The “Internet” Mitch Hedberg and My New and Only Charity

This is long and may be repetitive, which Mitch Hedberg never was, but I’m no Mitch. If you think you know Mitch, who said, “We need help!” but hilariously, scroll to the end. If you don’t see a need, to help? Scroll back to the top and read until you do. In no way am I saying I know Mitch, but I do think I got Mitch instantly.

Charles Schultz may have said this, “Happiness does not create humor. There’s nothing funny about being happy. Sadness creates humor.” If that is somehow a rule, I think I do know the exception to it.

This first came about because I wanted to quote him accurately. People quote him all the time and often with little accuracy. Accuracy is important, but perhaps, in this case, that effort is kind of pointless.

If you know anything about Mitch, you know that his jokes were eventually all meticulously crafted, but that given the night his delivery of them might not be meticulous, and they might not even be finished much less executed in full, often on purpose.

The above quote is pretty inaccurate.

The first incarnation of that joke is from the first CD that he released on his own. And on that CD the wording is this way, “I’ve always wanted to have a suitcase handcuffed to my wrist…alright! It’s not a full joke there. That’s filler. Filler. One of the list is bending up. I can’t read it! Alright!”

That pretty much tells you more about Mitch Hedberg’s artistry than any meme. All of the memes will give you the perceived “best,” most “concise” version of his joke. That was never Mitch. In fact, it is odd that someone made a meme of that joke because Mitch admits that when it was recorded. it wasn’t even really a joke.

He admits it is just something he read off of a list of the jokes he was trying to put on his CD. I don’t know if there ever was a real handcuff to the wrist joke that was fully developed, or if he just found seeing people in movies with them in this way amusing. It is amusing. So it doesn’t matter if there was an entire joke (although if there was I’d like to hear it), but Mitch’s intent seemed to be to always joyfully amuse people with the things that joyfully amused him.

Then there is this meme.

Both of those memes come from his first CD “Strategic Grill Locations,” which was initially recorded and performed perhaps on “September 7, 1999” at the Laff Stop  (from what I can tell not the Laugh Stop) in Houston.

Here is a “transcript” of that performance. It not only is very badly formatted with all kinds of different weird colors and fonts, it is very inaccurate.

Now the “weed” meme above is very inaccurate. I can’t know for sure, but my guess is that the joke listed never ever was performed using the word “weed.”

It did appear on that first CD with the word “drugs” as it probably always did, and the clear intention of that meme is to likely promote the legalization of “weed” without endorsing “drugs,” especially because drug use likely did contribute to Mitch’s death.

Drug use and alcohol did likely in some way help him find things that did amuse him,  but he probably found and wrote many amusing things without them. How much or often is fairly impossible for most to know.

There are honest recollections though, and this was mine and I will maintain at least the part from me until the day I die.

“I don’t know how to describe it to you, but the instant you met this guy you realized that he didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. Maybe the sweetest thing God ever produced. He spent like 20 minutes smoking with me. He introduced me to his wife. I asked him if he got sick of staying in so many hotel rooms and his answer was ‘No way, we love it.’ I’m guessing Mitch was thinking of the genius way he’d found to get the world to clean up his room for him.

“After his death, I read about how he’d met a couple of college kids and after hearing about their sweat box dorm room returned the next day with an air conditioner. The only celebrity death that’s ever left me severely depressed.”

The air conditioning story may or may not be true. I’m guessing it is true, and of course, I’d like it to be true.

Another honest reflection is that I loved him the first time I saw him. It was a brief appearance somewhere on television (probably on Comedy Central) and it wasn’t just the jokes I loved. It was his delivery, which was awkward and slurred, his apparent shyness, the sunglasses (likely rose-tinted) and pretty much everything else about him, mostly his hair and friendly nature that was readily apparent to me instantly. Glee is a good word for it.

Now people worship him (that’s fine with me) and an early death always seems to sadly help in that regard, but it remains true that for much of his life most people did not get him or understand his brilliance. Most people don’t understand him now. I may not even understand him although I’ve always tried, but again I did meet him and that is what forms most of what I think and understand of him.

There were people that saw something there at the time. He dominated many comedy festivals. Time magazine did refer to him as “the next Seinfeld” (Probably in the January 12th, 1998 issue, but I’m not going to spend money to find it), and Fox did pay him something like $500,000 dollars for a sit-com holding deal.

That Fox holding deal was from what I know very amusing to Mitch, because he got paid a ton of money to do very little, and Fox did not have any idea what to do with him. It was also very frustrating for him too.

Mitch said that they wanted to make a sitcom with him as a tennis instructor, which is absurd because Mitch would unlikely be able to play tennis for longer than 10 minutes due to his constant smoking, and he would probably have very little interest in ever playing tennis. He did say this on that first CD though.

“I play tennis. The thing that’s depressing about tennis is no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once, they’re fucking relentless!”

Now he probably never played tennis, and the transcript of that joke messes it up at least five times and it is a very short, albeit hilarious joke.

Here was the transcribed version:

“I played the tennis. The thing that’s depressing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I will never be as good as a wall. I play with it once, that fucker relentless.”

It’s on tape! How hard is it?

So Fox had no idea what to do with Mitch other than put him on “That ’70s Show” a few times. Fox wasted a half million dollars which is awesome to me. Had they just let Mitch be Mitch or even just filmed Mitch randomly for 23 minutes, they probably could have had a show they would have made money from and in the former case it would have likely been very good (although oddly structured and apparently random).

Mitch voiced that frustration here.

That joke originally was on that first CD in this form.

