Poor Decisions

Forrest Shaw spent nearly a decade as an environmental biologist before transitioning into stand-up, which gives his cynicism about human behavior an unusual backing. He examines poor lifestyle choices with the weary detachment of a researcher watching a test subject repeatedly fail a simple maze. When detailing the indignity of spending eight hundred dollars to save a spiteful elderly cat, only for the animal to thank him by ruining his clothes, he approaches domestic chaos with flat, unhurried precision.

The taping took place in October 2016 at The Electric Pickle, a bar and music venue in Miami. Hurricane Matthew was brushing past the coast outside, leaving sideways rain and downed palm fronds while only twenty audience members braved the weather to fill a room built for a hundred and fifty. Shaw worked the storm directly into the act, riffing on Florida survival logic and a local news report about a man taking bizarre revenge on an alligator.

When Comedy Dynamics released the hour in March 2018, Shaw was working as a staff writer on Comedy Central’s The Jim Jefferies Show and opening for Jefferies on tour. Jefferies served as an executive producer alongside director Clyde Scott.

The rest of the set wanders through the sudden guilt of calorie counts on restaurant menus and the booming scam of certifying useless house pets as emotional support animals.