Oct. 19, 2024

The Mitch Hedberg-issance

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac delves into the life, career, and enduring legacy of comedian Mitch Hedberg. Reflecting on Hedberg's unique comedic style and sharing personal anecdotes, including the story of his posthumous album 'Do You Believe in Gosh,' Johnny recounts memorable moments and contributions from Hedberg's life.

00:00 Introduction and Today's Topic
00:40 Mitch Hedberg's Last Days
01:41 Tribute to Mitch Hedberg
02:40 Mitch's Unique Comedy Style
04:06 Personal Stories and Anecdotes
05:20 Mitch's Influence and Legacy
07:47 Mitch's Struggles and Personal Life
13:38 Unreleased and Rare Content

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Kalaroga Shark Media. Hello, I'm Johnny Mack with your daily

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comedy news. There's been talk of the Hebburg Gassans had

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burchase Sons. Anyway, Mitch Hedberg's name has been around a

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lot more lately than it had been in the past

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few years, so I thought I would do today is

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just off if you listen to all fifteen sixteen hundred

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episodes of this podcast, this is for you as a rerun.

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But you know, new listeners come and old listeners go.

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So what I've done here is over the years, I've

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sold a few lengthy Mitch Hedberg related anecdotes and I've

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put them together to make it today's episode, which is

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all about Mitch Hebburg. So one thing I can tell

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you is I know exactly where I was on March

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thirty first, two thousand and five. Here's why. I was

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at the New York City Javit Center doing an episode

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of Jim Brewers radio show for Sirius XAM. We were

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broadcasting from the car Show and Jim was in a

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bad mood because the night before Jim was doing a

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concert with Mitch Hedburg and Mitch did not show up,

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and Jim was kind of annoyed because he had to

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stretch and fill because the other comedian didn't show up,

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and Jim wound up doing an extra forty minutes or

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an hour or whatever was the story there. Jim was

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quite upset about it. As we were doing the broadcast

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from the car show, we got word there was a

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reason Mitch Hedberg didn't show up for that show. He

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had passed away the night before. Mitch Hedberg passed away

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March thirty, two thousand and five in Livingston, New Jersey,

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not far from where I live, So we were like, oh,

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that kind of changed the mood several ways. One, we

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felt like we were being a bunch of jerks for

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being mad at the guy not showing. Two, we all

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love Mitch Hedburg, and holy cow, he had passed away.

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From personal experience. I knew at the radio station that

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I wanted to do a tribute to Mitch Hedburg, but

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I don't like being a vulture, so I didn't want to,

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like the next day be like, oh, wait, I do

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a Mitch Hedberg tribute, because then we make it about us.

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So we waited, and I eventually reached out to Mitch's wife,

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Lynn Shawcroft, and I'm like, hey, would love to do

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a tribute to Mitch. Would you be into that? She

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was into it. She came by. I got to know

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Lynn reasonably well, and when she came up, she had

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Mitch's notebooks with some jokes and a bunch of I

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think they were cassettes. They might have been CDs, but

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they were live shows recorded late in Mitch's career. And

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I was sitting there with Lynn and she hadn't heard

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them in a while, and they sounded great, and I

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said to her, you know, you've got another album here.

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That album became the posthumous Mitch Hedberg album that do

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you Believe? In Gosh? I had nothing to do with

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making the album, other than possibly perhaps putting the thought

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in Lynn's brain. I'm glad that that album was released.

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From a twenty thirteen article in GQ, GQ wrote, Mitch

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Hedberg was Twitter before Twitter. His jokes were short, inane,

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and timeless. It was on the road doing stand up

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three hundred nights a year, living off vending machines, writing

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constantly about the world he saw around him. Mike Birbigley

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said Mitch wrote some of the best jokes at the

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last three decades. He's one comedian who all comedians agree

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is great. Mitch was never without a pen and never

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threw away a notebook. Lynn Shawcroft kept most of the

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notebook's private, but back in twenty thirteen, she opened them

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up to g QGQ wrote the results a masterclass in comedy.

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There was only one time Mitch ever lost a notebook.