“I was on ‘That 70’s Show’ one episode and I put it on my acting resume. Before that my acting res…It was my first … acting gig, and I put it on my resume… acting resume before that was sparse. It was full of bullshit. I had to make things up. Acting experience, okay, when I play pool, if I make a shot, I act like I’m not surprised.

“I had a bad audition, I acted like I didn’t care.

“See as a comedian, I always get these situations where I’m auditioning for movies and sitcoms, you know. As a comedian, they want you to do other things besides comedy. They say all right you’re a comedian, can you write? Write us a script. ACT! Act in this sitcom. They want me to do shit that’s related to comedy, but it’s not comedy, man. It’s not fair, you know. It’s as though If I was a cook, and I worked my ass off to become a really good cook, they said all right you’re a cook, can you farm?”

That took me 15 minutes to transform the “transcript” into what was actually recorded, and it says EVERYTHING that needs to be said about Mitch and Fox and Hollywood, and I believe mostly before it actually happened.

It also mentions something else that is criminally misunderstood about Mitch. People will tell you that he did no work, that he was just stoned and naturally funny.

From all indications, although he made seemingly endless jokes about not wanting to work hard, he did work extremely hard to become a great comedian, which is really the only thing he ever wanted to be.

I saw an early clip of Mitch and he bombed (He often bombed for various reasons, some his fault many times not), but in this case he actually deserved to bomb. His hair was dyed white. The wording of the jokes was already there in some form, but his distinctive delivery of them was in no way apparent. It wasn’t there at all. From where he was then to when he did often kill, he obviously worked very hard, but only at his true craft.

This is my favorite Mitch joke about work and it’s on the same CD.

That is actually accurate, but it only has 13 words so it’s no real accomplishment. Mitch also had good jokes about the number 13.

“My hotel doesn’t have a 13th floor because of superstition but come on man, people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you’re really on. ‘What room are you in?’ ‘1401.’ No you’re not! Jump out the window, you will die earlier!’ Because 13 is an unlucky number, right? Well then so should the letter B be ‘cuz B looks like a scrunched together 13. ‘Hello, what is your name?’ ‘Bob’ ‘Get the fuck away!’

“If 13 is unlucky then 12 and 14 are guilty by association. I saw you 12 you were hanging out with 13! No, I wasn’t. I was with 11. You talk to 14 about that shit. What you got to say 14? Me divided by 2 equals 7. Alright. I was with 13, shit.”

Followed by the friendliest laugh ever and “Maybe they can add some laughs to that joke.” Which was the humility of Mitch because there are already at least ten things to laugh at and enjoy in that very brief passage that lasts about one minute.

That is exactly how it appears on “Mitch All Together,” and was probably exactly how Mitch wanted it to appear.

You can find a million memes of just that bit all over the internet in various incarnations with various degrees of accuracy.

Here is a joke that probably tells you about his life and work process.

“See I write jokes for a living man. Y’know, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that’s funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain’t funny.”

That also appears on “Mitch All Together,” and it is misquoted all over the place on the internet so the only one here that is working and is not lazy is, in fact, Mitch.

When I did want to quote him right, I stupidly wound up on the very stupid Wikipedia. I’ll explain in a bit why I didn’t just go to the album first. Here is the Wikipedia listing for “Strategic Grill Locations.”

That entry is brief and somewhat accurate. It mostly concerns what you can easily buy, the 2003  re-release  by Comedy Central, and says that it was originally self-published and sold by him on his website and at shows.

I purchased that CD in 1999 very soon after it came out at San Francisco’s “Improv,” which I do not think exists anymore.

There were many clubs called that, and Mitch had a great routine about them.

“You know this ‘Improv’ sign is all over, all the ‘Improv’s’ have it, and the one in Tempe, Arizona, the ‘Improv’ in Tempe, the sign is made out of gold. I swear to God. And at the end of the week the dude wasn’t gonna pay me, so I stole the ‘M’ ’cause the ‘M’ seems like it weighs the most. Followed by the ‘R.’. Then the ‘P.’ The ‘P’ was one little thing away from being just as heavy as the ‘R’. Then I had a gold ‘M’, and I said you want to buy a Gold ‘M’ and the dude said “No, what the fuck do I want a gold ‘M’ for?” “Well how ’bout a gold ‘W’?” I had a bad set here last night, and they added the ‘E’ to the end of the sign.”

That is from the Mitch album “Do You Believe in Gosh?” and it is quoted on Wikipedia and it isn’t even close to being accurate. How fucking hard is this?

Actually, it is way harder than you would think. I could go on Wikipedia and make it accurate, but it would be taken down immediately by some Wikipedia Nazi editor. The whole process is absurd and the page inaccurately quoting his jokes doesn’t have any cites or proof, and here is where all those Nazis endlessly argue about it.

Mitch Hedberg Wikiquote Talk Page

They argue about whether the page should exist. They argue about whether it is copy-rite violation. They argue over whether things should be in bold or not. They argue about how many quotes can be on the page. They do discuss a bit how much of a “one-liner” that may have actually been many lines should be quoted especially since they are unwilling to quote the entire track, much less the entire album. They do not discuss how accurate the quotes are.

I can’t change them, and if I tried it would take me years of research to even try. I can’t mail anyone the actual album. I do know from experience that if Mitch’s wife Lynn Shawcroft tried to change it that they would tell her that she can’t prove that she is Lynn Shawcroft and thus can not comment. Perhaps a team of lawyers could do nothing but make them take the whole page down, and that is uncertain and would likely be expensive.

