John Grimes

Grimes moves on stage like someone who has absolutely nowhere else to be. He holds the mic and talks about his life with an unhurried cadence, leaning entirely on his own shamelessness. His primary stage persona is that of a perfectly content freeloader. He will outline his schedule as a stay-at-home dad whose children are in full-time daycare, waiting a beat for the audience to realize he is just describing unemployment, and then smile at the accusation.

He is a fixture of the Los Angeles club circuit, regularly working the Laugh Factory and the Hollywood Improv. As a staple of the long-running Chocolate Sundaes showcase, he has figured out how to make quiet, domestic observations work in loud, late-night rooms. He does not try to out-yell the comic who went up before him. Instead, he drops the volume and forces the crowd to lean in while he justifies his financial habits.

The material in his special Going For Broke revolves around the mechanics of living without ambition. He breaks down the physical exhaustion of reinstalling a baby car seat as if describing a heavy construction project. In his bits about dating, he skips broad observations in favor of restaurant logistics, mimicking the tension of a waiter handing the check to his girlfriend while he sits quietly. The punchline is rarely that he is secretly in charge; it is his total surrender to the situation.

A St. Louis native, Grimes often references his Midwestern roots to highlight the cultural differences in how people react to his interracial relationship.