David Huntsberger

Photo By Bret Brookshire

More fun than a barrel of Scopes Monkey Trials, David Huntsberger's brand of stand-up straddles all things rascally and erudite. Taking audiences on a comic odyssey about evolution and de facto social Darwinism, the 26-year-old Huntsberger displays a distinctly Kubrickian view of humankind's relationships with technology. In a sly wink to Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi connect-the-dots leap of simian to spaceman, one recent show opened with Huntsberger's Shatner-esque interpretative reading of a Pixies song, careening the narrative elsewhere before the "this monkey's gone to heaven" chorus – a reference no doubt lost on the audience's classic rockers and comedy clubbers expecting Craig "The Lovemaster" Shoemaker catchphrase fodder.

But bottom line, it's all just jokes for this former K-12 substitute teacher, who holds a degree in civil engineering from Colorado State. "[My act] is like a minithesis, but it's a fake one. My heart's not really that into it. I don't want to get up there and be like, 'You gotta listen to this!' If anything, it's whimsically offensive. I'm not saying anyone's in the wrong." Indeed, Huntsberger delights most in deflating all airs of superiority, be it in thrift-store hipsters, elderly health nuts, or equine society elitism toward NASCAR. Even Lucy, the infamous partial fossil skeleton, is skewed as less a missing link than a bad case of monkey scoliosis.

Huntsberger's profile has taken a steady rise since his move to Austin by way of San Diego in the fall of 2004. He was a finalist in last year's Funniest Person in Austin contest and recently performed on Comedy Central's Premium Blend, a veritable Good Housekeeping seal of approval for young comics. Despite growing up in a family that loved to laugh, stand-up wasn't an early avocation for the Reno, Nev., native. "My mom used to take us a lot to the comedy clubs in Reno, because of all the casinos, but they always booked the shittiest, hackiest comics. Essentially, the first guy would be awful, and the second guy would be some up-and-comer who was just getting booked as a middler, but good, and we'd crack up and go, 'God this is funny!' But then you'd have this old codger, like a 60-year old dude who played some weird character and would just eat his own balls for an hour. It was like, 'Oh, kill me!' So I associated stand-up with that."

Although his easygoing onstage manner hints at a penchant for voices, David relegates character portrayals like his Darling Danny Dingleman, a dig on "that Eighties joke-throwing style of comedy," to The Hooligan Show, the revue he created with core members Doug Mellard, Scott Calonico, Stacey Mead, and Daniel Jackson. Despite having just a handful of performances under their belts, the Hooligans frequently manage to attain the heights of local alt-sketch comedy zenith the Hyper Jackson Chamber. Be it stand-up or sketch comedy, David Huntsberger is leaving audiences eep-eeping.

David Huntsberger appears March 24 & 25, Friday and Saturday, 9:30 & 11:30pm, at the Velveeta Room, 521 E. Sixth. For more information, call 469-9116.