Miserable Comedy Hulk Is Doing Okay

The very funny Gary Gulman has a pinched, wavery, please-don’t-hit-me excuse for a voice. It comes out of a 6-foot-6 body that features shoulders the width of a sofa. Watching footage of the comedian from the far past (2002, Gary Gulman Live!), it’s a surprise to see what a lavish young hunk he was. Everything was still in shape from his days playing college football, or from some early-career ambition to look smart for the crowds. With a Samson-like waterfall of hair and a pair of admirable cheekbones, he missed out on flawlessness only because of a heavy-backed, flamboyant nose whose tip extended an inch or so below the nostrils. As it was he still achieved an impressive degree of drop-deadness, and his voice, if it didn’t trumpet, could be said to ring out like a coin on a counter—not a quarter, but at least a dime. A thin voice, perhaps, but one that held together as he sailed his words out over the audience.

Talking loud is a large part of the comedian’s craft, and today’s Gulman hasn’t abandoned the practice. But the loudness comes out as yelps and squawks of protest set against a whispery, self-doubting stream of words. He’s no hunk either, having aged into a teetering mass whose clean lines have vanished. This is the work of time but also of authenticity. This version of Gary Gulman is in tune with his act, which was never braggadocious and has become more forlorn and bedraggled with the years. The climax came with his HBO special The Great Depresh (2019), which is about his lifelong depression and how no one, especially his mother, paid enough attention to it. His act gives voice to a squashed personality, one deprived of comfort and self-respect but somehow still holding tight to intelligence and imagination.

Like a caterpillar that’s half pasted by a brick but still has a fringe of legs kicking away, Gulman generates elaborate scenarios illustrating a life that sounds unlivable. His second-most famous routine has him squeaking his way through a confrontation with an old lady at the supermarket. His most famous routine takes as its centerpiece the flop sweat, the panic and petty sniping, of a committee faced with the minuscule job of thinking up two-letter abbreviations for the states. Inanimate beings coming to life and find themselves eating dirt. “We’re a cookie too,” wavers Hydrox, watching Oreo’s success. The ungainly, sour grapefruit, beloved of no one, is allowed some tagalong popularity by doing its spin off of the renowned grape name, but only after submitting to a powerful amount of condescension from the grapes who grant it permission. Worst of all, Pepsi sets itself up for humiliation with an ill-considered message on Gulman’s answering machine. “Call me, it’s the Cola,” Pepsi says, so of course Gulman calls Coke. The two of them wonder who could have left the message, then share a laugh when they guess. Later, at a party, Gulman tries to avoid Pepsi, but the poor sucker won’t take a hint. Pepsi wants to know why Gulman never answered his message. This opens the sap to a crushing rejoinder: “Oh, I thought you were RC.” Here we see Gulman when he feels free to be devastating; the catch is that he’s dealing with an anthropomorphic creature that exists in limbo. Old ladies in supermarkets are still a trial for him.

These are good years for Gary Gulman. The wobbly giant had his HBO special and published a book about his life (last year’s Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the ’80s), and he’s welcomed by podcasters and journalists who want to hear his opinions at length. Conan O’Brien lauded the state abbreviations routine, though I have to disagree with his specific term of praise, namely that the routine is “well crafted.” The narrative divagates, returns to its theme, then divagates again and yet again. The biggest laughs occur in the first half, with the committee members’ anguish upon discovering there’s not just an Alabama but an Alaska, not just an Arizona but an Arkansas. The routine has no shape and doesn’t so much end as shut off, doing so when the harried committee of abbreviators has been left well behind. But that doesn’t mean the piece runs out of laughs. It isn’t tightly organized or honed, just inspired. It’s large and ill-defined but brilliant, and I think the same is true of Gary Gulman.