Steven Wright

The delivery is so flat it registers as a resting pulse. He shuffles out, hunches slightly over the mic stand, and stares at the middle distance. Then he states a premise that bends the laws of physics, using the exact tone someone uses to read off a hardware receipt. There are no transitions. A joke about a dog is followed by a joke about the curvature of the earth, separated only by a two-second pause and a dry swallow.

He built the modern version of the surreal one-liner. When younger comics try to write detached, strange jokes, they usually end up doing a bad impression of his cadence. He stripped standup down to its absolute chassis. He removed act-outs and volume, leaving nothing but a weird idea.

The material runs on dream logic. He mentions buying powdered water, or putting a humidifier and a dehumidifier in the same room to let them fight it out. The laugh comes from the delay. The audience hears the sentence, pictures the image, and breaks. He does not smile when the crowd reacts. He just waits for the noise to pass.

When he released the album I Have a Pony in 1985, he proved a comic could control a theater by doing almost nothing at all. He stands perfectly still, relying entirely on the strange wiring of his sentences to carry the hour.