Mitch Hedberg is one funny dude. But his shtick—the stoner who’s mistaken the stage door for the restroom or exit—might be affecting his career trajectory. Dope logic and delayed response time is funny to a point, but it’s maybe not the best business plan.
Strategic Grill Locations, the self-produced 1999 concert CD Hedberg had printed up to sell at shows and on his Web site, didn’t include the early, hilarious joke that provided its title. His new disc for Comedy Central Records, Mitch All Together, takes its title from a routine on the earlier CD.
The eponymous joke is, understandably, a fan favorite: “They call corn on the cob corn on the cob. But that’s how it comes out of the ground, man. They should call that corn. They should call every other version corn off the cob. It’s not like if you cut off my arm you would call my arm Mitch, but then reattach it and call me Mitch all together.”
A native of the St. Paul area, Hedberg escaped to Florida after high school to pursue music. But instead of making his name playing bass in a knockoff of Skynyrd or .38 Special, he followed a buddy to a comedy open-mic night and stumbled up onstage. In the years since, he’s appeared on Letterman ten times. He’s done a half-hour Comedy Central special that is among the cable network’s most requested. He wrote, directed, and starred in Los Enchiladas!, a film that premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.
Time columnist Joel Stein christened him the next Seinfeld back in 1999, too. Superstardom seemed to be Hedberg’s destiny. Though Hedberg and Seinfeld have both worked many of the same clubs, both can handle a microphone, and both know better than to appear with children in instant pudding commercials, that’s about as far as the comparison goes. Hedberg’s frozen-banana logic and koala infestations have very little in common with Seinfeld’s meticulous observational comedy. More like Ellen DeGeneres, Emo Philips, and Steven Wright—the master of the non sequitur one-liner to whom he’s most often compared—Hedberg creates his skewed comedic world out of old-fashioned setups and punchlines, then reinvents it joke by joke.
A lot of comics blather on about hack material like airline food and doomed romance. Few attempt the kind of surreal vaudeville Hedberg performs so effortlessly on Mitch All Together. Like defining the problem with animal crackers. “I think animal crackers make people believe all animals taste the same,” he says. “What does a giraffe taste like? A hippopotamus. I had them back to back.”
Last May, Hedberg headlined eight shows at the Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, two shows a night for four nights, to record the new CD. But during at least one of those performances, he spent a considerable part of his set competing with his audience. People wouldn’t quit shouting out setups, all the well-known material from his first CD and his Comedy Central special.
Fortunately for old fans and new converts alike, Comedy Central has also rereleased an edited version of Strategic Grill Locations, so Hedberg’s imperfect masterpiece will finally be available in stores. Those who didn’t buy it or file-share it a long time ago can now listen to their favorite Hedberg jokes when and as often they want. In turn, maybe they’ll let him give his new material an honest try.
Back in May at the show I saw, Hedberg ignored the audience requests as long as he could. Near the end of his forty-minute set, he quickly tossed off a few, as if out of professional courtesy. Then he made a dash for the door at the back of the stage. On the disk, he seems to reach the end of his rope as he confronts another night’s gabby audience. “I’ve got a great job. I can talk for forty-five minutes straight. But if someone says one word, they’re out of here,” he blurts, between jokes. But after riffing on the prospects of his audience getting the boot, he gives up. “Go ahead, talk,” he groans. “But just use your hands.”
It’s hard to believe this is the same Mitch Hedberg who amiably rambled through more than an hour’s worth of half-finished jokes and embarrassed apologies on Strategic Grill Locations—the same Mitch Hedberg who turned unguarded self-deprecation into hilarity. Eight sold-out Acme shows edits down to less than forty minutes of comedy for Mitch All Together. A paucity of new material could explain Hedberg’s somewhat frustrated-sounding delivery. It might also explain why Comedy Central packaged a free DVD with the disc. It includes a short appearance on Premium Blend and two versions of his Comedy Central special.
Actually, the unedited Comedy Central special here hints at what makes Hedberg’s new CD such a disappointment. As his twenty-five minutes onstage near their end, he’s hasn’t gotten many huge laughs. So like a pro, Hedberg returns to material that worked on his first CD and his earliest Letterman appearances. He finally wins the crowd with his joke about a potato chip company that planned to make tennis balls until a truckload of potatoes arrived. As the laughter swells, he chuckles, “My old shit works better than my new shit. I am out of ideas.”
He’s wrong. Much of his new material actually works better than his earlier material. The difference is Hedberg himself. What used to be a shy stoner ramble has become a frantic monologue. He sounds exhausted on his new CD, too—too tired to bother winning over an audience with funny new routines.
Hedberg came back through town last September, opening the Comedy Central Live Tour. As supporting act, Hedberg had just twenty-five minutes in front of audiences who’d paid to see headliners Lewis Black and Dave Attell. It should have been Hedberg’s name on the Orpheum marquee. That would have been a sweet homecoming gig following May’s week underground at the Acme. Five years ago, back when he first started doing many of the jokes his fans now want to hear nightly, that would have been everyone’s prediction. Back before the smoke cleared.
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