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He and Lynn were in Chicago that had gotten back

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to their hotel. When Mitch noticed it was missing, he

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tore through the hotel room looking for it. Lynn said

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it was one of the only times I saw him

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really visibly upset about something. Finally, after a while, he

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started telling himself, it's fine, everything'll be fine. That's when

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the phone rang. It was a kid at a frat party.

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Apparently Mitch had left the notebook on stage. Somehow it

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ended up in the hands of a college age fan

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who wanted to give it back. Mitch and Lynn headed

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to the party to meet the kid. When they got there,

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or relieve, Mitch pulled out a lot of cash tried

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hand to the kid. The kid didn't want any money,

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He just wanted Mitch to call him to hang out

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next time he was in town. But by then it

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was already five or six in the morning, and Mitch

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hated to feel indebted to people. He finally looked at

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the kid and said, just take the f and money man.

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Lynn says, Mitch's jokes were about our life. He wrote

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about what he liked, so his jokes were about sandwiches

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and carrots and staying in hotels and the weird ways language works.

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Now this next thing. I remember Lynn telling this to

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me when we were listening to the tapes I referred

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to earlier. We were in one of the smaller studios

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at Sirius, and she pointed out during Mitch's stand up,

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people would call out the endings before he could finish them.

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He was having a tough time touring because of that,

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so Lynn says later in his career he had to

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write jokes that were even shorter and faster. Examples, when

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someone tries to hand me out of flyer, it's just

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like saying here, you throw this away, or a turtlenecks,

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like being strangled by a really weak guy. All day,

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Mitch knew what else connected with his audience. Drug jokes.

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There were dozens. I like the FedEx driver because he's

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a drug dealer. He doesn't even know it. He's always

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on time. People associate long hair with drug use. I

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wish long hair was associated with something other than drug use,

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like an extreme longing for cake. That strangers would see

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a long haired guy and say that guy eats cake.

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He's on putt cake. To say another daughters, don't bring

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the cake eater over here anymore. He smells like flower.

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See how excited he got when he found out your

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birthday was fast approaching. At one point, Mitch started writing

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companies he liked looking for sponsorships. In addition to gold Bond,

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he wrote a uniball to say the jokes he wrote

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with their pens were funnier. Eventually, Jimmy Johns the Sandwich

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Makers signed on to sponsor Mitch Hedburg from the Guardian

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in twenty fifteen. Mitch Hedburg a sly alchemist who turned

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sentences into comedy. Gold from behind sunglasses and bound head,

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Mitch Hedberg delivered concise gags that open up the mundane

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world and showed anyone could be a comedian. If you're

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flappable and have legs, you're never blocking a fire exit.

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That's the line that got the writer hooked on. Mitch Hedburg.

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A man standing still on a stage with his eyes shut,

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Mike in the stand reciting a list of staccato jokes

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with a percussive rhythm seemed odd. I'd never heard one

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liners before which had no hint of pun slinging or wordplay,

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just funny sentences. I guess the writer hadn't heard Stephen Wright.

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Believe me, I'm a huge Mitch Hedberg fan, but there's

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surely some Steven Wright influence in there. Mitch was a

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drug user or something, which caused his death in two

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thousand and five, but listening to him didn't sound like

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the ramlies of a typical stoner, but instead the thoughts

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of someone unencumbered by the conventional logic that gradually takes

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us over so we succumb to adulthood. Watching Mitch allow

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you to feel like a child again. And although kats

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and Hamburgers aren't important, finding humor in the mundane is

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Jokes such as if you live with a muster, you'd

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never get the hiccups require a sense of thought, But

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having been in his presence for two minutes allowed you

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to think with the Hedbergian that logic or is it Hedbergian?

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How would you pronounce that word I'm going with Hedbergian

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sounds cooler Hedbergie in that logic that guide you seamlessly

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to the funny. The joke is just ten words long,

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but ten words was enough for Hedberg to paint a

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hilarious and detailed picture that most people couldn't paint with

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one hundred. However, the audience aren't just laughing at the painting,

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but the man with the brush, and their own incredulity

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that a single person is able to have all these

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thoughts which don't make you just say, I've never thought

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of that in a way before, but instead, I've never

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thought about anything like that ever. His long hair often

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of skirt, his bowed sunglass face, he never showed dominance

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over the stage by pacing His hands would often be

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held still behind his back. He seemed shy, but this

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made him far more relatable than any confident comedian who

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chats to audiences with the unfettered glances of an old mate.

