Party Nights

Emmy Blotnick introduces herself as a “self potato” (a phrase cribbed from a famously wrong answer on Wheel of Fortune) and proceeds to trace the boundaries of her own mild-mannered, highly specific neuroses. Instead of projecting a standard comedian’s bravado, she leans heavily into her own social awkwardness. She talks about the heavy artillery of sleep accessories she needs to function, from weighted blankets to night guards, and details her strange attempts to trick the Amazon suggestion algorithm into thinking she is a cooler person.

Released as an audio album by 800 Pound Gorilla Records in May 2019, the material also served as Blotnick’s solo hour at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe later that summer. At that point in her career, she was primarily known as an industry-favorite writer, having written for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and served as head writer for Comedy Central’s The President Show.

Much of the hour revolves around a quiet awe of pop culture. Blotnick walks through her obsession with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, takes a humiliating Beyoncé-themed dance class, and recounts a surreal New York bar mitzvah that paid Nicki Minaj several hundred thousand dollars to make an appearance. Her delivery is polite and low-key, but her jokes are built with a writer’s eye for modern oddities, painting a picture of an introvert trying to survive a world that is much too loud.