I just accidentally saw this a second ago, and it’s from just 90 days or so ago and shows that she knows this and is trying to change it. Help her!

Mitch Hedberg’s Widow: The “Late Comic Isn’t Done Being Funny (Guest Column)”

Perhaps the only funny thing about that talk page is this.

“My belt holds up my pants and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. What the fuck’s really goin on down there? Who is the real hero?” I assume this is a joke. why? what does it mean?Kdammers (talk) 05:19, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

The actual joke on “Do You Believe in Gosh” is this:

“I got a belt that’s holding up my pants, but it’s fucking heavy so it’s weighing ’em down. If it weren’t for the belt, my pants would be OK…. But my pants? My belt holds up my pants, and my pants have belt loops that hold up the the belt. What the fuck’s really going on down there? Who is the real hero?”

I have no idea how to punctuate it, but that IS a joke.

It isn’t a one-liner. It’s hilarious. It’s still funny in the form the guy who asked if it was a joke was in, but it’s, of course, best understood and laughed at in it’s best form with Mitch’s honed delivery on his album.

That guy still might not get that it is a joke, but fuck that guy for even being a Wikipedia editor. He’ll never get how brilliant that joke in any form is.

The night I first saw Mitch (my only whole show) was not a great night for him. Most of the people there had no idea who they were going to see. I did. That’s exactly why I was there.

They looked at him like Bill Hicks said through the eyes of “a dog that’s just been showed a card trick.”

They didn’t try to get him, and then decided it was funnier to just keep buying him drinks.

Sadly, whether Mitch considered himself an alcoholic (he probably did), Doug Stanhope once told me that Mitch was so nice that he would never turn away anyone and would never refuse a drink from anyone out of courtesy, fan or not.

He talked about this hilariously too.

Lynn to her credit did eventually go up on stage and stop Mitch from accepting free drinks.

After about 15 minutes more of only a few people laughing at really good material delivered well (He was still very funny despite the fact that he was probably drunk), Lynn started to remind him to tell people about his great CD that was available for purchase (I feel bad for her. It probably sucks to have to be perhaps the adult in the room, and my guess is that since she did love Mitch that is never what she wanted to be).

Mitch ignored her for a long time and then said something approximating this.

“I ain’t gonna waste my time for what like three people … would anyone here actually buy this crap?”

About three of us raised our hands, and I did purchase it that night.

So when it was released by Comedy Central in 2003, it had 21 tracks and was 53 minutes and 47 seconds long.

My version, which is what I burned onto my computer, is one hour, three minutes and four seconds, and that’s exactly how I want it to be.

It has no tracks. It’s just one huge, probably unedited, chunk of the real show, which is why I had to go to the internet first to find my quote quickly. I should have just listened to the whole thing again even though I was only making a quick Facebook comment about little league baseball that I could spent 2 seconds on had I wanted to be lazy and just posted the meme from the internet.

The horrible transcript of the show at least made it quicker to find the joke on my mp3, although again that version wasn’t close to being accurate.

I’m not sure why or who edited out that ten minutes or so from my original, but it was for probably idiotic reasons that didn’t get who Mitch was or the brilliance of Mitch. I’m guessing. For all I know, Mitch could have said take exactly these ten minutes out, but I would bet my net worth that never happened.

I suppose you could fault Mitch for that to an extent, but my guess is that Mitch was much more interested in working on his art than overseeing the people that presented it, which is the case with a lot of true artists.

Mitch had likely already had his fill of business people by the time his holding contract with Fox ended, even if he had joyfully been given  half a million dollars to go through it.

My suspicion is that the business people thought those ten minutes didn’t go over well and weren’t complete jokes, but if you saw him that night or any night, you would know that he would always throw out a joke that he would immediately say wasn’t a complete thought or even a joke, and his delivery of it and reaction to it would likely be the highlight of the entire show.

When I burned all of my CD’s onto my computer, I sold them. I still have all of my vinyl mostly because of the album covers, but CD’s never cared about album cover art.

I did spend like 30 minutes looking for the CD in its original form on the internet and totally failed no matter what whoever was selling it would claim it to be.

You will find a bunch of people offering it with many different covers, none of them real. My search for it resulted in a lot of spam emails afterward.

To the best of my recollection the cover looked like this.

That’s from a 2017 vinyl release of it. I’m pretty sure that it was never originally on vinyl, but at least that seems to be the whole show and the original cover.

I met Mitch on a Monday night at Largo in Los Angeles in 2000 after he had done a short set along with his wife and maybe ten other comics, a lot more praised and lauded than Mitch. He was from what I could tell very sober.

I was likely in the 99th percentile of people who had never met him in terms of understanding his brilliance and even I was painfully ignorant and hurtful when I did approach him with honest intentions.

The first thing I told him about was that sort of disastrous time I had seen him.

Most people would have been pissed. Some comedians would have been rude had I just said: “Hello, I love your work.”

Mitch was the opposite of rude or angry.

He said, “You were there? That’s hilarious!” He and his wife then smoked and talked to me for 20 generous minutes.

Sadly, I wasn’t done being ignorant and stupid.

I had just seen his wife perform, and she was very funny, but I asked if she had just begun following Mitch as a comedian.

This wasn’t the case. She had always been a comedian and likely had always had artistic dreams of her own. It was probably hurtful to her, and it was likely demeaning of me to ask.

They both were still completely wonderful to me for the next ten minutes or so.

I have no idea if either had any angst at the time, but in all cases Mitch just seemed like a guy who totally loved what he was doing exactly the way he was doing it and with exactly the person he was doing it.

