Hot Cross Buns

Dave Attell stands on stage wearing his trademark cap, holding a microphone in one hand and a recorder flute in the other, ready to fire off a volley of quick one-liners. There is no overarching narrative, no moral to the story, and no attempt to teach the audience a lesson. Instead, the hour functions as a high-density barrage of absurd setups and quick punchlines, finding humor in the sordid details of late-night living, aging, and questionable choices.\n\nFilmed at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco, this 2024 Netflix release marks Attell’s first solo stand-up special in ten years, following 2014’s Road Work. At 40 minutes, the set is exceptionally lean, packed with jokes that move so quickly they barely give the crowd time to process the last punchline before the next one starts.\n\nAmong the memorable sequences are his thoughts on hard seltzers like White Claw, which he describes as the gateway to a night of apologies, a weirdly structured connecting flight from Wuhan, and a mushroom-fueled trip to a petting zoo equipped with baby carrots. Critics praised the performance for prioritizing pure joke-writing over self-serious storytelling. Attell wraps up the set by playing a plastic recorder, utilizing the instrument to transition between his final rapid-fire thoughts and keep the audience off balance until the very end.