From the time we met in early 2007, my husband Anthony and I have always enjoyed comedy as a way to relieve some of our day-to-day stress and get some good laughs. From looking up funny animal videos, ‘stupid people’ clips, and whatever specials are on Netflix, comedy is a large part of our daily lives. 

We first heard of Chris Porter when he appeared on Season 4 of Last Comic Standing. While we ourselves hadn’t yet met, we both remember watching the show and finding him to be memorable and absolutely hilarious.  Fast forward to some time in 2016 and we discovered his special, ‘Ugly and Angry’ on Netflix. We remembered loving his comedy nearly eleven years ago on Last Comic Standing and decided to give it a try.

Let me say here that we have a 5-minute rule for any new show. If our interest is not at least a little bit piqued by the 5-minute mark, we move on to something else. With ‘Ugly and Angry’, well before that first five minutes, we already had tears rolling down our faces and our stomachs aching from laughing so hard.

What we love the most about Chris Porter’s comedy is his sarcastic, no-nonsense humor, all said with a completely straight face. He speaks of crazy life experiences, frustrations with society, and our favorite, stupid people also known as ‘fuck-tards’. Anthony and I watched this special at least a dozen times together, and I am sure he watched it a few himself while I was working my second job at Starbucks. (You have to watch the special to find the humor in that.) Anytime we had a bad day, or just needed to laugh, “Ugly and Angry’ would be our go-to show.

Bits from the special, especially ‘fuck-tards’ has become a part of our day, especially while driving. If we are getting…upset…with somebody on the road, all one of us has to do is quote Chris Porter, and we start cracking up laughing and some of the tension is relieved. So, when his special ran its course on Netflix, and they decided to so cruelly remove it without warning, we became irritated.

It didn’t take much for us to decide that we would love to see Chris Porter live. Last year, I started Googling ‘Chris Porter tour.’ When one does this, Google has a habit of not telling the whole truth. Right now, the only dates that come up are for Denver Improv in Denver, Colorado. This is a lie. I bring this up because I have been searching this for months, hoping for something new to come up…and it does not.

Last Tuesday, I went to the Columbus Funny Bone website to see if anybody good was coming to town. Right there on the main page was Chris Porter for April 6-9. Call it luck, or fate that we were meant to go, but I immediately bought two tickets for the April 6 show. Now, all we had to do was wait two long days. Again, this DID NOT come up in a Google search when looking for tour dates.

I won’t go into all the boring bits of the next couple of days, but I will say that we both enjoyed the smaller, more intimate setting of the Funny Bone and Chris Porter did not disappoint. From the moment he stepped on stage, poking fun at Columbus being a ‘funny mall town’, we were cracking up laughing. In fact, he had the entire room near tears for most of the night. He went into more crazy life experience stories and talked about stupid people some more. He proved a valid point by saying that everybody is stupid when it comes to something.

Once again, he delivered with a straight face, and his show was completely different from what can be seen in ‘Ugly and Angry, which was appreciated. Even when some people in the audience yelled out that they wanted to hear ‘fuck-tards’, Chris Porter did not back down, saying to watch the special. If you ever get the chance, I definitely recommend seeing him if he ever comes to a club or venue near you. If you are in Columbus, while Saturday night is sold out, there is still the chance for Sunday night (April 9)

Unfortunately, photos during the show were not permitted. We did end up getting to meet him after the show, which was awesome beings he is one of our favorite comedians. In person, he is very personable, friendly, and down to earth. This just made the night all the more memorable and we hope to get the chance to see him again. Our only regret was not having the cash to purchase a record copy of ‘Ugly and Angry’, complete with a digital download.