He seemed to love being on the road, meeting people, seeing the world, but perhaps he most loved just getting a bit stoned and watching a movie with his wife in a random hotel room. That’s all guesswork from my memory of that wonderful conversation.

His 2003 release of his second CD “Mitch All Together” was a gift of epic proportions. One thing I do know is that when you are given a gift you should say thank you and be appreciative of it. 

It wasn’t free, but it was an incredible value. For what I remember to be the price of one CD, you also got a DVD.

On that DVD were at least two videos. One was his 22-minute long Comedy Central Presents special from apparently January 5th, 1999, which would have pre-dated “Strategic Grill Locations.” 

Part of it, is probably the first thing I saw of Mitch and you can watch it here if you have the proper cable package. 

If that was all you saw of Mitch, you too would think that he was the “next Seinfeld.” It appears to be a comic at his peak doing a well-rehearsed 22 minutes crafted perfectly by that comedian to launch his very bright upcoming career. That would be fine and with just that and nothing else you would think Mitch Hedberg was brilliant.

That wasn’t the only gift Mitch had to share though. That 22 minutes was masterfully edited and there is a place for that, but it was nothing like what actually was filmed the day it was shot. Mitch being generous, honest, and maybe ambivalently added on the entire uncut video of that performance.

It is around the internet in various bastardized forms in various places. It is about twice as long as the 22 minutes “special.”

In the uncut version, you can see the real Mitch or at least a more real Mitch Hedberg experience.

He’s awkward. He stumbles around and rambles. He wonders if he really has anything “special” to offer. He wonders how the people in the audience (probably fed there by Comedy Central) got there and whether they have any idea who he is (probably very few). 

Sometimes there are big laughs. Sometimes silence, and when there is silence, he threatens to edit in laughs from other jokes that did get big laughs just to mess with their minds. At one point he sits down and does some of his jokes that way from the back of the stage.

At pretty much all times he never looks the audience in their eyes, instead preferring to shyly look at the ground from behind his tinted sunglasses, which may be either a comedic choice or true shyness.  At all times he is wondering if any of this is salvageable.

At one point, he says it is over and does some older material, which very likely no one had ever heard. A lot of it gets big laughs making him curse himself that he didn’t start with those jokes.

A lot of jokes comment on the fact that the way he has chosen to look and sound make him appear to be a drug user, which he jokingly admits with the famous, “I used to do drugs. I still do drugs, but I used to, too.”

The way he looks, sounds, and dresses though seem to me to be a conscious choice. There are many completely unthreatening, very friendly stoners in the world.

Who knows how much that most famous one-liner of his career meant to him, or how much was an act, but look how much more funny stuff he has to say about both here and look how oddly it is presented online in pretty much the only way I have to share it.

Near the end of the uncut version of his special he says, “I’m a heroin(e) addict. I need to have sex with women who saved someone’s life,” which would have been perfect had it ended there, but it didn’t and because it didn’t it became somehow more perfect.

After some giggling and a small amount of applause, he again starts wondering about how it will be shown on television when it does air, he looks at someone in the crowd and says, “You’re a good reaction guy. Keep … keep the camera on that guy. I want to tell the people in the truck whenever you are cutting to a reaction shot, cut to him! ‘Cause you’re really good. You’re very … You laugh a lot man. That’s very pleasurable to see. My, my special is gonna be all fucking cut up and shit, it’s gonna be very weird. It’s not going to be seamless! It’ll be all jerky and shit. Ahh, I’ve got to get out of here. They are going to get mad at me now, I know it. I’m going to get yelled at. Alright, I love you guys. Thanks for coming to my special.”

In that last two minutes or so, Mitch seems happier than at any other part of the show, mainly because he made one guy genuinely laugh. Then he made him laugh more completely off the top of his head and he laughs with him. I think Mitch could have been a great actor, but it would be hard to convince me that there is any acting there.

When he genuinely says quietly, “Alright, I love you guys.”  It perhaps sadly is the biggest laugh he got the entire night, but when he says thanks he gets a huge well-earned round of applause.

One version of that video enthusiastically labeled “Best Show Ever!” is on YouTube right now and cuts off right before he says “Alright, I love you guys” and says thank you!

So here is a true artist, who cares very deeply about how his art is portrayed. Even if he had honed it to 22 perfect minutes, he would have to worry about camera angles, lighting and all kinds of other bull shit that isn’t live comedy. He clearly doesn’t know the best way to represent himself so he lets them do their version and he shows you how it happened for free.

He was a gift, and people like that need to be nurtured and helped, and not be pitched half ass sit-com ideas where they play tennis instructors!

The aired version ends with a different great joke and then cuts right to “I love you guys” and the thank you. The alright is gone, which may not seem to matter much, but do some research about Jim Morrison hearing Elvis throwing in the word alright, and how much it mattered to him and how much he did it too.

I just watched it like 10 times in a row and I’m not 100% sure that what Mitch mumbled sort of inaudibly is actually the word alright, but I think it is and none of the mumbling is in the final cut that aired. I have heard recorded Mitch say alright at least 10,000 times.

Stupidly, I gave that DVD to a friend and told him to perhaps watch the 22-minute version first and then the uncut version. I’m not sure what he watched, but he got none of it and was not impressed.

He returned it, but in the process, I lost it. If you ask my friend now, I think he will say that he loves Mitch Hedberg too. That would probably be honest, with who knows how much of a degree of understanding, but the most important thing is to love Mich as much as he seemed to love everyone.

