Adam Cayton-Holland is a comedy lifer. After breaking out with his 2017 Comedy Central Half-Hour, Cayton-Holland has pursued a depth to his craft over easy gimmicks like others in his comedy class. This is something that makes him a stand-up of the highest repute, and something that shows so clearly in his latest effort, Wallpaper, which focuses on his middle-aged life as a father, and the comedy that presents itself at this point in his life.
Adam Cayton-Holland has a great sense of timing.
Early on, Cayton-Holland shares that one of the surprises of parenthood is having the parents of his children’s friends and schoolmates bring their children up to him so that they can tell him jokes for approval. One kid tells him the joke, “What is a ghost’s favorite fruit? Booberries!” He then takes a pause and asks “What the fuck do you want me to do with that?” He then says he punches it up for the lad, suggesting peaches as a punch-up, and going on a lengthy tangent about how peaches were the ghost’s wife’s favorite fruit before she died, and how their not being together in death is proof that the afterlife is cruel. He then tags it with, “Have a nice day, Jamison.”
Elsewhere, he talks about how his oldest will probably be a good brother because he has empathy, but that he keeps catching him saying fucked up stuff like “I don’t love anyone. I want to live by myself.” He then says “And I know he’s just repeating what he hears me saying…” while the audience loses their minds.
Cayton-Holland is a fun parent.
After his son realizes he doesn’t know what giraffes say, and that neither do he nor his wife, Cayton-Holland realizes he can just lie, so he tells him that giraffes walk around going “hort.” Cayton-Holland admits that he is living for the day when his son learns that they lied to him, and imagines a scenario in science class that ends with him being sent to the special needs class. He imagines his son confronting him about this, and Cayton-Holland having to admit that he lied about that…and also that he’s not sure kangaroos actually say “boing boing.”
Cayton-Holland is clever.
Setting up a joke about his son only talking to women, Cayton-Holland says “I get it. Men are the worst.” He then tells a story about his son’s love for pretending to be blue-collar workers, and a time he talked to a woman in the park, unintentionally gaslighting her “at a high-school level.” He ends the joke by saying, “Once he figures out that women love it when you tell them to smile more, he’s going to fucking crush! And I can feel a lot of women in the room not liking where that joke went. But I set up the joke by saying men are the worst, and then I ended the joke by giving an example of men being the worst. So I ask you, is it the joke you don’t like, or do you just hate foreshadowing?”
It’s this wit that makes Cayton-Holland a delight, and certainly more than Wallpaper.
Adam Cayton-Holland's new stand-up special, Wallpaper, is available now exclusively on 800 Pound Gorilla. Watch it here first before it hits YouTube on January 18th!
