Author: Brian Beatty

The werewolf’s life has never been easy. But the complications of twenty-first-century living often result in even more confusion and frustration. Fortunately, a few sessions with a qualified life coach can help today’s lycanthrope adjust to those inevitable crises of confidence.

OWN YOUR ASPIRATIONS.
Werewolves often lack a sense of purpose in their lives, personally and professionally. As any good life coach will tell you, it’s your choice to make. Whatever the lunar phase, whatever your dreams, you must first decide whether you want to go through life as a victim of society’s ridicule and fear or as the latest toast of its reluctant acceptance, like hip-hop performers. Once you own your aspirations, the rest is outrageously simple.

ACCENTUATE YOUR POSITIVES.
Sure, it’s difficult being a monster. But don’t let that spoil your prospects for happiness. Steer clear of negative, stereotypical thinking. Instead, learn how to accentuate your unique, mostly positive werewolf qualities, such as the razor-sharpness of your fangs and your superhuman physical agility.

TRANSCEND YOUR FEARS.
The world can be a scary place, it’s true. But remember, nearly everyone you’ll ever meet will be more terrified of you than you are of them. Nothing frightens a community more than sudden pet disappearances—except possibly when a bunch of tasty babies go missing. The only thing werewolves really have to fear is being shot by a vigilante carrying a gun loaded with silver bullets.

BALANCE CAREER & FAMILY.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and it doesn’t do much for werewolves, either. That’s why it’s important to prioritize your priorities to make sure you balance your responsibilities at work and at home. Wandering parks and city streets with your children in the wee hours of moonlit nights is the best way to watch them grow up. Remember, the family that preys together stays together!

BE YOUR BEAUTIFUL SELF.
Body-image issues plague teenage girls, homosexual men, and werewolves alike. Look beyond your hirsute reflection in the mirror and discover the inner beauty hidden beneath the coarse brown fur that covers your body. Once you’ve done that, you may also want to spring for a makeover, or at least a comb.

HOWL YOUR HEART OUT.
Worried that your neighbors will think less of you because you’re always out howling at full moons? Learn how to howl in a discreet, socially acceptable manner. And when ripping out a neighbor’s throat, there’s no need to rub in the embarrassment by behaving like some kind of brute savage. Your victim will feel bad enough already.

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.

It’s the start of another four-week run of stand-up comedy classes at Stevie Ray’s School of Improv, the eponymous training center Steve Rentfrow named for his comedic alter ego. He does a pretty good Cosby impression, a bit that is intended to make a point about imitation, the fifth of what’s just been defined as the seven levels of comedy. Eleven nervous students sit on uncomfortable kitchenette chairs, balancing notebooks awkwardly on knocking knees.

This scuzzy office in the Calhoun Arts Center at Lyndale and Lake makes for an unlikely classroom, but these hopefuls appear serious about their stand-up comedy studies. But is it possible to learn much of anything over the course of just four two-hour classes? Especially about something as ineffable as comedy? Could the joke really be on us—with only Stevie Ray laughing, all the way to the bank? Our dutiful instructor didn’t address these questions during his introductory remarks at the beginning of class, probably because he was busy collecting everyone’s tuition checks.

It’s not that I mind paying my $100. I understand Stevie Ray’s running a business. And he’s certainly not alone. All kinds of folks around town would willingly accept my money in return for sharing a few not-so-funny, not-so-secret insights. The Brave New Workshop has offered comedy improvisation classes for years. And a thriving local improv scene has resulted in myriad options to study improv. If growing enrollments are any indication, dire times are leading more and more desperate people to these classes, too. Because comedy beats working for a living, right?

Stevie Ray also offers improv training, but my peers and I want to make our mark with just a microphone and some jokes—in other words, embarrass ourselves solo. This vague notion is one of the few things we have in common. We’re a hair stylist who once booked Cedric the Entertainer and now wants her own turn at fame, a tiny quick-walking and talking Vietnamese jewelry designer, a high schooler eager to get revenge on her teachers, a shy professional clown into New Age philosophy, and a few others probably worth crossing the street to avoid.

The first two weeks of class we examine what makes people laugh. Stevie Ray’s lectures begin with Aristotle and end with the construction of a one-liner. These same topics comprise the majority of Stevie Ray’s Medium-Sized Book of Comedy, which is something of a self-published jumble and the class’s only required text. I’m inclined to forgive the book’s rough edges, because it was written by the busiest man with two first names in Twin Cities comedy.

Stevie Ray’s credentials don’t begin or end with the textbook. He graduated from Moorhead State University with a degree in a course of study he created: Theory and Performance of Comedy. As a stand-up, he’s worked with Paula Poundstone, Marcia Warfield, and “Sniglets” creator Rich Hall. In 1983, he served as Pee Wee Herman’s bodyguard. And according to the author bio in the back of his book, he’s a holder of three black belts who keeps bees and harvests organic honey in his free time. That he’s also a qualified beekeeper and humorist, we’re just expected to believe. Stevie Ray uses the stand-up of professionals and former students to illustrate his ideas. He performs little of his own routine in class.

Week three, we trade our pens and paper for an unplugged microphone to create the three-minute routines we’ll get to perform at Stevie Ray’s Comedy Cabaret out at the Radisson Hotel in Bloomington after classes are done.

The hair stylist does a happy little rant about purchasing tampons. The jewelry designer speeds through an unintelligible bit about his thick accent. I spend my time describing southern Indiana, where I grew up. The area could quite easily be called North Kentucky, I joke, except in Indiana, we don’t marry our sisters—just date them. It’s not exactly Woody Allen or Steve Martin material, but my classmates chuckle.

During our final class and dress rehearsal (the mic is now connected to a small guitar amp), Stevie is the only one who laughs at me. I appreciate that solitary hoot. The Saturday before my first stand-up performance, when I should be polishing my set, every lesson I’ve learned escapes me and I die a slow, serious death in front of everyone except Stevie Ray.

Stevie Ray offers suggestions for improving our routines. He recommends ways to tighten set-ups and punch up our punchlines. He laughs even when all hope seems lost, probably because he’s had his share of students for whom there was no hope. Odds are that in every class, between one and five students just aren’t very funny. But their checks cleared, too, and humor—after all—is subjective, right?

How I’ll survive my fate in front of total strangers, I can’t imagine. But something funny happens the night of my stage debut. My three minutes quickly come and go. Too quickly. And I do, in fact, survive. The audience, drunk and disinterested during the other student sets, responds well to my simple hillbilly humor. They laugh. They applaud when I’m finished. Total strangers go out of their way to congratulate me afterward.

Afterward is when I remember what I decide is the best advice Stevie Ray ever offered—advice I figure is worth about a hundred bucks: “At the start of classes, people always want to know if they’ve ‘got it.’ At the end of classes, they always want to know if they should go on,” he said. “I always tell them the same thing: The audience will let you know if you’re funny and if you should continue.”