This newsletter is about Chris Fleming and nobody else I know.

Apr 17, 2026 4:01 pm

What's up Camnation?

Long time, no talk.

To be honest, I've grown a lot in the time since we last spoke. Sometimes it feels like I've become a whole different person since you last knew me, all that time ago. I am bolder, braver, and more myself than any version of me that existed before. I think the person you used to be would be proud of the person I am now. I still wonder what whoever you've become would think about that.

And that's the first paragraph of my two-months-late newsletter to 68 strangers and friends btw, and not like secretly stuff I wish I could say to my ex-situationship.

~~Speaking of reaching 68 contacts on this newsletter, maybe if you like it, share it with exactly one friend?~~

In the time we've been no-contact (and I'm talking to you, dear reader, and no one else), I've had the privilege of seeing the funniest person alive right now perform standup comedy at Playhouse Square. Here it is, the actual topic of this newsletter: Chris Fleming is the greatest comedian of the 2020s.

Something broke in me upon leaving Chris Fleming's show. Whatever fear barrier that was holding me back from being exactly myself onstage ruptured irreparably. I am not exaggerating when I say I believe that I became a 100% better comedian the second I saw Chris Fleming live.

I have been called hard to impress. I think I have never enjoyed an opening act at a show I paid for ever. (Except Hannah Pilkes at Paul F Tompkins' Varietopia in 2024, a show where I hated the headlining act instead). I think 99.9% of standup comedy is dogshit, and standup comedy is literally the thing I love most in the whole world (though lately improv has been closing the gap pretty quickly!!).

That's not like a pick-me thing, btw. It's more a confession. It's a bad quality; I am insufferably snobby about comedy, and I'm working on it in therapy ('Therapy' is what I call being toxic-ly aware of all of my shortcomings and mostly just trying to will them to go away).

I'm not just a hater, though. There are standup comics that I love with the same ardor with which I hate Mark Normand. Among Fleming, those whose live performances or hour specials uniquely inspired me include Rory Scovel, Gianmarco Soresi, Yamaneika Saunders, Chris Gethard, Sarah Silverman, Demi Adejuyigbe, Gavin Matts, Carmen Christopher, Jerrod Carmichael, Jordan Jensen, and obviously: Tony Hinchcliffe.

So, what separates those 11 real examples of good comedians from the 4,000 examples I could give you of mid or bad ones? It's not that skill that we keep calling "good joke writing," when we mean "ability to surprise or misdirect an unchallenging audience" or worse, "ability to shape sentences in the recognizable cadence of a joke." I'm tired of "good joke writing" being treated as anything more than a baseline necessity to deserve being on a lineup. You have to know math to be a mathematician; it's the job. You have to know how to write a joke to be a comedian; it's the job.

If good joking writing makes a comedian a comedian, what makes a good comedian a good comedian? In my never-humble opinion? Voice.

Chris Fleming is my greatest comedian alive not just because no one else could do what he does, but because no one else should.

Did that sound too much like the way AI structures sentences? Whatever.

The thing that broke in me when Chris Fleming took his flamboyant bow was the notion that I could just be myself later. The delusion that I could get good at standup comedy by doing what everyone else is doing for 10 agonizing years and then wake up 32 years old and ready to be me.

Once, I was carrying on the age-old female comedian tradition of patiently talking with some guy who sucks about comedy. Both of us claim Chris Fleming as an influence, which is crazy because Chris seems like a guy who respects women, so like maybe get influenced in that way? But I digress. We came to a real chicken-and-the-egg debate:

Which came first, Chris Fleming's voice or his skill?

This guy, sort of defensive of his own comedy, wondered: "...but what was Chris Fleming doing when he was as new as I am? Probably the same thing, right? Figuring out how to write a joke the regular way first? There's no way he was Chris Fleming the second he stepped on stage."

I can only surmise the answer to this, at least until Chris Fleming and I are hanging out in green rooms in LA, if I move out of Cleveland before LA is underwater or burnt to a crisp or whatever global climate change is gonna do I don't really read the news. But I was a Gayle Waters-Waters stan in high school, so I've been paying attention for a while.

Elliot's right. Oh, I wasn't going to use his name. The aforementioned asshole is right, to a certain extent. There's no way Chris Fleming was this fully-realized version of himself when he started comedy. And it's totally possible he was up there talking about Tinder and his pussy like the rest of us for a couple of years before something broke in him and he decided he could be himself.

But there's another thing you can be before you're yourself and good, besides being someone else and good. You can be yourself and bad.

What a humiliating, terrifying thing to be: fully yourself in a room where no one gets it yet. But, god, I think it might be the only option.

Here's to being fully yourself in a room where no one gets it yet.