I am SO bummed out.
One of my very few non music-related heroes/influences, Minnesota comedian Mitch Hedberg, died on Wednesday. Since I first saw him in the mid 90s, I've always thought of him as an unorthodox comic genius. The very first thing I heard him say was "I wrote a script and gave it to my agent and he said I need to rewrite it.. I said 'fuck that, I'll just make a copy.'" I laughed my arse off and from that moment on was permanently fished into the brain of Mitch Hedberg.
When I was a kid, I not only listened to music obsessively, but I also listened to as much comedy as I could get my ears on and I loved it. Steven Wright (one of the best in my humble opinion), SCTV, SNL, Steve Martin, Weird Al, Jake Johannsen, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Billy Crystal who was actually really funny back in the day, and Cheech and Chong were amongst my favorites. When I grew up I wanted to do one of two things: be a standup comic or a musician. Had I taken the standup comic route, I'd like to think I would have grown up to be like Mitch - sans the all-too-early death.
99.9999% of comedians out there bore me to tears with jokes about stupid people, fat people, men leaving the toilet seat up, jerking off, airports, and all of that other overdone mundane material - but not Mitch. He never attacked anyone personally; he always just talked about stuff. He talked mostly about food and inanimate objects like vending machines ("I like vending machines because food tastes better when it falls.. sometimes when I buy a candy bar I will drop it so it achieves its maximum flavor potential"). His delivery was just as funny as the jokes themselves - just standing there like a space case with his eyes closed, hair hanging down, talking like a beat poet and stressing his syllables in weird places.
Even though I've probably seen him perform a good 2 dozen times now, it was never enough and after every show I couldn't wait until the next one.. on Monday I checked his website and saw he was performing in St. Peter next month and was actually considering making the 1.5 hour drive to go see him. ACK!
The last show he did here at the Orpheum last Fall was one of his best; he asked the crowd if he opened a comedy club in Minnesota if we'd come. Hells YEAH we would! I hope one opens in his honor. He has 2 cds out and I highly recommend them both - I'm pretty sure they're available on his site (link below) and/or amazon.com. And I certainly hope there's a bevy of other shows he's recorded that we'll get to see and/or hear someday.
We've lost a comic genius folks - put your heads down and hang your hair in your face in a moment of silence for Mitch.
"I was going to get my teeth whitened but then I said 'fuck that, I'll just get a tan instead..'"
"I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shishkabobs."
"...and then at the end of the letter I like to write "P.S. - this is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated."
People teach their dogs to sit, it's a trick. I've been sitting my whole life, and a dog has never looked at me as though he thought I was tricky."
"So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that's funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn't funny."
Links:
Pioneer Press article with a ton of great Mitch quotes: http://www.thedotdotdot.com/humor/hedberg.html
Official site: http://www.mitchhedberg.net
