Stavros Halkias’ Official Website

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(2022) Live at the Lodge Room
(2023) Fat Rascal

Live at the Lodge Room (2022)
Rating: Good

Stavros Halkias used to be a co-host of a podcast called “Cum Town”, a podcast that’s wildly inadvisable to search for or listen to on your work computer. It was one of the most popular comedy podcasts of all time, raking in $140,000 per month on Patreon in it’s prime. As Halkias describes it, he is now “order appetizers every time” rich. Now, obviously, he has enough fuck-you money to pursue his dream to be a standup comic, and, as luck would have it, he’s very funny!

Halkias has the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he looks like and doesn’t give a shit. His self-deprecation is at a minimum, making only occasional references to how he’s “fat as hell” or how he looks like a side character from Grand Theft Auto. Quite the converse, actually. He spends a lot of time talking about sexual promiscuity, including an extended threesome story! Gross, right?! But it’s not all disgusting sex and overindulgent eating habits. Halkias talks about how millennials are completely fucked (“unless someone schmassassinates Schmeff Schmezos”), how much drugs rule, his odd Greek upbringing, and trying to eventually, against all odds, grow up. He’s endlessly endearing and charming, and has a great ability to pull you into his world. He grew up with immigrant parents in a shitty part of Baltimore. As he describes it, he’s straight out of the second season of The Wire. The stories about his family are the best part of the set, and I wish there was more of it.

I like the indignity of being pegged as the “party animal” just because of his appearance (“You think I want to do just cannonballs? I want to do other DIVES, you guys!”). I like the subversion of the money-saving-millennials complaint (“Millennials are spending too much money on lollipops. Yeah, well, I actually need a CPAP machine, so…”). I like his story about falling down the stairs at a subway station and a bunch of black kids helped him (“I’m too fat for the scorn of black teens!”). I like the observation that mansplaining has caused men to not be able to explain anything anymore, allowing them to be dumb as shit. And, of course, the blasé “I’m 32, I should probably start trying some gay shit.”

I thought the first 10-15 minutes or so about COVID fell flat. It wasn’t a strong way for Halkias to start the set, nor was the threesome story a strong way to end it. Some jokes, especially the ones about sex, are a little generic. The threesome-related crowd work, though, was glorious. One guy had a shitty threesome with two women at 4am and he was the only one who didn’t come (“They gave you Adderall?? What the fuck?”), showing Halkias’ strength at talking to his audience off the cuff. Pretty good for a first-timer, I’d say. I very much look forward to watching his next special.

Fat Rascal (2023)
Rating: Good

Halkias is fat and ugly and short and proud of it. He was stopped at international airport security without papers and was afraid he looked too much like a pedophile. And yet, in spite of these limitations, it sounds like Halkias gets laid a lot. Like, a lot. Listening to a fat guy talk about eating pussy is kind of gross, I’m not gonna lie. And he spends about 20 minutes talking about his dick. He spends so much time talking about his dick that I can picture it perfectly. That’s how much he talks about his tiny little curved shrimp dick, with its tight foreskin and its weak stream and its high-velocity cum. Makes you want to watch this special immediately, doesn’t it?

Halkias is a total natural at this stuff. I’ve never seen someone so chipper while being so self-deprecating. The first thing he says when he arrives on stage is “Look at this place, I don’t belong here.” He makes fun of the balcony patrons for looking like nerdy incel Gamestop employees; clearly they don’t belong there either. He makes it clear that he knows that he looks like a henchman in a Steven Seagal movie. It’s not all fat and ugly and nerdy and penis jokes, not really! Halkias spends some time talking tech, making the astute observation that people only think Elon Musk is smart because they can’t figure out his accent and that Neuralink is just going to put all of a person’s good memories behind a paywall (“Getting jacked off on the bus is a platinum-level memory”). He touches on his many trips around the country: there are people who look just like him all over Buffalo, there was a a guy in Phoenix who told Halkias that it wasn’t cool to tell jokes about being white, the girls in Tampa look like “the hottest girls at a bowling alley”. I laughed out loud that the white man’s Jesus is not only a tall white dude, he’s also a piece of ass! I chuckled sensibly when he said the airport cops on bikes hadn’t accosted a black teenager in a while, so they were a little cranky.

Halkias’ storytelling isn’t his strongest suit. The longest story involves an unpleasant confrontation at the desk at Delta Airlines, but most of it was dry with few actually good jokes peppered within. He does some decent crowd work, though, just like in his previous special. Here he makes fun of a guy who prowled Facebook looking for a “strong woman”, and he makes fun of another guy for getting broken up with. Both topics are mined for some comedy goodness, and Halkias’ own giggle is infectious. He seems to have fun with crowd work, he should do more of it.

Other jokes of note: Halkias couldn’t watch Squid Game after breaking up with a Korean girl because he just got mad at seeing any Korean person. Halkias is the “king of Walmart” because he can’t fit in anything from Macy’s or the Gap. Halkias joined the “Ten-Foot-High Club” which is where you beat off while everyone’s boarding the plane. And, of course, Halkias is saving getting pegged for marriage. He’s old-fashioned that way, you know.

Most of Halkias’ charm comes from the idea that he could be one of your funny friends. He’s loose and laid back, tells crude jokes about the internet and sex, and has the confidence that you wish you had. And since he’s already put out two specials in two years, I look forward to the next six before this decade is over.