A tad rigid, a tad crazy-eyed, with a million-dollar smile and a talent for generating nasal, cartoonlike vocal inflections, Kurt Braunohler was born to be a bizarro-world game show host. And that’s just what he was on IFC’s quirky, improv-based Bunk—at least until the cable network yanked the show last fall.
Braunohler infuses his stand-up with the same warm, amiable, this-close-to-putting-a-hatchet-in-your-head persona he brought to Bunk. One of his best bits, built around the people-to-kill list he supposedly hung on his apartment wall as a joke, ends with a stroke of genius no serial killer would be clever enough to pull off. In his rumination on Craigslist‘s Missed Connections feature, he advises a generation of hopeless romantics that they can burn their images into the brain of that cute girl over there by doing something utterly obnoxious and outrageous. And he promotes replying to ads that obviously aren’t meant for you as a cunning (if perhaps slightly deranged) way to meet your special someone.
Presented by the Reader and Tomorrow Never Knows ’13, Braunohler performs here on a bill with Cameron Esposito.