Loose in Chicago

What makes Kyle Kinane worth watching is his uncanny ability to transform the absolute worst habits of his own life into sweeping, majestic narratives. For his third Comedy Central special, filmed at the Metro in his native Chicago, he walks directly out of a neighborhood bar and onto the stage to greet a crowd of people he affectionately labels “hirsute fart factories smelling like expired mustard.” He spends the first half of the hour dismantling his own health, specifically a recent gout diagnosis he blames on ordering too many menu items with the word “rodeo” in them. Kinane’s gift is making his own decay feel like a collective victory, admitting he received his official diagnosis on the exact same day his eBay ghost-hunting gear arrived in the mail. As the set progresses, he pushes into darker territory, managing to talk about mass shootings and the Westboro Baptist Church without adopting a preachy tone. After taking a Jack the Ripper tour in London, he finds himself feeling a bizarre wave of American exceptionalism because the historical killer only managed five victims (an amateur number in the States, where Kinane notes people get shot over depleted Egg McMuffin supplies). He handles these radioactive topics through a lens of pure curiosity, culminating in a sequence where he imagines a friendly exchange between a Hell’s Angel and a gay protester who find common ground in their hatred of Fred Phelps. He also takes a moment to address trivial, everyday conspiracies, like his firm belief that Trader Joe’s parking lots are intentionally constructed to be too small.