“Mitch All Together,” one of the best gifts of all time, would be said by Howard Stern in 2004 to have “sold over 60,000 copies” (Mitch also had a great joke about the rounding off of numbers). Mitch admits that “If you are Van Halen, that’s a depressing figure.” Stern notes that if you are Mitch Hedberg “It’s a big deal” and Mitch laughs and says “Exactly!”

The only thing you can say looking back about Mitch’s act that may have not been totally original is that Steven Wright put out “I Have a Pony” in 1985. If you are cynical (and Mitch never seemed to be); have heard nothing else; hear both comedian’s debut albums and know the years they were released. You might cry, thief.

Mitch was 17 when that came out. That’s a very important age for someone who appreciates comedy and might want to do it for a living. That album was huge. It was everywhere in 1985 when it came out, Wright was all over television doing it exactly as it was on the album, and doing the same in front of as many as 23,000 people, which is amazing for such soft, subtle and non-abrasive material. I’ve seen comedians in front of 2,000 people that were loud and brash, and it was hard to make out a word they said.

So I’m sure Mitch heard that album and was influenced by it, somehow everyone listened to every word of that album and memorized it, to the point that Wright could no longer perform it. It was very likely 40 minutes of meticulously pored over material performed once perfectly and recorded and then performed a lot more in exactly the same way. In response to that Wright did not release another album until 22 years later. “I Still Have a Pony,” which was another 40 minutes of perfectly recorded material.

In January of 2003, months before Mitch Hedberg would finally have a real album released, Steven Wright said this to the Onion.

The Onion: Steven Wright quotes are popular on the Internet. Does that sort of thing hold any interest for you?

Steven Wright: No. About five years ago, somebody showed me some web sites that had my material all over them, and I thought that was fascinating. One reason was, I’d never seen my jokes written one right after another like that. I write on drawing paper—I don’t even like lines on the paper—so I have notebooks all over the place with handwritten pieces of my act in them. So to see it go by, all typed out neatly, was like, “Wow.” And then two or three years ago, someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn’t write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn’t write any of it. What’s disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I’m embarrassed that people think I thought of them, because some are really bad. The thing about the Internet is, there’s no rules. It’s like the Wild West. It’d be like, if you never read Oliver Twist… Some guy goes to the bookstore and buys Oliver Twist, and he’s reading, and all of a sudden, in Chapter 11, Oliver goes to Miami and starts a brothel, and starts building boats, and then he goes back to London. And it’s because some nut in Detroit, at 2 in the morning, typed this into the book. But the guy reading the book doesn’t know that, and he’s thinking, “This Charles Dickens guy is an asshole. What the fuck is this?” You know what I mean? They just type this shit up and say I wrote it. If you went down the street to Borders at night, and broke into the store, and stuck all this extra stuff into the books, you’d be arrested for breaking and entering and destroying property. But on the Internet, they can do whatever they want. That’s the thing that bothers me. I wish it was just my material, and people could like it or not like it. Just as long as it was really mine.

That statement is not just very prophetic as to the internet legacy of Mitch Hedberg, who would not live to hear Wright’s second album, but I’m guessing a ton of the stuff on that site came from something that Hedberg wrote in some fashion.

Probably, definitely the stuff Wright wished he had written. Probably, a lot of the rest was either badly transcribed Hedberg or things Mitch tossed out as half ideas and then immediately dismissed as goofs. If it was from him in any way, it was definitely put there in completely incompetent fashion by someone else.

When Mitch recorded “Strategic Grill Locations” in 1989, for some reason only known to Mitch and maybe a few others, he doesn’t have his best 40 minutes memorized in its ideal form. What he does have is a list of stuff, and the intent to get it all recorded, while a bass player vamps for over an hour. The bass player is improvising, which is the exact opposite of Wright’s technique.

It wasn’t a very effective way of giving everybody who wanted a second Steven Wright album (tons of people), something they would have to wait many years to get, but it clearly was in no way Mitch’s intent to be the next Steven Wright, much less the “next Seinfeld.”

In fact, it’s clear that in the very short time since he taped that Comedy Central show that he totally figured out how he wanted to be presented.

What remains in that original 1:03:04 recording is all hilarious and perfect in its own way, and it definitely has no trace of what all of Steven Wright’s work has “near catatonic depression.” Mitch Hedberg replaced it all with joy and happiness. So just like what happens in the 2000 movie “Finding Forrester,” Mitch took Steven Wright’s very depressing “Oliver Twist” (which is a very depressing book) and on page two before it had a chance to get depressing, wrote a completely different book in somewhat the same style.

Mitch’s “Oliver Twist” is nothing but pure love and joy, and in my opinion, it’s the better book. Mitch didn’t know exactly what would be in the meat of that first album, but he knew exactly how it would begin and end.

It ended with the best, most well honed joke, he had at the time!

Now that version, except for the subtracted profanity necessary for television, is pretty much exactly as it was in was in its first CD incarnation. The name is misspelled on the video (of course it is), but the message he ended his debut with remains the same.

Forget how hungry you are right now, find someone who is hungrier and then eat together.

That’s an amazing and uplifting message from a guy who was 21.

Steven Wright was close to 30 in 1985 and ended his album with a very funny joke about meeting a stranger he has no interest in and finding out despite that lack of interest that it was a guy who had fucked him over ten years earlier, which is sad and cynical in every way.

Who knows how conscious Mitch Hedberg was about the difference between those two comedians and their outlook on life? The more you say Mitch was influenced by Wright, the more intentional of a choice it had to have been. The other possibility is merely that Mitch was very much a once in a lifetime original. Either way you have to recognize Mitch Hedberg’s brilliance and the purity of his worldview.

