The Half Hour

Hampton Yount works with the irritated cadence of someone who has thought about trivial absurdities until they turned sour. He does not waste stage time trying to seem charming. When he talks about dealing with a moon landing conspiracy theorist, his solution is simple: invent an even dumber lie about how space shuttles run on horses just to watch the other person’s brain short-circuit.

Taped at the Royale in Boston in June 2015 and broadcast that August on Comedy Central, the set caught Yount during a busy run writing for cable shows like MTV’s Ridiculousness and Adult Swim’s Loiter Squad. He had just released his stand-up record Bearable and was months away from being cast as Crow T. Robot for Netflix’s revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Across twenty-one minutes, he runs through the belligerent tone of men’s body wash commercials, the racial optics of Olympic track events, and looking forward to an eventual divorce with the practical relief usually reserved for paying off a car note.