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Most audience members know they don't possess the requisite skills

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to talk on a stage as confidently, such as greats

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like Steve Martin or Sarah Silverman. So Mitch Hedberg's demeanor

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made him far more human to many people. He made

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me realize you don't need great performance skills and ability

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to write seamless segues to be a comedian. If the

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sentence you're saying are funny, people will laugh. As untimely

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passing means we'll never know what one of the most

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inventive and prolific writers in comedy could have eventually achieved.

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But watching a handful of his YouTube clips makes it

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clear he created more laughs and jokes in his one

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short life than many other comedians could hope to create

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in two. In twenty eleven, dead Spin wrote, by all accounts,

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Mitch Hepburgh was a pretty regular guy. He grew up

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in Saint Pame, Minnesota, before he ditched the suburbs, literally

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leaving his parents home without telling them after high school

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graduation because he didn't know how to tell them he

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was going. I met Mitch's parents at the Las Vegas

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Comedy Festival. Oh, it's got to be fifteen years ago now.

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They were so nice. Mitch eventually surfaced in Fort Lauderdale,

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eventually taking up kitchen work and trying his hand unsuccessfully

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at opened My Comedy Nights in the area. He begged

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his way onto MTV's short lived comic Kazi. I didn't

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know that, And even though the show didn't last, Hepburg

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was on his way. In ninety six, he appeared on

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Letterman Wow That Long Ago Wow. Ninety seven, he won

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the grand prize at the Seattle Comedy Competition. In ninety eight,

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he stole the show at the Just for Last Festival

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in Montreal. Heedburg developed a style of awkward, scattershot observational

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jokes that weren't exactly one liners. He was a minimalist, sure,

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but he was working on another level, and say Henny Youngman,

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his jokes weren't just riffs on existing tropes. The only

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norm hebburger here, too, was that there weren't any norms.

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His humor never met you halfway. He pulled listeners into

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his own head. His delivery was as off putting as

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his material. His was the sort of art that elicits

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a huh wow as opposed to a wow huh. That

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was his brilliance. The obvious point of comparison is with

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Stephen Wright, and again, on paper, the two comics seem

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to share a lot in common, but where Wright was

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a comic Gollum, an android programmed to tell off putting jokes.

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Hebburg was in an odd way, emotionally accessible as offbeat.

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As much as his jokes were, they presented in the

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manner of an odd ball childhood friend you hadn't seen

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in years. Though dressed in the garb of turn of

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the century hipster, Hedberg's jokes were decisively unironic. He wasn't

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engaging in social commentary or rye negativity as much as

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he was bearing his weirdo soul. The stoner labels inaccurate,

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but even the occasional drug user could identify Hepburg was

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you high, thinking you're funny, but actually being funny. That's

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how he won us over. The way he stood on stage,

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eyes closed, sunglasses on, bangs over his face, halfway trembling.

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He told joel Stein in nineteen ninety eight, I don't

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like to connect with the crowd. I find if you

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look at people's faces, you see a disappointed face. He said.

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Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think of

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something that's funny, I go get a pen write it down,

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or if the pen's too far away, I had to

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vinced myself that what I thought of ain't funny. He

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broke the fourth wall repeatedly in an attempt to reposition

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himself from alone on stage to seated among the audience.

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That's like a carbon copy of the previous joke, but

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with different ingredients. I don't know what I was trying

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to pull off there, that joke, maybe laugh where I

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could finish it, which is good because it's no ending,

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all right. Oh, he was so good once when being

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handed a drink mid joke, a joke that was foundering anyway,

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he just cut the joke off and said that up

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a joke, a joke about FFing up, an fed up joke.

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After he broke out it just for laughs. Edburgh got

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a five hundred thousand dollars development deal with Fox. He

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appeared on Letterman a few more times. He financed his

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own movie, a subtle tribute to his restaurant days, called

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Los Enchiladas. His next paragraph has a couple jokes that

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I don't remember hearing dead smend rights with disarming subtlety.

