Joe Pera is the ace knuckleball pitcher of comedy. The Buffalo-born comedian's jokes come at you slowly and unpredictably; while they may initially seem underwhelming compared to those of high-velocity comics, they invariably wind up in the strike zone and make you shake your head in disbelief and amusement at their off-kilter trajectory and the revelatory thud they make in the catcher's mitt of your mind. His deadpan, okey-dokey delivery belies a sharp, sneaky wit. 

Adding to the laugh factor is Pera's appearance. Although he's in his 30s, he walks as stiffly as an octogenarian ex-NFL lineman. He's bespectacled and modestly attired, like a high-school science teacher from a town you can't find on a map. His body seems to be as square as his demeanor. He's used his blond hair, glasses, and mild features as fodder for perhaps the most tasteful Jeffrey Dahmer bit ever. 

Pera's burgeoning stand-up career has gained some traction from his popular Adult Swim TV show, Joe Pera Talks With You, for which he wrote and in which he acted during its three-year run. That series—which mined skewed, feel-good humor from prosaic scenarios—arose from the Adult Swim animated infomercial, Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep. Through these works, Pera established himself as the preeminent practitioner of ambient, ASMR-inducing comedy, with help from keyboardist/composer Ryan Dann. In 2021, Pera published the illustrated book A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape. His brilliantly distinctive 2023 special, Joe Pera: Slow and Steady, currently lives on YouTube, so fire it up.

In advance of Pera's July 21 stand-up performance at the Moore Theatre, we talked by phone about his Italian heritage, Rust Belt sensibilities, being mysterious, notebooks, and other important matters. Yes, Joe does speak s l o w l y offstage, too, but there's more of an edge to his voice, as well... perhaps because some of my questions irritated him.

The Stranger: First, we need to settle a mystery. Wikipedia lists your birth year as either 1988 or 1989. It's rare for this basic information to be uncertain in the 21st century. Can you set the record straight, or do you prefer for it to remain a mystery?

Joe Pera: [seemingly annoyed] Yeeeaaahhh. It doesn't matter. 

It might matter to some people.

[definitely annoyed] Am I 35, 36, or 37? Let that keep them up at night. 

On a similar note, your website reveals very little personal information. Do you prefer to be as close to a blank slate as it's possible to be in 2024?

It truly is impossible. You can find a lot of information about me online with very little work. [thoroughly annoyed] I dunno... I think I reveal plenty.

Does it seem like an advantage for your comedy to not have everyone know everything about you?

It's different nowadays. Before the television show [Joe Pera Talks With You], it was nice to go onstage with a complete blank slate and win an audience over, reveal a little about yourself, bit by bit. But I feel like it's not even possible nowadays, because people know a decent amount about me through the TV show and my other work. It's a different feeling at the beginning of the shows. There's already a kind of a background of who I am and what type of comedy I'm going to do.

In some ways it's nice not to start from zero with the audience. At other times, it's kind of less fun. You can't get to know each other together at the same time.  

Were there any revelations that you had during your youth that convinced you that you had to make people laugh for a living? Was Buffalo an auspicious place in which to nurture your comedic sensibilities?

Yeah. I was thinking about that, because I just did a show in Buffalo. People in Buffalo are very good ball-busters. Making fun of each other is how we get by. My friend Matt Wayne from Buffalo has a wonderful joke about the one time he bought a jean jacket, which is not even that weird. But it was something new and a little different and people made fun of him—just for wearing a jean jacket. I don't carry that style of comedy into what I regularly do. But that active sense of humor is always a part of Buffalo, a coping mechanism.

Is it like a rust-belt inferiority complex or a humbleness?

I would say both of those things. But also the working-class culture. My dad's Italian and I think that's part of the culture—teasing each other to show that you care, even though sometimes you go a little too hard or too far. That kind of constant teasing has a way of showing love or affection in a weird way. 

I haven't seen every minute of your comedy, but I've seen a fair amount. Do you not dip into the well of your Italian upbringing for your act? That tack seems to be very common among Italian-American comics.

