15 Kyle Kinane Jokes for the Hall of Fame
You might not know Kyle Kinane by name, but you certainly know his voice. Because if you’ve watched any Comedy Central promo over the last 11 years, that’s him telling you when you should tune in. It’s worth getting familiar with his stand-up as well, though, as he pulls off a remarkable balancing act on stage — he’s a hopeful cynic, a high-energy slob and an honorable dirtbag all at once. He may not have any of the answers to life, but he sure as hell can put things in perspective. Which is why we’re inducting 15 of his best jokes into the Hall of Fame.
On Borrowed Time
“I’m 42 years old, and my name is Kyle. You know what that means? It means I’m on borrowed time. There’s no such thing as an Old Kyle. You’re trying to think of one right now. Don’t, you can’t. There isn’t any. Nobody went to Grandpa Kyle’s for Christmas this year. Kyles die in their early 20s in free-climbing accidents, the way God intended. Right now, there’s five different Kyles that are just piles of bones and Patagonia windbreakers, thawing out at the base of Half Dome, waiting for a hiker to find him. When a Kyle dies, Red Bull sends flowers to the funeral.
“‘All right, PK dog, I’m going to miss you!’
“‘What was the cause of death?’
“‘Wicked air! Wicked, wicked air!’”
On the Lottery
“I don’t understand why the people that play a lottery aren’t more afraid of lightning. Like if you believe in those odds, shouldn’t you? ‘Hey, I’ve got 20 bucks on the Pick 5. Is that a storm? Oh, shit!’”
On Whiteness
“I said the whitest thing I’ve ever said in my life in Edinburgh. Not anything terrible, but just white. You know, sometimes how you’re hyper-aware, like, ‘Whoa, that was white.’ Where you even have to step back after something comes out of your mouth, like, ‘This tuna salad is pretty good, but it could use a little bit more mayonnaise, Barbara.’ Ugh. Thought you were more well-rounded than that, dude. Come on, man.
“‘A karaoke birthday party on a Monday. You’re crazy for this one, Timothy.’ Egh.
“But then, once in a while, you just top yourself. That’s what happened to me in Edinburgh. I think the exact phrase I used in Edinburgh was, ‘I can’t believe this castle doesn’t have wi-fi!’ It’s not getting whiter than that, dude. That’s it. You complained about brand-new white shit inside of real old white shit. You just made a honky turducken is what you did.”
On Margaritaville
“The saddest song in the world is ‘Margaritaville’ by Jimmy Buffett. But not ‘Margaritaville’ as it was written. You got to think about what ‘Margaritaville’ is now. Cause now Margaritaville isn’t a fictional location where some made-up relaxed dude is like, ‘Ah, I guess I screwed things up, whatever. Que sera! Ooh, thatched-roof huts, white sand beach, I’ll get over it.’
No, Margaritaville is now a real brick-and-mortar restaurant that sits in the parking lots of shopping malls throughout the country. That’s the setting, and it’s the darkest shit you’ve ever heard in your life. Not some fictional island that’s in the Caribbean: ‘How do we get to it? Stolen jet boat, maybe one of them airplanes that has hot dog buns instead of wheels, so it can cruise right up onto the beach.’
“No, Margaritaville Number 218, St. Paul, Minnesota, let’s say early February. It’s the tail end of a lunch rush. There’s a community-college dropout behind the bar, wiping off laminate menus. And there’s a man, sitting at the bar by himself, openly weeping into a basket of coconut shrimp. ‘Some people say it’s a woman to blame, but I know, I know! This is my own damn fault!’”
On Pizza
“I was once delivered an unsliced pizza. Everything you believe in just unravels. Everything you hold true. To some people, it sounds like a simple mistake. Not me. I took it personally. I was like, ‘That’s somebody down at Domino’s making a judgment call on my life. That’s somebody seeing my name come up on one too many tickets and finally just being like, ‘Listen, man, we know that you’re probably gonna eat this by yourself. More than likely, all in one sitting too, so... You know what to do, man. Just fold it in half and bon appetit.’’ Just ‘cause they were right, I didn’t appreciate the assumption. ‘You don’t know me, Domino’s! PLUMPH! Mmmm... This giant taco tastes like Italy!’”
On Air Travel
Kinane, trying to make sense of a guy sitting next to him on a flight eating homemade pancakes out of a Foot Locker bag: “If you’re on an airplane, you’re on there with purpose. You’re fighting gravity to travel through the sky to land on another part of the Earth’s crust. Nobody’s waking up casually like Amelia Earhart — ‘I think I’ll take to the skies today!’ You have purpose; you have reason to fight nature to go somewhere else. How do you have that purpose in your life, but still do it with hastily packed hobo snacks in your midst? That’s not how you catch a plane. You’re like, ‘This one going southbound? Haven’t seen Grapefruit Joe in a while. I’ll drop in, and we’ll share some beans.’”
On Living Alone
“I got my own place ‘cause I realize I’m about to get the type of weird that I can’t even have people witness on accident anymore. Things are about to get strange, and I’m gonna need some solitude for that. It’s not so much like, ‘I’m gonna pay my bills on time and read more books.’ It’s much more like, ‘Twizzlers look like they fit in buttholes, and I cannot have somebody walking into the laboratory when Dr. Kyle’s conducting his experiments.’ It’s the corkscrew shape. Lick ‘em and stick ‘em, fellas. Find out about your bodies. It’s 2012. It’s not gay. It’s about loving yourself.”
