Comedy Central Presents: Jeff Stilson

Jeff Stilson is a writer’s comedian, which makes sense considering his day job. At the time of this 2003 taping, Stilson was best known in the industry for his Emmy-winning writing and producing work on The Chris Rock Show and The Late Show with David Letterman. On stage, he drops the chaotic energy of late-night television for a remarkably low-key, measured delivery. He is quiet, almost gentle, but his jokes are constructed with the immaculate precision of a guy who spent years pitching monologues to David Letterman.\n\nFilmed at the Hudson Theatre in New York City, this half-hour set finds Stilson applying his deliberate pacing to the exhausting realities of family life. He admits that naming his three children induced a panic similar to naming a Microsoft Word document, eventually resorting to reading the end credits of Dude, Where’s My Car? to find inspiration. His parenting material is wonderfully unsentimental; he compares childbirth to expelling a basketball and concludes that if he had to do it, he would never want to see the kid again, \”not even on weekends\”.\n\nStilson also turns his dry perspective toward sports. He wonders why winning NFL players credit God for their victories while losers take all the blame, imagining a player admitting that Jesus caused a fumble because \”He hates our team\”. He also riffs on the soporific qualities of golf broadcasts, proposing that commentators whisper simply to avoid waking up the sleeping audience.