Ansari brings his comic hipster swagger

At 31, Aziz Ansari is at a fascinating point in his comic career. So interesting, in fact, he can perform the nearly impossible task of filling a sports arena for what is ordinarily an intimate stand-up routine. That's what Ansari did Friday when he packed the Wells Fargo Center.

Then again, Ansari is a different comic from most, a wiry stand-up who not only has rock-star status, but whose snarky routines have the tone and rhythm of daring musical artists, like Kanye West and LCD Soundsystem, whom he name-drops into his sets. If nothing else, Ansari has - no, is - hipster swagger personified, comically.

Knowing you can't stay a snarky hipster forever, Ansari - a Philadelphia favorite who filmed his stand-up special, 2013's Buried Alive, at the Merriam Theater - developed two heartening aspects of his persona rarely touched upon: his experience as a first-generation American, and true romance, which made him seem surprisingly sweet. Ansari entered to the Spaghetti Western sounds and sights of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone and commenced to poke fun at people who weakly can't commit to veganism (then again, "salads need to step up their game") and women constantly dealing with "creepy guys," an idea alien to men who'll take any attention no matter how weirdly lascivious. Ansari qualified the unequal treatment of women with Beyoncé making less money than Jay Z on tour and having to cook his steak while he performs "99 Problems."

Before revealing the non-game-playing aspects of his current relationship, Ansari warmly and incisively dissected the rude isolationism of the single person in the Twitter/Instagram age, how singles easily dismiss suitors because they're "looking for something better" (as though "2Pac and Biggie" might come back while you're on a date). Ansari then brought a male audience member to the mike, detailing the anatomy of a sour set of tweets, resulting in a woman's dissing a guy with that night's Ansari tickets.

In the night's first routine, Ansari talked warmly about his arranged-married parents arriving in South Carolina from their home in India and the sacrifices they made to ensure young Aziz's happiness. And Ansari's own level of hardship to date? "When my iPad died" and "I had 10 whole minutes without total entertainment."