Comedian Rob Delaney’s Twitter feed is full of good advice.
“Cheap date idea: cut open a pack of hotdogs & squeeze the juice over your lover’s body then summon a peregrine falcon with your mind.”
Also, public service announcements: “@TMZ Not POSITIVE it was her but I think I just saw Sarah McLachlan throw a bag of dogs in a river.”
He’s not afraid to talk politics, either: “If you see a woman breastfeeding during the shutdown, call the police. That is socialism & it is illegal & #gay.”
It’s all in a day’s work for the man who’s been dubbed the Funniest Person on Twitter by Comedy Central — and by an impressive volume of fans: He had 945,323 followers last we checked, ranging from Mindy Kaling and Jimmy Fallon to Lena Dunham and Slash. New Yorker scribe Susan Orlean follows Delaney, as does CNN anchor Jake Tapper. The 36-year-old comic and writer boasts perhaps the most disparate celebrity following on the site.
Though Twitter is an unpaid endeavor, the fame Delaney’s reaped from it has helped his stand-up career immensely; last year, he released a comedy special and has seen his bookings climb as his star rises. “I’m continuing to tour, and I’ll record a special next year,” he tells The Post.
If you follow Delaney, you’ll be familiar with his cringe-worthy icon: a photo of himself standing on the beach in a tiny Speedo. “When I started on Twitter, I thought, ‘This is a silly, foolish Web site that shouldn’t even exist, so why don’t I post a photo that’s worthy of it?’ ” he says. “People have said, ‘Oh, you should take that down,’ or ‘I’d love to follow you but I don’t want to look at that picture.’ That makes me so happy.”
The LA-based comic has been on the site since 2009 but has seen his popularity skyrocket in the last couple of years. He became a voracious heckler of Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign, and was even dubbed “Romney’s nemesis” by Bloomberg Businessweek. He also frequently spoofs “retweets” of the president (“RT @BarackObama: Is the song ‘Piano Man’ about a guy who is actually part piano, like a monster?”).
Now, he tells his back story in a memoir, “Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.” The title is a sendup of the format many tweeters use on their profiles.
His absurdist comic voice has been shaped by a troubled past, about which he’s been candid online, and in one-man shows and stand-up. “I had a bad thing that I dealt with and got better,” he says, “and you take those things that are dark and you monkey with them in a way that makes them not as scary.”
For Delaney, that thing was alcohol: For years he was a blackout drinker, in his native Marblehead, Mass., and while studying theater at NYU. Finally, in 2002, he ended up in a horrific auto accident that landed him in jail with broken arms and legs — and then in rehab.
He’s now happily sober and married, with two young children. But that hasn’t diluted the content of his gleefully raunchy tweets. Does his wife object?
“It doesn’t bother her,” he says. “Sometimes she’ll take issue with something if she feels a joke is lazy.”
Though much of his humor comes from being a satirical horndog, he’s a supporter of women’s rights; he recently published an essay in the UK’s Guardian newspaper about a woman’s right to an abortion, and he recently touched off a Twitter love-fest with feminist sci-fi writer Margaret Atwood when he included her on a list of his favorite things.
Some of Delaney’s most straightforward tweets address getting help for depression. He has also focused lately on health care and the government shutdown.
“[ObamaCare] binds up so many things people care about,” he says. “I would love to put on, like, football pads and take two baseball bats and run through Congress and make our country have single-payer health care.”
As for feedback, he’s been pleasantly surprised: “Most responses are pretty smart and funny and nice,” he says. “It’s almost improved my view of humanity.”