STAND-UP TUESDAYS: Chris Hardwick

January 16th, 2013

Grant Trimboli

Stand-Up Tuesdays is a weekly comedy spotlight written by the wonderfully talented Angie Frissore. Covering both known and unknown comics, Stand-up Tuesdays is your new source for all things funny.

This week, Angie puts a spotlight on Chris Hardwick. If you or your comedy troupe would like to be featured on Stand-Up Tuesdays, please email utgjames@gmail.com.

The time has come, fellow comedy lovers, where the nerds shall inherit the earth – and they will be led by comedian Chris Hardwick. The Nerdist himself, Hardwick celebrates all things nerdy in his first Comedy Central special: Mandroid features candid comedy tales that cover virginity, chess club, shark vaginas, awkward childhood, awkward adulthood (which in this case is an extension of awkward childhood) and a myriad of other topics which may or may not include sex with animals.

Filmed in February 2012 in New York City, Mandroid offers a glimpse into Hardwick’s uber-nerdy childhood – a time when he’d get his ass kicked for showing up at school with his Atari 2600 game cartridges – and if you’ve never even so much as glanced at a Harry Potter movie, you just might find yourself on the outside looking in when it comes to Hardwick’s comedy.

Hardwick has been performing stand-up for over fifteen years and is most recognizable as the host of AMC’s The Talking Dead, former host of the mid-90’s MTV dating show Singled Out, and the creator of The Nerdist podcast, one of the most popular comedy podcasts in existence. His nerdy ways know no bounds, as even his ComedyCentral.com biography boasts, “Chris Hardwick was born on the starship Enterprise and is the product of two red-shirts that quickly met their demise in a transporter lovemaking mishap. He was banished by the Federation to earth after “inappropriate conduct” on the holodeck with a computer-generated Buffy Summers.”

Mandroid isn’t all nerdy fun and games, however. Hardwick’s comedic style is high-energy and inclusive, as he takes the stage to rile up his audience, inviting them to take such a comedic plunge with him. His observations on certain aspects of society are nothing short of hilarious, particularly as he notices that most of our county (‘Merica, as Hardwick calls it) is made up of corn.

“If you were to look at the earth from space, I think it would look a lot like a piece of Crispix cereal,” Hardwick states. “Corn on one side, rice on the other.”

Listening to Mandroid offers the kind of experience that stand-up comedy was meant to give – it’s an hour of high-energy, fluid hilarity that is, at times, rife with silliness that provides a nice little escape from the ennui of daily life. Hardwick’s humor is as creative as it is witty as he touches upon some absurd subjects – such as his bit, ‘Vampire boyfriend complaining about his girlfriend’s period’, which Hardwick admits only seems funny in his head, when he’s alone:

“I mean it’s like I’m tired of waiting twenty-four days to get to the good part!”

Though I’ve been a fan of The Nerdist for some time now, it’s refreshing to see Chris Hardwick in his own Comedy Central special, getting to do his nerdy comedy thing. There are several truly ‘laugh out loud’ moments in Mandroid that will certainly leave me eager to hear more of the comedian’s work. Chris Hardwick’s Mandroid will be released on January 22 via Comedy Central Records. Pre-order your copy today at Amazon.com and get ready to get nerdy.