And you know what? Just like a master magician, Mitch told you exactly what he was going to do right from the start and still did it!

“I have to uh I have to record the CD. So I have to tell all the jokes I have. ‘Cuz, I want to put em … I never recorded a CD before, I’ve told a lot of these jokes before, Hee hee ha ha, but I gotta put em on a CD now, see. So, it’s all gonna spread it out. All these jokes on a CD right here. These are the CD jokes! Thought of it today, yeah, I, I whittled the list down today. These are the jokes that I could think of today, which means they are the CD jokes. I might think of another one that won’t be on this list, and I’ll throw it in, in a moment of spontaneity that you won’t be able to detect. ‘Cause you won’t notice that it’s not on the list. But I will be proud of the spontaneity, and you’ll see it in my stride!

“So don’t fuck up the bass tonight, Chuck.
‘Cause we’re on a CD here.
So fucking keep it, keep it going. Don’t fuck up a scale.
‘Cuz these jokes all gonna go right here.”

I can’t find that efficiently edited on the internet. In print, I could make it look better.  In print, I have no idea how to punctuate it, but it wasn’t meant to be read, it was meant to be heard! This actually has editing. The intro’s been cut, which robs you of the joy the MC had for Mitch, but  Mitch’s intro does remain in tact, and it is perfect and inspirational in every way.

That’s not an illusionist who has learned a bunch of tricks, that is a guy who has pure magic within him.

Do you have any idea how fucking ballsy that call to arms is?

Those are not ramblings. Those are among the finest song lyrics ever written! It shouldn’t have been on a CD that wasn’t sold professionally for four years, it should have been broadcast live to the whole world like “All You Need Is Love” was by the Beatles.

There’s no reason for me listen to “I Have A Pony” again because I have it all memorized. Every time you listen to “Strategic Grill Locations,” you find something new and to try to get the exact wording of even the shorter jokes takes fifteen minutes, which despite the outrageously absurd fonts is why that original transcription and the following transcriptions of even small parts of it ARE so bad.

At some point, like Wright, the audiences that did know Mitch wanted him to be a human jukebox and reiterate those original jokes. That made Wright jaded and kept him off the road. 

The only thing that Mitch would not do for his fans was be a human jukebox. He kept writing tons of new jokes, but the only way he reiterated his old ones was by giving his fans even more.

So what was on “Strategic Grill Locations” as this: “I’ve got an ant farm those fellas didn’t grow shit! What about some carrots for me maybe? I like carrots.”

Became this on “Mitch All Together”: “Hey, this joke’s on the first CD, but I added a new line so I can’t fuckin’ rob you of this one: I got an ant farm; them fellas didn’t grow shit. I said “C’mon, what about some celery? You fuckers don’t farm. Plus, if I tore your legs off, you would look like snowmen. That’s… That’s the part that’s not on the old CD.”

Right after that he starts to tell a joke about smoking a pipe, which he will tell you is a good prop to tell people where the punchlines are, which he never did.

He asks if you can smoke in Minnesota clubs. Someone says, “You can!” and he says, “I can? Well, who the fuck am I?” He then answers his own question immediately “Mitch Hedberg, that’s right!” and finishes his joke. At his best, he knew exactly who he was and exactly what he was doing.

Then there is this: “I didn’t go to college, but if I did, I would’ve taken all my tests at a restaurant because the customer is always right.  Alright, alright. That, that joke’s better than you acted. Perhaps it’s not. Maybe it’s dumb. It could be. I hear you, man. I’m not a fucking genius, for Christ’s sake, you know? I’m just trying to tell some jokes. Shit! Who the fuck are you? That track is number 14. It’s called ‘Attitude.'”

That’s his first recording as a “professional.” It’s been four years since that rambling, but amazing Comedy Central performance. There is no dead space. Everything there was intended to be there, and if there is any variation from the original plan, it is caused by audience interaction and is instantly made better with ad libs. He’s basically saying, I could be the “next Seinfeld” fuckers, but I’m “Mitch Hedberg, that’s right!”

Everywhere on that CD,  he is talking about career decisions. Everywhere on that CD, he says he has the best job in the world. The only job he ever really wanted and he’s appreciative that he has it.

That last joke says a lot about Mitch and Steven Wright too. Mitch wasn’t educated in the traditional sense, Steven Wright was.

Steven Wright’s comedy is completely an intellectual exercise. Let’s see how clever I can be in as few words as possible. Wright’s jokes tell you very little about himself other than that he may or may not be kind of depressed.

Every Mitch joke tells you exactly who he really is, and tells you why he is proud to be who he is. I’m not knocking Steven Wright. He got there first and his craft is undeniable. Mitch used it way better, and you get way more bang for your buck with forty minutes of Mitch than with forty minutes of Wright in terms of the volume of jokes and laughs.

Steven Wright did write some version of “Oliver Twist.” Mitch wrote the ultimate “Choose Your Own Adventure” book and every outcome is filled with joy and happiness for the reader.

I’m fine with this because it shows Mitch changed the world and how it does business.

 

 

I DO have a big problem with this, because if you go to their site you can see “Calvin and Hobbes” merchandise, which lets you know beyond a shadow of a doubt someone is making money without the right to for the wrong reasons. 

 

 

The fact that Mitch Hedberg died young was a horrible thing, but the even more horrible thing is that Lynn Shawcroft lost him and instead of getting to be with him and jointly pursue their individual artistic pursuits, she now has to spend her time unjustly protecting his legacy, which has likely meant sacrificing her own artistic ambitions. That seems pretty hard to do when you’ve lost someone very special that you loved being around constantly.

