concept: a game called “john mulaney or cecil palmer?” where you have to guess if a quote was said by popular stand-up comedian john mulaney or fictional radio host cecil gershwin palmer
this might sound easy, but please keep in mind that john mulaney has said “whoa, that tall child looks terrible! get some rest, tall child! you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends!” and cecil palmer has said “alligators: can they kill your children? yes.”
Seeing John Mulaney do his ‘Robot Test’ bit has given me a strong desire to see him play a live action Riddler.
But not like, as any character other than John Mulaney? Like, let’s make a John Mulaney version of Edward Nigma. Just this socially awkward disaster man who somehow becomes a supervillain because of a misunderstanding he couldn’t correct without ‘seeming rude’. And now supposedly he’s committed to killing Batman but he doesn’t actually want to be the cause of a man’s death so he just obfuscates things with ‘clues’ and ‘riddles’ and ‘battles of wits’ until Batman inevitably defeats him and he’s just like ‘oh thank god please don’t hit me’.
Batman’s like ‘you need help Nigma’ and he’s just like ‘yeah that’s fair, I should probably look into seeing somebody at this point, I became a supervillain because of social anxiety and that might just be a red flag you know?’
“Hey, Batman, think you’ve seen everything, huh? Well, figure out how to deal with this! You know Gotham General Hospital? Yeah? Well you’ll never guess what I let loose in there!”
“Riddle me this, what has four hooves and presents a massive health and safety violation?”
One of the funniest things I ever experienced was when I went to go see John Mulaney live, and halfway through a bit about how expensive college in the States is, he looked down at the sleeve of his suit jacket and just. stopped. dead halt, mid sentence.
And after like three seconds, where we’re all trying to figure out the punchline because the story clearly hadn’t ended, and John Mulaney quietly says, “Has there been tinfoil on my buttons the whole goddamn show?”
He’d taken his suit to the drycleaner, and they’d wrapped the buttons on the sleeves and the coat with tinfoil to protect them, and John Mulaney didn’t notice until half-way through his set, and was SO FLABBERGASTED that he never did finish the story about college and instead did five minutes on how stupid it was that his buttons were reflecting the light and he just didn’t notice, and in that moment I understood more about John Mulaney as a person than I ever have.
during one of his portland shows, he noticed this like 7 year old girl in the front row and asked her (and her parents) if she ‘is aware that she is physically here right now’ or if she was just brought along. turns out her favorite john mulaney bit is the “and I’m new in town” bit and that she’s seen all his stuff. He was so shocked and discomforted by the fact a SEVEN YEAR OLD has seen his shows, that he couldn’t get through a bit about donating to charity without interrupting himself at least three times to import good life lessons on this small child, as if that makes up for all the horrible things he’s said that she heard
When I saw him in Ft. Lauderdale, there was a bar in the lobby that people kept leaving to go to. At one point, a guy in the front row just got up and BOOKED IT to get drinks. John Mulaney looked over at a woman who was next to the empty seat and asked, “Are you with him? What’s his name?”
She was, in fact, with him, and she did tell him her date’s name. John Mulaney considered this, looked around, and unplugged his microphone. Leaning in to us, he told us that we were going to trick this guy so fuckin hard. He said, “At some point during the show, I am going to stop and say, ‘Well, you guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale,’ and then you guys are all going to scream back ‘WE LOVE MILKSHAKES!’ He’ll be so confused.”
He then continued on with the show as normal, the drinks guy returned to his seat, and that was that for quite a long time. We thought he had forgotten about it until, at some point during what I believe was his McDonald’s drive-thru bit, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “You guys know what they say here in Ft. Lauderdale…”
Naturally, we erupted with “WE LOVE MILKSHAKES” and John Mulaney SWUNG around to face the drinks guy and said, “I bet you’re real confused now, huh, JASON?!”
ah so john mulaney is a chaotic neutral cryptid
i saw him last night and there was a good ten minute interlude where a woman told him everything she found wrong with his suit, including that his pants were too high waisted to which he replied “that’s where my hips are” and someone in the back shouted “look at that high waisted man he’s got feminine hips!” and he yelled back “that’s my joke! i’m offended!!”