David Cross tells some jokes at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 31, 2012. (Photo by wdecora)

Actor and comedian David Cross hails from Atlanta. And he returns home to see his family every year, particularly on Thanksgiving.

Inevitably, returning home yields some family quarrels, he confessed. And sometimes insignificant quarrels will escalate.

And it’s during those arguments that you sometimes learn something about family members that forever changes the way you see them, David told his late show audience at the Warner Theatre last Friday.

In an argument over not just the best way to plug in the Roku streaming player but rather the best way to look up how to plug in the Roku streaming player, for example, David learned something important about his mother.

“I found out she simply cannot take a punch,” he told the audience.

Thankfully, David Cross is a comedian and not a serial abuser of parents, so the audience did indeed have a laugh due to how the comedian developed the joke and brought it home.

Timing was his chief weapon as he returned again to several favorite topics weaved throughout his latest standup show, David Cross: Making America Great Again!

For instance, David is an avowed atheist, and many of his jokes returned time and again to how inconceivable religious people are to him.

He threaded that humor into his perspective on local sites, telling the audience he had a rare opportunity to go sightseeing in DC during the day. In so doing, he hit some Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of Natural History.

“What do Christians do when they are forced to walk through the museum on tour?” David wondered aloud. “Do they cover their children’s eyes, and say, ‘Don’t look at these lies! Lies!’ as they walk past the dinosaurs?”

Watch David Cross riff on “an existence predicated upon manufactured necessity” in a standup routine from 2011:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97CuAQ_xxM4]

As the night progressed, the jokes became even more not safe for work, or just about anywhere else really, as he continued to knock the mentality of all religions as well as those who oppose gun control.

Needless to say, the off-color humor won some laughs but some folks actually walked out of the theatre after the halfway mark. David wasn’t surprised.

“A lot of people come expecting some puns and pratfalls from Tobias Fünke,” David said, referencing his Arrested Development character. “But there is at least eight hours of pubically available material where I’m being just as offensive as I am tonight.”

I’ll leave you to look up that material or to catch David live as he continues on his world tour. Tonight, he hits Charlotte, NC, and continues around the country to conclude his US tour in Oklahoma City on April 24. (He has a show not far from DC in Philadelphia on April 3 if you missed him here, and you’re up for the trip!)

Toward the end of the show, David struck an affable note when he got a bottle of tequila and a couple of beers from backstage to share a shot with a birthday girl.

Cheers, David! I hope the only Christians that see you this tour have a really good sense of humor about their faith…