Most people will probably be happy to blame his death all on drugs and alcohol. From what I can tell (Those things may have led to some bad shows, but artistically the only full one I saw wasn’t a bad show. It just had an idiotic audience.) he mostly died because he was enjoying himself too much to take care very good care of himself.

He did though seem very cognizant of the life he had chosen.

I’ve been too misguided to take care of even the tiniest medical things in my life, and I don’t think I have experienced a fraction of joy that Mitch did, and I’ve produced nothing of the pure joy he left behind. I can’t find a single second of a Mitch performance that wasn’t fun and joyful.

His dismissal of the audience he knew would not buy his amazingly well-crafted CD. That was even fun and joyful.

I have two recordings of Mitch on “The Howard Stern Show” where he is lauded by Artie Lange (who somehow is still alive) as brilliant and discusses his drug use as honestly as he probably could at the time. It was recounted pretty well in the first but is immediately brought up again in the second.

Mitch had even discussed rumors about him, specifically one that he had a fake leg. He said that he would admit he had one (probably proudly, cleverly and hilariously) if he did. He acknowledged that explaining the truth wouldn’t “quell” the rumors and commented on the people who spread rumors. “Uh, that’s what the problem with people ahh spreading rumors. Don’t you think people spreading rumors suck man?”

There are few people who were hurt more by rumors professionally and personally than Mitch. He still somehow finds it amusing, talks about it with some sense of joy, and comes up with great jokes about it on the spot with no discernible real anger or derision.

The first thing after Stern introduced him on the second show, and before Mitch even spoke was Robin Quivers asking, “Was this our friend who had the uh drug problem?”

Stern says “That’s all you remember about Mitch?” It was.

Lange says knowingly and prophetically, “Yeah, the guy is an amazing talent Robin and all you remember is the drugs?”

Mitch finally speaks and says somewhat ruefully, “Yeah, I remember it man.”

After Lange tells a joke about how the only thing he is known for is his drug problems (and drugs hurt Lange’s art far more than Mitch’s and Lange never had the talent Mitch did sober or stoned), this passage occurs.

Mitch (reflectively): Well, you know I’ve got the drugs under control now.

Stern: Do you?

Lange cackles in the background.

Stern: You got it taken responsibly?

Mitch (less seriously): Yeah just you know for the creative side of it.

Lange cackles even harder.

That all happens in less than the first minute and a half.

At some point Mitch suggests that he had been given the death penalty for possessing Xanax, which is apparently what he had when arrested. I’ve always had depression and sleep issues, and the only thing that ever helped was Xanax, and I have always been able to get as much of it as I want almost instantly.

Stern mentions the Time magazine “next Seinfeld” quote.

Mitch: Yeah, that didn’t materialize

Maybe not financially, but artistically even if you add all of Seinfeld’s television shows and films and everything else. I’d rather have some Mitch than all of Seinfeld.

Mitch’s analysis of all that?

“Um well um man you know, I’m not cut out for that. I think that guy was wrong obviously.”

Personally, I think there is evidence that Mitch could have been a really good actor; he could have written and starred in a really good sitcom; he could have likely done almost anything he wanted to do. He never wanted to be the “next Seinfeld.” What he did want, and what he did work at was precisely what he said joking or not, to be a great comedian.

What else he wanted few likely know, but it seems to me that for better or worse pretty much everything he did was his choice.

He does acknowledge that he loved being a road comedian, “Yeah, I love it. I love it!,” and that everyone wanted him to do more.

“That’s just it. I didn’t have an idea you see. I thought I could just roll into Hollywood and just lay back, and they would just tell me exactly what to do… If you don’t have an idea you’re screwed.”

He does then say that it was the co-creator of “King of the Hill” (not Mike Judge) who did want him to be a “tennis instructor.”

He does admit that if someone does have a great idea for him that he’s still waiting for it, but somehow he wants an HBO special too and he does not have one.

Mitch claimed humbly that he had no point of view, but that is incorrect. His point of view was precisely to live a fun, productive life, following his dreams: To enjoy it, and reflect on it at all times.

To me that remains a better point of view than 99% of anyone else’s point of view.

Mitch did suggest that his only need for money was to buy a ton of sunglasses.

At all times you can tell that what he does appreciate are the little things in life that he writes his jokes about.

For most of the show he is just sitting in on the news and when he chimes in it is pure Mitch, usually brief, and always clever and funny.

There is a long discussion of Congress’ investigation into steroids in baseball (drug use that did provide measurable results and did earn their users lots of money.) A clip is played of Jose Canseco saying that he thinks there is currently very little steroid use in baseball since he first exposed it in his book, but that back in the day it was as commonplace as “having a cup of coffee.”

Mitch instantly follow with the hilarious, “Yeah, I like my steroids with cream and sugar.”

My copy of that second show ends prematurely.

“The Howard Stern Show” is often a brutal competition to try to be the funniest one on it via being as brutal as possible. At no point in those two shows is Mitch in any way competing or being even a tiny bit brutal, but at all times he is the funniest one there, and he never sounds a bit sad or anything less than joyful about his life.

Here is the one thing in this post not labeled as opinion that I can’t prove. 

I would bet my life that there was at least a third appearance, probably very soon after September 7th 2003. I probably only heard it once, but I would still bet my life on it.

Warron Zevon had recently died and Howard Stern talked to Mitch about how Zevon knew that he was dying and had feverishly worked as hard as he could to finish his last album and have it released in its best possible form.