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He deconstructed the stand up form by ticking on hackneyed

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subjects and turning them on their head, or by bombing

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deliberately halfway sports. No. I don't want the f Remember

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that show My Three Sons. It'd be funny if it

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was called My One Dad. Wait what, I just bought

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a two bedroom house, But I think I get to

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decide how many bedrooms there are. I hohtsh you. In

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the context of tripping non sequitors about koala infestations potato chips,

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this came off as subversive. He was blowing himself up

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along with everyone in the room. The self destruction extended

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to his personal life. At first, it seemed div Hedberg's

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riffing on his drug use was more of a dig

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atous stage persona. My manager saw me backstage and said, Mitch,

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don't use liquor as a crutch. I can't use liquor

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as a crutch because a crutch helps me walk. A

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liquor severely f's up the way I walk. Some people

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think I'm high on stage. I would never get high

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before show because when I'm high, I don't want to

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stand in front of a bunch of people I don't

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know for stretches. He lived off the grid, living out

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of hotels or out of the RV he bought with

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Lynn Shawcroft in May two thousand and three, after showing

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Austin Mitch was arrested for possession of a controlled substance.

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He spent two and a half days in jail, followed

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by six months in a hospital, supposedly for the treatment

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of a leg badly mangled by heroin injections. Through the

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end of his life, he'd walked on stage with two

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plastic cups that were widely known to contain alcohol, and

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at least one specifically identified as screwdrivers. Hebburg had kill

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her sets and less successful sets. Some lack verves, some

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lack directions. Sometimes he couldn't remember the jokes at all.

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Sometimes his fans would holler out the jokes who was

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trying to tell to help him out. It was interactive

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stand up. Even on the good nights, people sung along

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to the choruses that often step on his punchlines. Hebburg

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had so fully seduced his fans the division between stage

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and seats fell away. Didn't you ever hear of dramatic pause? Hid,

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sometimes grouch, But that was the point. His fans weren't

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attuned to the artifice of performance so much as they

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were there for communion. Lynn Shawcroft is Missus Mitch Hedburg,

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and she had some really interesting tweets. Lynn tweeted, what

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Mitch Hedburg achieved in stand up comedy is nothing short

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of astonishing. The way he did it, almost one fan

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at a time, is crazy yet admirable. He had several

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appearances on late night television and one low rent Comedy

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Central special. That's it. The Comedy Central was fun by

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low Rent. I'm referring to the audience that was papered.

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They weren't fans per se, never heard of the comedians.

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I think Mark Maron taped a special the same day

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slash same audience. I could be wrong. Norm MacDonald was

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there a tell two. Mitch didn't have an online presence

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or platform. He wasn't on a TV show with a

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built in audience. I remember club after club packed. He

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worked too much. He had a hard time saying no.

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So after Lynn wrote all that, I love this tweet

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reply from Toby Welch. So Lynn writes all that about Mitch,

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and Toby Welch tweets, Yeah, that's nice, but what happened

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to the defriines. This next section is from two episodes.

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The first story is about the missing ten of minutes

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and then you oh, I'll hear my voice change. I

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was on my Twitter account and a friend of mine,

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Brian Rich, he tweeted like a normal this is just

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a normal guy tweeting, and he tweeted Tuesday night, I

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bought it pie and thus I'm ready to watch the debate.

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And when I read it, my brain did it in

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Hebburg going, I bought a pie and that's I'm ready

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to watch the debate. That's ridiculous, which right, like, despite

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my half ass impression, that's like a Mitch Hedberg joke.

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So this article I found, it's really really great. Bradlaidman

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dot com. Brad wrote the night I first saw Mitch,

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my only whole show was not a great night for him.

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Most of the people there had no idea who they

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were going to see. I did. That's exactly why I

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was there. They looked at him, like Bill Hicks said,

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through the eyes of a dog that's just been shown

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a card trick. They didn't try to get him, and

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they decided it was just funnier to keep buying him drinks. Sadly,

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whether Mitch considered himself an alcoholic, he probably did. Doug

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Stanhope once told me, that's Brad, that Mitch was so

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nice that Mitch would never turn anyone away and would

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never refuse a drink from anyone out of courtesy, fan

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or not. Lynn Shawcroft, to her credit, did eventually go

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up on stage and stop Mitch from accepting free drinks.

