September 9-13
	www.ryanstout.net

To slightly misquote a little Texas band by the name of ZZ Top, “Everybody crazy about a sharp-dressed man”—at least if the sharp-dressed man in question is Ryan Stout, who typically wears a suit onstage (and who, not coincidentally, grew up in Texas). And when we say “everybody,” we not only mean comedy club audiences like those lucky enough to see him this week at Cap City, but showbiz panjandrums as well. Indeed, Ryan Stout’s star is clearly on the rise: He’s the winner of the 2005 Boston International Comedy Festival’s $10,000 Stand-Up Contest, he’s performed at HBO’s The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas and the mother ship of that fest, HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. Not long after those festival appearances, he signed a deal to host an MTV game show, “I.Q.” The “I.Q.” pilot never made it onto the airwaves, but Ryan obviously wowed the execs with his quick wit and hosting chops—they hired him to host a another new MTV show, an opportunity that came his way while he was taping “Live At Gotham,” Comedy Central’s New York-based stand-up show. Not bad. And Stout has also made fervent fans out of lots of folks who aren’t festival bookers and TV producers, from established comics (he’s worked with quite a few, including Robin Williams, Dana Carvey and Dave Chappelle) to people like journalist Ben Fong-Torres, one of the original and most significant of Rolling Stone’s writers--remember what a prominent presence he was in the film Almost Famous?--and someone who knows a thing or two about recognizing highly talented artists, wrote this: "Ryan Stout, a straight-arrow-looking kind of guy, shocks the crowd into laughter with his inventive interplay between innocence and a jarringly twisted point of view. He goes from loony to weirdly logical. With him, it's more than clever writing; his comedy is based on clear and clever thinking." All this, and he’s a sharp-dressed man, too. With David James