Meet John Mulaney, king of the nerds. In his new stand-up set, the 29-year-old Saturday Night Live writer recalls in loving detail the classroom bullying that prepared him for his career as a champion self-mocker. Today Mulaney has a Seinfeldian eye for routine absurdities – nitpicking Ice-T's line readings on Law & Order: SVU, copy-editing a panhandler's sidewalk pitch, questioning the vocabulary used in tabloid headlines. ("No one has said 'bozo' in a thousand years. Who was your source on that, New York Post? Some tiny old lady that chain smokes all day long?") But he reserves his greatest scorn for his own miscues, like when he spends nine minutes reliving a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to procure a Xanax prescription. If Mulaney's self-portrait doesn't quite reach the zany heights of his finest SNL creations, he has an odd charm of his own that's undeniable.

Listen to "Old Gay Man":

Related
• Photos: Random Notes

“The Pretender”

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."