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After about fifteen minutes more of only a few people

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laughing at really good material delivered well, Lynn started I

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him to tell people about his great CD that was

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available for purchase. Mitch ignored her for a long time

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and then said something approximating this. I got to waste

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my time for what like three people? Why would anyone

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actually buy this crap? About three of us raised our

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hand and I did purchase it that night. So when

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it was released by Comedy Central in two thousand and three,

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it had twenty one tracks and was fifty three minutes

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and forty seven seconds long. My version, which is what

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I burned on on my computer, is one hour, three

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minutes and four seconds. That's exactly how I want it

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to be. I may have to reach out to this

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guy and do an interview with him. I want to

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know all about this alternate version of the CD that

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he has. He writes it has no tracks, just one huge,

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probably unedited chunk of the real show, which is why

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I had to go to the internet first to find

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my quote quickly. I should have just listened to the

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whole thing again, even though I was only making a

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quick Facebook comment about Little League Baseball that I could

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have spent two seconds on had I wanted to be

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lazy and posted the meme from the Internet. I'm not

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sure why or who edited out those ten minutes from

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my original, but it was probably for idiotic reasons that

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didn't get who Mitch was or the brilliance of Mitch

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of guessing. For all I know, Mitch could have said,

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take exactly these ten minutes out, but I would bet

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my net worth that never happened. My suspicion is that

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the business people thought those ten minutes didn't go over

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well and were complete jokes. But if he saw him

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that night or any night, you would know that he

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would always throw out a joke and then would immediately

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say wasn't a complete thought or even a joke, and

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his delivery of it and the reaction to it would

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likely be the highlight of the entire show. Near the

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end of the uncut version of especially says I'm a

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heroin addict I need to have sex with women who

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saved someone's life, which would have been perfect had it

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ended there, but it didn't, and because it didn't, it

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became somehow more perfect. After some giggling and a small

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amount of applause, he starts again wondering about how it

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be shown on television. When does it air? He looks

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at some of the crowd says, you're a good reaction guy.

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Keep the camera on that guy. I want to tell

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the people in the truck wherever you're cutting reaction shot

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cut to him, because you're really could you very? You

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laugh a lot man, very pleasurable to see. My special

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is going to be all cut up. It's gonna be

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very weird. It's not going to be seamless. I gotta

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get out of here. They're going to get mad at me,

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and know it gonna get yelled at all right. I

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love you guys, thanks for coming to my special. The

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aired version ends with a different great joke and then

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cuts right to I love you guys and to thank you.

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The al right is gone, which may not seem to

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matter much, but do some research about Jim Morrison hearing

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Elvis throw the word all right, and how much it

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mattered to him, and how much he did it too.

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Isn't that amazing? The article also mentions when Mitch was

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on Howard Stern late in Mitch's life, Stern asked Mitch

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what Mitch would do if he knew that perhaps he

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only had a few months to live. Creepy right. Mitch

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thought about it a while and answered, I won't do

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the impression here. Wow, that's a really hard question. I

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do know that Bill Hicks knew that he was dying

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and did work really hard until the day he died,

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like he went to Waco and stuff like that. Me

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I sort of don't think I'm that important because most

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of my jokes are about bananas and things like that.

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And let's wrap with an album review from two thousand

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and eight from the Washington Posts. This the review of

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the posthumus Do You Believe In Gosh, a stand up

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performance recorded two months before Hedberg's death. The album is

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funny moments, but listeners familiar with the comedian's personal history

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may find that Hebberg's troubled specter looms over the proceedings.

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Do You Believe In Gosh does include bits on anchovies

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and carrot juice, but Hebburg also delves into darker subject matter.

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He seems particularly fixated on missing body parts, with references

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to amputation, a woman born without arms, and extended bit

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on the Headless Horsemen. Granted the materials more silly than morbid.

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I'd hate to be the headless Horseman's dentist. He wouldn't

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make very much money. He also delves into his professional life,

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saying I got a door deal here. Tonight, I'm working

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