Singled Out

Paul Sheffield approaches modern bachelorhood with the pragmatic irritation of someone who simply wants the people around him to make sensible choices. His main dating grievance treats petty lifestyle decisions as legitimate red flags, like arguing that taking an adult on a dinner date only for them to order chicken nuggets is grounds for immediate termination.

Filmed at the Dry Bar Comedy club in Provo, Utah, the 2017 set captured Sheffield nine years into working comedy clubs across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. He had won the local Happy Valley Comedy Competition in 2010 and shaped a clean club style suited for rooms that ban vulgarity.

The rest of the performance runs through everyday frustrations: trying to shave minutes off an estimated arrival time against his car GPS, wearing enormous JNCO jeans in the nineties, and the lukewarm family reaction when he chose stand-up comedy over a conventional day job.