Established 1981

The centerpiece of the set is an impassioned, point-by-point courtroom defense of Guy Fieri. While late-night writers and online commentators spent years mocking the Food Network host for frosted tips and bowling shirts, Torres points out that Fieri pays his workers living wages, officiates mass same-sex weddings, and spends his workdays buying lunch for camera crews at struggling mom-and-pop restaurants. The bit works because Torres treats the subject with genuine moral urgency.

Recorded at Comedy on State in Madison, Wisconsin, Established 1981 served as Torres’s debut release for Comedy Central Records in September 2017. He had spent six years developing the material across clubs in Portland and New York, releasing the album alongside a Comedy Central Half Hour television showcase.

He performs with a slow, drawling cadence, looking, by his own account, like a Native American Meat Loaf impersonator.

The material leans into strange domestic situations and dead-end jobs. He picks apart the odd social isolation of homeschooled children whose kitchen table doubled as a classroom, and shares personal details about his youth in Texas without softening the edges for sympathy.