Well, I'm no [Sebastian] Maniscalco. But I gotta couple of jokes about [my Italian upbringing] this time around. There were some mild mentions of it on the TV show: the way that the grandmother made the meatballs, the way she was always cooking. I'm not an immigrant myself; I'm a few generations removed. So I don't feel like it's part of my everyday reality. It would be a little weird if I was a blond guy talking about being an Italian the whole time. 

How old were you when you realized you wanted to stand on a stage with a microphone and make people laugh?

My friend Dan Licata in high school was always doing pranks. We eventually moved to New York together and were always writing together. We still work together to this day. I would slip him ideas that he would have the guts to do. I wasn't a class clown or anything, but he would be doing stuff... He jumped off of a building and broke both of his legs. That was his big signature [move]. 

We would sit in his basement when we were 16, 17, and write jokes. We saw Mitch Hedberg perform live a couple of times, right before he died, and that was big for both of us. I didn't know anybody who was a stand-up comedian or who worked in entertainment, but it felt like a possibility. We watched a lot of Comedy Central Presents at that time, and Kids in the Hall made [comedy] seem kind of fun and like Great Lakes boys could do it. The way that it was shot, it had that homemade feel, which made it feel approachable. Or like that early version of Jackass, where it's like, 'Hey, maybe if I do get together with my friends and pick up a camera, we could create something great.' It's much more complicated than that, but when you're 16, you can get that impression.

New York City does not seem like a place where you—a slow and steady person—would enjoy living. How do you like being based there? Have you adjusted to it well? Or does it feel like you're out of joint with the fast pace?

It was a tough adjustment. I am very slow-paced. But I guessed early on that if I wanted to try for a career, I wouldn't be able to just do stand-up in Buffalo. I would have to move [to New York]. It's where the most shows are and, arguably, the best comedians... The most opportunities to get onstage every night.

Even when I go home for a little while or go to a place that's a little slower-paced, I find that I'm not writing as much and I don't write as fast. [New York] keeps the pressure on me to keep moving and working in a way that I wouldn't have somewhere else. We stayed near a lake in Seattle the last time we were there and I thought that if I lived here, I would just walk around and swim and never write anything. It's kind of like an oyster-pearl type thing; you need that friction.

[New York] is where I met a lot of my comedy friends, who I find very inspiring and learned a lot from. I don't know if it would happen the same way [anywhere else]. 

Who would those people be?

Dan Licata, Jo Firestone, Conner O'Malley, and Marty Schousboe are the big ones. They all worked on my TV show. We had been working together before that. It was the first big project we did together. There are plenty more people that I've gotten to meet that you learn things from along the way.

When I first moved here, I got to see Hannibal Buress do sets around town. We're not close or anything, but just being able to watch him work was really exciting. I did a small tour with Todd Barry, and getting to know him and watch him work was pretty exciting, too. And the guy who's opening for me on this tour, Carmen Christopher; he's one of the funniest people I've ever met. I met him in New York.

A lot of them are Great Lakes people, Rust Belt people. They moved to New York and we kind of found each other. The ideas we had from our upbringing, we were able to meet each other and kind of expand on them and learn from each other and grow them into bigger stuff. It was weird that all of us gravitated toward each other, but I think we saw each other having similar ideas, background, types of families. Being inside the city makes you become close friends.  There are almost too many people that I learned from. 

It sounds like it was a positive move for you.

Yeah, but definitely stressful. We did a lot of bad [open] mics and shows. Dan and I had a show for nine years together, and it was only five years in when it got easy and people started coming without us begging. Also, the audiences here are demanding, which is good. Overall, it's exciting to know that people are working at really high levels and if you want to follow them at a show, you've got to really bring it. 

What is the most important catalyst for your humor? What is the central motivator?

I do think I get a lot of ideas from when I am home from Buffalo. It's hard to say where ideas come from exactly. The main catalyst is stumbling upon an idea, where either it comes to me or I'm searching for it. But the catalyst is stumbling upon the nugget of an idea, which is the best, and you're inspired to pursue it as far as you can.

I'm working on a joke right now. What happens if you have a daughter who's a cheater? She's cheating on her high-school boyfriend—do you step in or not? I'm exploring that. It's kind of hard, because you know [the jokes] can be great to follow through on properly. You have expectations for it, and you kind of feel it, but you don't know exactly the shape yet. But the idea of trying to get it right and knowing how great it could be is my motivation. Trying to live up to that.

