Thursday, March 31, 2005  

RIP Mitch Hedberg

I hope to God and Jesus and Who The Fuck Ever that I'm being suckered in by an April Fools joke. I really do. Because it looks like Mitch Hedberg's dead.

I first met Mitch before my first year as a comic was even over. I had accepted a job on the staff of Judi Brown and Steve Marmel's Vail Comedy Contest, very much mistakenly assuming that it would be a great way to network with (gasp!) real working comics. What I found was that real working comics, especially those on the cusp of becoming industry darlings, have no interest whatsoever in networking with the guy driving the van and hanging up the backdrop. I was treated like a wet food stamp by a number of comics who have since gone on to a fair amount of fame and fortune.

And yet that's also where I met Mitch Hedberg, who was quite unlike any comic I'd ever seen. He had great jokes. GREAT jokes, and an incredible style. It wasn't so much that he sounded stoned, it's like he was stoned on laudanum, or opium, or whatever the hell a beatnik in the forties would have been stoned on. But he also had spontaneity on stage that was sublime, especially when delivered in that tripped-out drawl. He was like Thelonious Monk; improvised, but technically rock solid. During this contest, there was a timer onstage that would go green, yellow, then red when your time was up. Most of the comics got freaked out as the light progressed, stammering and speeding up, trying to cram in just one more joke. Mitch paid no attention whatsoever. He maintained his slow, cool pace until the moment the light turned red, when he'd drop the mike on the floor, mid-sentence and walk offstage. It was a brilliant way to close a contest set; the audience howled every single time, as did I. Mitch was also incredibly nice to me, both when he thought I was just a van driver, and later when he found out I was a new comic. I have come to learn that the people with real talent tend to be the kindest. Mitch would be my Exhibit A.

He didn't win the contest -- in fact, if it hadn't been for some vote tampering, a midget in a mesh tank top doing stock lines would have -- but he made an impression on everyone as the Real Deal. The Genius Comic. That label's completely overused, but it was made for Mitch.

I had the pleasure of working with him a few times after that, when I had become a little more established and could legitimately claim the title of working comic myself. Mostly we worked one-nighters in the Midwest together. I remember one show at a club in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. Mitch was higher than a kite and had gone onstage with his Army-green messenger bag, which was completely stuffed and overflowing, still hanging around his shoulders. He was killing, really killing, but about halfway through his set, some guy in the crowd yelled out, "Dude, what's with the bag?" Mitch, in his trademark style, looked down, noticed the bag, then looked at the guy and said, "Oh, man. It's cool. It's a bag. I put all my stuff in it. I used to carry it around in my hands, like this," and he mimed a double-handful of books and things. "But now," he continued, "I put it all in my bag, and it totally frees up my hands, so I can do this." And he flipped the guy the bird, smiled, and said, "Shut up, fucker, you're ruining the show."

That was the week he convinced me (after a number of bourbons) to go out and do "band breaks." After our show, we'd prowl Saint Cloud for rock clubs. In between bands, we'd go up and try to do comedy. The rule was that you couldn't say anything like, "Hey, we're the comics at the club down the street." You just had to go up and just start doing your act. It was, obviously, a nightmare. You've never seen such hatred and heckling. Utter death. After we did it a few times, I asked Mitch why we were subjecting ourselves to such misery.

"It's cool," he said. "You'll never bomb this bad again."

I don't think I ever saw him in person after that, but occasionally, for a couple of years after that, I'd get a letter from him, usually scrawled in green crayon. I don't know that I wrote him back much, if at all. I'm bad about that. Right now, I sure wish I had. But that was about the time things really started clicking for him. Bigger clubs, bigger festivals. Time named him the Comedian of his Generation, or some such.

It was also about the time I started to get calls from friends in LA, saying things like, "Dude, Hedberg's getting out of control. Too much partying, too many drugs." It's a tough thing when a guy's vices, and voice, and stage persona all start getting blurred together. It's a cycle that tends to feed on itself. When I heard those stupid rumors that he'd lost a leg and was in Mexican prison, I have to admit I didn't just laugh them off. It wouldn't have surprised me if they were true, not at all. Still, it was fun to see him get Rock Star famous, though it seems like that fame finally caught up with him. His success, albeit too brief, means there's still hope for the Good Guys.

Understand this: I'm not claiming him as a friend. Pretty much, we worked the road together a few times, which makes our relationship somewhere between blood brothers and total strangers. But every comic has a handful of guys he works with when he first starts out that impact him in a real and fundamental way. Mitch was one of those guys for me.

And he was everything a comedian ought to be: honest, immediate, and real. And one-hundred-percent-fucking funny. I'm proud to have worked with him. I know I'm a better comic for it.

It takes a Real Comedian to die the day before April Fools, and brother, let me tell you, Mitch was that good.

Bee Delay

The Colorado Rockies had a spring training game called on account of bees yesterday. That is, perhaps, the funniest thing I've ever heard. The only thing funnier would be in the game had been called on account of dogs with bees in their mouths, so when they bark, they shoot bees at you.

World Gone Mad

God damn Barry Bonds. God damn his melon head, God damn his little girlâ??s voice, and God damn his steroid-ravaged knees. His presence on my fantasy baseball roster was the one thing keeping me from fielding the Bad News Bears this season, but he â??jumped off the bridge,â?? and he just took my $24.95 with him. Thatâ??s right; Iâ??m paying Yahoo twenty-five bones for the pleasure of watching my collection of defects and booze-hounds bumble their way through weekly beatdowns that will probably be so severe as to actually break the Internet. If you find that your favorite website wonâ??t load in the next month or so, just assume itâ??s because my boys of summer just lost another game by the score of 7 to Q.

Oh, well. Thereâ??s always American Idol. Whatâ??s that? Iâ??m supposed to hate American Idol? Weâ??re all too hip? Too smart? Itâ??s for red-state suckers and doe-eyed housewives? Bite me. You, you, and you. Bite me twice. This is drama at its purest. This is Aristotelian. This is raw desire coming into conflict with that most dastardly of villains: the American electorate. Why would I want to watch anything else? Who wants to watch smart-aleck kids in some fourth-rate sitcom when I can genuinely ruin somebodyâ??s LIFE with a toll-free call? Donâ??t misunderstand me. Itâ??s not all schadenfreude. These kids can fucking bring it. They are legitimately talented, and this yearâ??s crop of pop is no different. Hell, the show might very well be won this time of year by a fat guy with Don Johnsonâ??s beard or a black chick with Thomas Dolbyâ??s hair. And if thereâ??s a god in the sky, some time in the next few weeks, Bo Bice will smash Constantine Marullisâ??s greasy, smirking noggin in with a mike stand draped in Aerosmith bandanas. How can The World According to Jim compete with that? It canâ??t. I love the show unreservedly. I love the singers, and I love the judges â?? Paula Abdul (fucking crazy), Simon Cowell (fucking mean), and Randy Jackson (the worldâ??s first black wigger). Bread and circuses, my ass.

You want bread and circuses? Go to Florida. Go see Terry Schiavo. Thatâ??s the sinister distraction, ladies and germs. Itâ??s a non-event. Political grandstanding. Nothing but grist for the right-wing hate mill. Itâ??s smoke and mirrors, and donâ??t get fooled. Itâ??s easy to think that thereâ??s something going on, as the usual crowd of conservative pundits bleating and braying out the window. Donâ??t let that chunkamunk hophead Rush Limbaugh trick you into caring; donâ??t let Michael Savage, the gayest fascist ever, buffalo you into paying attention. The only important things going on here is that (a) the Republicans are starting to feast on each other -- it might be the beginning of the end for Tom DeLay, the odds-on favorite for the captaincy of the Olympic graft squad, and (b) itâ??s makes mighty good cover so the GOP can run amok and get going on its agenda to dust off some other long-standing wet dreams, like drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a place that George W. Bush and his oil-company cronies have wanted to fuck over so long itâ??s amazing that they didnâ??t book a charter flight and head up there to gang-rape a caribou.

Is this what weâ??ve come to? Is this America, where our natural resources are sucked dry, our political process can be subverted brazenly with no consequence, where Barry Bonds can just fuck me, and where a woman in a coma gets more TV time than I do? The world has gone crazy!

More proof: Iâ??m doing comedy in Lowell â?? LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS â?? this week. The last time I was in Lowell, a drunken Italian in a track suit gave me a pressed ham through the window behind the stage. This is the Lowell version of getting a lai around your neck when you land in Hawaii. One show at Dick Dohertyâ??s Comedy Escape at the Doubletree on Friday at 9:00, two shows Saturday at 7:30 and 10:00. And to round out the crazy talk, Iâ??ll be hosting the open mike at Dick Dohertyâ??s Comedy Vault on Sunday night. Thatâ??s right, Iâ??ll be spending Easter in a dank hole surrounded by that most pathetic of creature: the aspiring comedian. What better way to celebrate the day Jesus rose from the dead than to watch eighteen shitfaced wannabes die? Come on down and dig the carnage.

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me...

Okay, just see me. Many, many thanks to Rob Steen at North Shore Comedy Productions for putting this up on the web. I'm trying to con him into hooking me up with some more recent bits from the same show, so y'all can see I have actually written something since I released the CD.

Insomnia

It was crisis time last night. I had to find a way to get more than 4 hours of sleep, or I was in danger of losing my job for either sleeping at my desk or engaging an acid flashback in a shouting match. This was Ugly Tired. Malarial tired. The kind of tired where you feel like you have a low-grade fever and every time you try to talk you sound like a drunken Jim Brady. The kind of tired where you don't mind sitting next to the homeless guy on the T because he's fat and "cozy."

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Steinbrenner's Weather Machine

George Steinbrenner must have a weather machine. It's the only explanation. He must have dipped into his Turtleneck Fund and hired some renegade Iraqi scientists to build a device to bury Boston under a blanket of snowy retribution. It's time to say out loud what we all know unconsciously: this winter will never end. It will snow twice a week for the rest of our lives, and it's all Mark Bellhorn's fault. The earth is out of balance, and we are paying the price. 86 years without a title was just the down payment, man. We'll be paying this one off longer than if we'd bought a TV at one of those "rent to own" places. Meanwhile, I've had a cold for three straight months, and I believe I've evolved a new organ in the back of my throat whose sole purpose is to generate great gobs of phlegm the color and consistency of kindergarten paste.

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For Your Mocking Pleasure

Dear readers, I give to you Poetry America's War and Patriotic Poetry selections.