Jokes I Wrote at Work

Brian Gaar approaches stand-up with the economy of someone who used to write for a newspaper and the cadence of a guy who built a following on Twitter. Jokes I Wrote at Work banks on his specific brand of exhausted dad energy, leaning into the disconnect between being a man in his thirties who still cares deeply about video games and the actual reality of raising children. He doesn’t do big act-outs or manic stage pacing. The comedy works because of how quietly he delivers his frustrations with adulthood and small-town Texas life. Filmed at the Spider House Ballroom in Austin, the 2015 hour captures Gaar just as his career was pivoting from daily news reporting to hosting a local late-night television show. The release serves as a live-action translation of the internet persona that got him noticed in the first place.