Same with the TV show. I would have episode ideas and you stumble across something so great that everything from the writing, acting, editing was just to not let that idea down. 

Some comics get into a persona onstage that is not how they act offstage. Would you say that this is the authentic Joe Pera onstage, that you're not putting any airs on?

Nobody gets onstage without putting any airs on. That's crazy. That's an impossible notion. Unless somebody just goes out there and talks off the top of their head... I've heard rumors of Sinbad doing it. But, no. It's just me taking my time with a performance. I do talk about the things I care about and think are funny—the same as I did in the TV show. 

I understand that. The way you deliver your material, obviously it stands out from most comics. I was wondering if that was an intentional decision or is that the way you always talk? I'm getting the impression it's the latter. 

I just take my time a little bit more. [beyond annoyed] We're talking right now; I'll leave that up to you to judge. 

Whatever the case, I like it a lot and think it's very effective. Of course, you have great material, too, but the way you deliver it makes it even funnier. Moving on... How do you deal with hecklers?

I don't want to jinx myself, but my audience is pretty friendly. It's usually not [composed of] people who want to screw around—at least not at the tour shows. From time to time, you get somebody who wants to make the show about them.  

There was a person in Kalamazoo who brought a baby to the show. It was not traditional heckling, but I had to adjust onstage. I realized that there was a baby in the audience and I had to wrap my head around that. That was an interesting situation—not exactly a heckler but something I had to deal with delicately.

Internet videos are making it weird, like it's fun for part of the comedy show to destroy hecklers. My approach is just getting them to be quiet in a nice way so we can move on with the show. And usually that's fine. I guess [some comics] get fired up and confrontational. For me, it's just trying to get into the next bit as smoothly as possible.

What’s a richer source of humor—mundanity or profundity?

Mundanity's easier. You can get profundity through the former, I suppose. A lot of what I find funny and people find funny are the things you experience day to day and the minutiae. The more you can get the details right, usually it's easier and sometimes you'll stumble into profundity. But it's easier to start with the little stuff and work your way out. 

Without giving too much away, what topics can people on this tour expect from your stand-up act?

Orbit gum versus Extra gum versus... all the gums compared. It's going to be a big ranking and it's going to take up about 15 minutes of the show. Notebooks—huge subject matter. Pens versus pencils. 

What else is on the agenda for your set?

I think I found the exact intersection of science and faith. Regret. Getting a rebate in the mail. Why I got rid of my old computer. A wide variety of stuff.

Was the musical aspect of your show something that you initiated or did somebody say, "Hey, why don't you use ambient music to enhance your performance"?

The credit goes to Ryan Dann, who composed for it. It really made things click. Talks You to Sleep is where it really gelled, but it started during a web series for some MTV spinoff called Pancake Breakfast Critic. Producer Kyle Hepp and editor Nate Pommer put in some slower music and it really made it work. We continued that with my friend Ryan Dann, who... Never mind, he wasn't with me in Seattle last time. But he's played on live shows and we've done Talks You to Sleep live now. It's an ongoing experiment for us to figure out where the line is between entertaining and funny and too sleepy. [Dann won't be on this tour, as he and his partner are having a baby.] 

People generally don't go to stand-ups for calmness, but that's what your act brings—along with deep belly laughs, of course. Do you think your success is partially attributable to people's urgent need to chill out, even as they're laughing their heads off?

I think so. I set out to make people laugh, and everything else is secondary. But yeah, the Talks You to Sleep animation seemed to work. And also, people seemed to find the Joe Pera Talks With You show during the pandemic, especially. When I started the tour, we thought we were going to try to get 100- to 150-person rooms. I guess a lot of people found the HBO Max app during the pandemic and they just wanted something funny and relaxing to watch. People said they could watch it with their parents or kids or even grandparents. It was unexpected.

But I always say the goal is to create stuff like Uncle Buck, where you could watch it with your old man and both laugh. It's not too weird to watch with your dad and not too boring to watch with your kid. 

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Joe Pera performs at Moore Theatre July 21, 8:00 pm, $35, 16+ recommended.