All Jane No Dick Closing Showcase: The Loopiest Sets They’ve Ever Done

• Pat Moran
• IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU: Aparna Nancherla shares the saddest ever Okcupid message.

By the end of a festival like All Jane No Dick, many of the stand-ups have already performed their laughter-proven material, making the final performance a weird playground for trying out new bits on a captive audience, or, as Phoebe Robinson put it, “This is the loopiest set I’ve ever done.”

Thank goodness for that. Last night’s final showcase at Curious Comedy delivered some of the funniest jokes I’ve seen all week. Everything Aparna Nancherla said was brilliant and funny and a little dark—her set covered existential despair as embodied by Okcupid messages, snack sandwiches (eating a snack, a sandwich, and another snack) consumed while “working from home,” and Christopher Columbus (“You have to hand it to the guy, because he probably would’ve taken it anyway and then murdered you”).

Longtime Portland comedian (and the oldest stand-up at All Jane No Dick, with the cutest pair o’ Keens) Susan Rice told tales of working the casino comedy circuit, and the geriatric men who want to take her out to dinner after the show, but first need to know “if [she] can drive at night.”

I didn’t find Phoebe Robinson‘s set earlier this week to be as funny as some of her older material (she was on Broad City, you guys—that sets the bar pretty high), but her set last night was punched up with goofy, accurate riffing on smug liberals who think that racism is over, and how to survive a bear attack when you’re out camping (and don’t want to be!).

In our preview for All Jane No Dick, Courtney Ferguson called Sara Schaefer “friend material.” And she did not lead us astray! I really want to be friends with Sara Schaefer, just so I can hear her recount the most embarrassing tales from middle school, like a funny, self-aware adult Angela Chase, in a way that makes you laugh uncontrollably, instead of, you know, bursting into tears.

Oh, fuck it. All of these ladies are friend material, and they’re just a handful of comics in what was a lineup thrilling enough to launch a one-man protest. I can’t wait for next year. In the meantime, Pat Moran took many photos of the closing showcase and Instant Comedy, the festival’s improv closer, and you can see them all here.