It's hysterical how damned often we take -- not just select things -- but everything we're doing or saying at certain times -- so seriously. We love to hear ourselves talk and we love to have others hear us think. We enjoy that engagement that comes from one-way conversations, bringing someone else into our small world, where the nervous habits and neuroses are palpable. As a matter of fact, we cover them all with icing and serve them up like a cake, sliced up and offered to everyone with a fork. Even if they don't have a fork, we give them our best plastic so they aren't left out. We're maddeningly full of ourselves and we're surrounded by others who are worse than us, but then, what's more important than our own preservation, our branding and our mythology?
Nick Thune's humor is built around an obsession with our own peculiar absurdities. We are larger than life. All of the craziest inner monologues are normalized when they're just rattling around in our heads. His stories and comedy suggest that we're most like Larry David and some scrolling anecdote/reference spouter 75-percent of the time. The characters that he creates, ie. the way that he projects his personality, are self-centered, but likely with that heart of gold that will let them always get away with their sometimes shallow pithiness. They are amusing and they're SO wrong that they're right. They live out their sprawling, over-the-top scenarios in their own cozy ways. They live out their days in anti-hero ways, all while probably still being good, caring friends and family members, whom you'd be able to count on in a pinch. The characters are probably closer to the way we all are than we'd like to admit. We hold onto grudges and heartache long after we've "cleansed" ourselves of it. We insist that we're capable of greatness -- of saving 25 firefighters from a burning building -- and then brazenly suggesting that we photo so well that we deserve the cover of the calendar.
Nick Thune's Netflix Special, "Folk Hero: Live at The Bell House, Brooklyn, NY," is available on Netflix, Feb. 18.