White Bread

David Crowe builds his set out of full-body mimicry and middle-aged panic, pivoting from a rasping Gollum impression to a detailed breakdown of why attempting to ride an ostrich in South Africa is an exercise in regret. Rather than relying on standard club cynicism, he treats every mundane indignity as an excuse to contort his face and act out worst-case scenarios.

Taped in 2017 at Dry Bar Comedy in Provo, Utah, the set caught Crowe more than two decades into a working road career. After sweeping both the Seattle and San Francisco comedy competitions in the mid-1990s and opening for Bill Clinton, Crowe had settled into a steady routine on the corporate speaking circuit and designed greeting cards on the side. The venue’s strict profanity ban plays directly to his strengths, giving him free rein to lean on pantomime rather than shock value.

He laments the modern pressure to enjoy day spas, recounting the tension of lying naked on a table while whale sounds play through cheap speakers. He details his fear of camping in bear country, where packing bear spray only highlights how hopeless he would be in actual wilderness. Later, he turns to entering the dating pool in his forties and marrying a pediatric anesthesiologist.

The set finishes with an eight-minute reenactment of straddling a hostile, two-hundred-pound bird with a sack over its head.