The Internet Discovers Vintage Standup from Louis CK

Louis CK is one of those people you can’t imagine being any younger than he is now. Somehow you just assume that the standup comedian went through his whole childhood and adolescence looking like the balding middle-aged man he is now, with the same wry exhausted sense of humor.

That’s why it’s so jarring to watch this old footage of him at age 21, way back in 1988, just getting started in the standup scene on The Cable Comedy Show. It resurfaced on YouTube recently and it’s weirding the internet out.

In the video, CK talks about sign language, his douchebag uncle, and being a lonely, horny weirdo – so the usual material, really, but without the experience, innovation, and gross parenting jokes that we associate with him.

CK tried stand-up for the first time in 1985 and it went so horribly he didn’t do it again for two years. He moved to New York in 1989, but didn’t have his first 30-minute stand-up special until 1996.

Here’s the full clip if you can’t get enough of outdated 80s comedy: