I’ve seen Zach Galifianakis when he was blasted drunk and it wasn’t funny either. Just a kinda funny drunk guy taking jokes way too far. He came out in the crowd and made fun of people but it wasn’t funny and went on forever.
They really owe money back when they do that.
I saw Hedberg at a comedy club once. He was so strung out he was reading his jokes from a three-ring binder. I wanted to tell him, “Mitch, you’re confused on the concept here! A comic’s material is funnier when the audience is stoned!”
Still, he got a lot of laughs, and what other measure of a successful performance is there in this business?
Same here.
Certain comics, like Galifinakis, Dimitri Martin, Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts I think of being experimental comics. As far as I know, this is not recognized as a genre per se. But they don’t just stand up and tell jokes, they seem to be experimenting with the boundaries of comedic stage performance. I don’t put Mitch Hedberg in that category. He has a strong comic persona, and he plays a lot with conceptual absurdity, which is also a feature of the experimental type comics I refer to, but otherwise he does straight stand up.
It’s the same outline though, he doesn’t tell stories, it’s just a list of unrelated jokes.
I think of Mitch every time I eat rice.
Emo Phillips did a lot of odd one liners in his stand-up.
“You know what I hate? Indian givers…no, I take that back.”
“Well, my brother says ‘hello’. So, horray for speech therapy.”
Ah, yes, I remember Emo. “They said I broke the mold. Some of it grew back.”
There are just too many.
That’s who led me to the Wikipedia page for paraprosdokians in the first place, in fact.
Are you sure he was strung out and not just working out new material? Don’t know what level of show you were at but working from cards/notebooks isn’t unheard of for early runs of stuff.
Never heard of him until now.
I used to love Mitch Hedberg.
Oh, I still love him, but I used to, too.
Plus one!
My sorta angry and snide comment above is because I only discovered Mitch after he died. This made me angry and resentful. Stop doing drugs and dying before I discover you, comics! Or don’t stop doing drugs-- learn moderation.
People either loved him, or they hated him. Or they thought he was okay.
Thanks, ZipperJJ, for reminding me to watch more Milton Jones!
“Some people say firefighters deserve more money, but apparently, a poll was taken and they all fell through a hole in the floor!”
His delivery cracks me up, the way he often looks lost or confused makes a nice change from most comedians IMO.
Biggirl, I totally agree. Perhaps it’s selfish of us to hope our favorite artists take care of themselves and not die so they can keep giving us their art, but I think it may not be selfish, really. Presumably in most cases a part of them (or all of them) wants to live, too.
With a guy like Hedberg, I hate to say, the worst thing that could’ve happened to him was success.
I had a neighbor, and whenever he would knock on the wall, I knew he wanted me to turn my music down… When he knocked on the wall, I would mess with his head. I’d say, ‘Go around.’
His next door neighbor was Nick Dipaolo.