The Half Hour

Few comics will stand under stage lighting, hold a phone to the microphone, and force an audience to listen to an obviously fake voicemail from a doctor congratulating them on the sheer size of their genitals. Randy Liedtke pulls it off by acting mildly annoyed that there is static on the line. He operates in a pocket of comedy where commitment to the bit replaces normal human shame.

Filmed at the Royale in Boston for the fourth season of Comedy Central’s showcase, the twenty-minute set arrived during a stretch when Liedtke was mostly recognized for elaborate real-world pranks. He had made national news two years earlier after baking iPhone-shaped cookies, driving around Los Angeles to bait traffic cops into pulling him over, and getting arrested on an outstanding parking warrant in the process.

That instinct for unnecessary trouble carries over directly to the stage. When he explains his panic over measuring the weight of food he consumes against the weight of his own waste, it plays out with straight-faced panic rather than gross-out swagger. Later, he describes the exact moment his grandmother passed away in hospice care, timed awkwardly to the arrival of an ordered pizza.

He does not bother trying to sound relatable or mature.