On Race Car Beds
“I know the big question on everyone’s mind tonight is, ‘Kyle, have you decided who you’re going to blame for falling asleep and crashing your 2003 Ford Focus into a wall?’
There are several choices. We could blame the bourbon, and the amount drank thereof. We could blame the mix CD that I made of 1980s power ballads that I entitled I’m a Big Girl Now. Or, we could go with the favorable choice: My parents. They were the ones who bought me a race-car bed when I was a young boy. And nothing sends more of a mixed message about falling asleep behind the wheel. ‘Is it like the fast ones on TV, mom?’ ‘You bet it is, Junior. Sweet dreams.’”
On Service Dogs
“I don’t think I’ve ever sexually harassed anybody. I have pet the fuck out of a service dog, though. I don’t know if that’s part of the same conversation, but if it’s about consent, I didn’t ask, you know? I got right up in there. I was like, ‘Fuck your vest, girl. Get over here, yeah! You get your scritches. If I wasn’t supposed to pet you, you wouldn’t have been a dog. That’s how the world works. Let me get you by your tail. Ooh, look at your leg going. Oh yeah, your vest says no, but your body says yes. Yeah. Shh, shh, don’t get nervous. He can’t see us, c’mon!’”
On Conspiracy Theories
“My conspiracy theories are so low-rent I can’t even hang out with the actual conspiracy theorists ‘cause they don’t want to entertain my notions. I’m like the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer of conspiracy theorists. They’re in the clubhouse in the corner going over the real stuff like, ‘Of course the moon landing was faked because we had to beat Russia during the Cold War no matter what the cost.’ And I try to jump in like, ‘Yeah and I think that Trader Joe’s is making their parking lots too small on purpose just so they seem more popular than they really are!’
“‘It’s obvious that the mob killed Kennedy...’
“‘And I think that expiration dates on food are just a conspiracy by Kraft and the FDA to get you to buy condiments before you need to! Mayonnaise doesn’t go bad, it just becomes Miracle Whip!’”
On Miracles
“All a miracle is, is the world letting you know it can still surprise you. I experienced a miracle recently: I burnt my laundry, and that should’ve been something that would’ve pissed me off, but I didn’t even know that you could do that. I just sat at the laundromat with a meteorite of my favorite T-shirts — and instead of being frustrated, I chose to have a sense of wonderment about it. Instead of being angry, I was just looking at everybody else, holding this meteor, like, ‘Did you know this could even happen? I used the same quarters in the same machine as everybody else! You all got fresh-smelling laundry, I created a new element for the universe!’ And that was followed by a half hour of me just holding it up, going, ‘I am the Alchemist!’”
On Relationships
“I have a woman in my life who’s apparently as big a fan of bad decision-making as I am. I was getting out of the shower, all glisteny, probably the best I’ll look all day ‘cause it was clear that I made an effort to clean myself. And look, I know what I look like. I got this beard, I got decent shoulders, the rest of this is a real bag of garbage. But I got a shower, I’m feeling confident and smelling good and she sees that I made the effort. So she tries to make me feel better, and she says, ‘You look like a Greek god!’ And without even thinking I just shot out of the holster, ‘You don’t know shit about mythology!’”
On Alcoholism
“I lived with an actual alcoholic — a true like, ‘Oh, you’re just asleep naked and that’s my bed’ alcoholic. And it was weird because that gave me perspective. Perspective’s the most manipulated concept in the world. ‘Cause perspective for me is like, ‘I don’t drink a lot cause look at this guy.’ Meanwhile, everybody else on this side of the scale is like, ‘We don’t drink as much as Kyle at least.’ But because I had one other guy over here, I felt fine about it. He was interesting. He was an alcoholic that would still insist on using drink coasters in his house, which I found kind of endearing. Like, ‘Fuck my liver, this is teak, dude.’”
On Rock Bottom
“My rock bottom, I took three weeks off of doing everything. That was rock bottom. The saddest I ever got was at three weeks of not drinking, and I found myself cleaning my bathroom on a Saturday night in absolute silence. I was like, ‘This isn’t how you celebrate freedom.’ That’s not how you live: ‘Hey, take a Saturday for yourself and do some chores, but have a good time. This is your own little party. Clean a bathroom on a Saturday? Bottle of wine, Mötley Crüe’s greatest hits.’ That’s what you’re doing: ‘Too Fast for Love! Squirt, squirt, squirt!’ and just Yosemite Sam-ing two bottles of Tilex into the ceiling. ‘This says use in a well-ventilated area. I don’t even have windows in this bathroom! Oh, another victory for the kid. Oh God, I got to take a walk outside. The floor is sliding underneath the wall again.’”
On Mysterious Ways
“The Lord works in mysterious ways...’ Why is the Lord the only person I’ve ever heard of who gets to work in mysterious ways, every day, and still keeps his job? If you all got jobs, go to work tomorrow and work in mysterious ways. Go into work on Tuesday, work in mysterious ways. Tell me how Wednesday goes. You work in a restaurant — go in there, and just start kicking sandwiches in people’s faces. ‘Salad’s getting served by hand today, motherfuckers! Hot coffee on a baby, KABOOM!’
“And your boss is like, ‘What are you doing?!?’
“You’re like, ‘Jeremy works in mysterious ways!’”
