Joe Rogan January 30, Mirage.

Joe Rogan’s comedy bears an interesting resemblance to the other aspects of his career: a dichotomy of styles playing to different levels of intelligence. For every critically acclaimed NewsRadio there’s a Fear Factor counterpart. Friday night at the Mirage, his best jokes were the ones where he made spectators utilize their brains. But for every thinker, there were cracks that never went beyond basic in setup and punchline.

The backbone of Rogan’s high-energy set was the well-worn premise that men and women are different. This included Rogan doing the lame voice of a hippy-dippy guy claiming he understands women and that he’s different than other men. It served as a lead-in to jokes, but instead of building them up it felt like it should have been left in the ’90s. That stood in stark contrast to Rogan’s skill of taking typical comedy punching bags and finding new ways to hit them.

On people obsessed with going to outer space: “Some people think our future is on other planets. That’s like you don’t want to clean your room so you move out of your house ... Get in the car. Let’s go to Death Valley. Get out of the car. There’s nothing here, right? Mars sucks worse! I just want to go to space. You’re already in space.”

Against the high of that well-crafted bit came the letdown of Rogan’s defense against critics who’ve called him homophobic: “It depends on the context. If I’ve got nine tequilas in me and a dude with a dress is trying to suck my dick, I’m probably going to be a little scared.” A lame response to a subject very few comedians are digging for deeper truths on.

But then there was this gem, calling out YouTube commenters: “Do you really think Jennifer Lopez has time to read your comments in between eating diamonds and f*cking all her background dancers?” Of all the things Rogan does, perhaps his comedy most mimics the cards he calls for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. You have to sit through a few clunkers to get to the highlight knockouts.