Matt Koff

He holds a specific place in New York comedy: the veteran television writer who spends his nights on stage. He applies the rhythm of a late-night monologue to basement clubs. He is the comic other writers watch to see how to trim the fat off a setup.

His albums and specials, including Who’s My Little Guy? and Cat Man, work because the writing is too tight for the audience to actually pity him. He leans on a sad-sack persona to catalog his dating failures and solitary habits. He never wallows. If a bit about his loneliness starts feeling heavy, he undercuts it with a bizarre turn about eating too much ham or developing a crush on a household appliance. He builds a high volume of jokes out of his sadness, refusing to let the room get quiet.

He spent over a decade on the writing staff at The Daily Show, winning an Emmy and bringing a joke writer’s rigid economy of words to his own life story.