle school teacher explaining a substitute assignment. Then he pulls out a piece of paper and reads a furious letter he mailed to an airline, or a full-page ad he purchased in a New Hampshire tourist guide to spite a parking clerk. He does not yell or pace. Eugene Mirman delivers completely absurd grievances in a mild, reedy voice.

He helped invent the Brooklyn alternative comedy scene of the 2000s. When most standup was confined to traditional clubs, he was playing indie music venues and running a multi-day comedy festival named after himself. He represents a specific era of comedy where the goal was to be as strange as possible while remaining entirely conversational.

His signature move is the real-world stunt. He does not just write a joke about a bad experience. He commits to an elaborate retaliation, like printing and laminating fake instructional signs to secretly hang in restaurant bathrooms, just so he can stand on stage and prove to the audience that he did it. The joke is the gap between a minor annoyance and the absurd amount of effort he spends escalating it. A bit might consist entirely of him holding up a printout and reading it aloud.

He voices Gene Belcher on Bob’s Burgers, and the energy is identical: a person perfectly content to build a strange reality and politely invite you inside.