Stern asked Mitch what he would do if he knew that perhaps he had only a few months to live. Mitch thought about it a while and answered honestly and reflectively. This isn’t that answer. If it was it would have a ton of ums, ahs, and alrights in it, but I honestly believe that it reflects accurately what was actually said and the spirit behind it.

“Wow…That’s a really hard question. I do know that Bill Hicks knew that he was dying and he did work really hard until the day he died. Like he went to Waco and stuff like that. Me, I sort of don’t think I’m that important because most of my jokes are about bananas and things like that.”

Mitch did write a lot of great banana jokes, but he was being far too humble, and hopefully at some point knew that.

Hicks is also a revered dead comic. Hicks was admittedly very angry, but his goal and message was that the world could be made better through love. You can debate whether Hicks was a failure or not. He’s very respected, the things he talked about are still relevant even though some of the events he talked about are dated. There have been many documentaries about Bill Hicks of varying quality.

No Mitch Hedberg jokes are dated precisely because so many were about bananas. One joke I have a recording of that is nowhere on the internet refers to an MTV reality show that no one remembers, but it remains timeless even if you have no idea what a reality show is or what MTV is or was, much less the name of that show. 

No Mitch Hedberg jokes that I’ve ever heard are angry.

There are jokes with profanity in them and some that discuss things that you need to be older to properly understand, but very few that you couldn’t share with a child in some form. 

That was on purpose or this joke would not exist: 

The version I just watched was from an appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” hosted by Elvis Costello. It has “Hey, man” in front of it, but I suppose that meme is accurate enough.

There doesn’t seem to be a single statement or question asked on social media that I don’t want to answer with an accurate Mitch Hedberg quote. Just the other day I saw people arguing about the pronunciation of Reese’s. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if Mitch pronounced it correctly, but that is exactly how I am going to pronounce it forever, and it had nothing to do with the joke.

I’d be willing to bet that I could listen to any discussion on any subject and be able to add something of value to it with an accurate Mitch Hedberg citation.

Every Mitch Hedberg joke I’ve ever heard shows joy, pure love, and the proper appreciation for the proper things in life no matter what condition he was in when he told it.

So his career on Hicks’ terms, especially the banana jokes, was a lot more successful and triumphant.

Around the time Mitch died, the internet was much less monetized, although everyone on it was doing their best to monetize it.

So I have a ton of recorded, unedited Mitch Hedberg material that I got for free in various states of audio quality.

I think I have at least five full shows, and they contain tons of great Mitch jokes that you can not find in any article ranking all of Mitch’s jokes. It isn’t for me to transcribe them. Even if I did so somewhat accurately, they wouldn’t come with Mitch’s perfected delivery.

I didn’t pay for those recordings, but I’d be happy to if the money went to the right person, probably Lynn Shawcroft or her chosen charity or her effort to preserve and better document Mitch’s life and career.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that everything I do own for free came from the absurdly named MitchHedberg.net, which existed because some greedy person (there were a lot at the time) owned MitchHedberg.com first. I can’t know for sure, but I think that whatever free file sharing that existed at the time was known about by Lynn Shawcroft and possibly endorsed by her.

That’s how kind and generous and what a gift those two people are to the world.

The date I have from that last Stern broadcast, I have no idea as to it’s accuracy, is March 17th, 2005.

Mitch died March 30th, 2005.

The last word should always be Mitch’s

That was the best and probably only version I could find to post that. I had to fix it so the first frame of the video doesn’t appear because whoever did post it had a bull shit agenda probably related to money. So that first frame ruins the entire clip.

I just spent 45 minutes trying to download it and edit it and post it without that first frame and failed. Starting out with that honest and worthy goal, I wound up giving my credit card information to a service that had nothing to do with me being able to do that and had to cancel my order, which I never received an email about or even ordered. When I canceled, they said I would get a cancellation email and I haven’t gotten it yet.

All of that 45 minutes was exactly how fucked up and evil the internet “Mitch Hedberg” situation currently is.

Most people have their own personal charity. I’ve sort of pledged to support small artists that I like so I can feel better about stealing from rich artists. That’s not really a charity though. So until the last few minutes, I didn’t really have one.

Any honest act of giving is fine, choose whichever one you like, and it is a personal choice.

My charity now and hopefully only until it is achieved, is to help Lynn Shawcroft preserve, properly market, and promote Mitch Hedberg’s material, after which hopefully she can go on to do other artistic things of her own choice.

That definitely includes an incredible web site, and it definitely demands a great documentary every bit as meticulously honed as the one Judd Apatow made about Gary Shandling. Why?

Perhaps because he and his wife were kind enough to spend 20 minutes cheerfully chatting and informing me more about them for no reason other than kindness, but I could also list at least 1000 different reasons easily as valid and maybe more important.

That was long, maybe too long, so I should have probably taken Mitch’s advice, you always should.

On my version of Strategic Grill Locations, it goes like this,”So my friend said to me, he said, ‘I think the weather is trippy.’ Then I said, ‘No man, it’s not the weather that’s trippy, perhaps it is the way that we perceive it that is indeed trippy. Then I thought, man, I should have just said ‘yeah.’ “

That lacks Mitch’s delivery.

I have no idea who makes these memes or profits from them. Maybe they are just shared out of true admiration and love. They could still be shared better and more effectively and you would need to only go to one proper place to do so. So far this has taken over 14 hours to write and 72 revisions to attempt accuracy, but I’m willing to spend many hours more and revise it over and over again until it doesn’t need to exist. 

I just found this as part of Lynn Shawcroft’s recent declaration and it is as it is perfect.  If you know Mitch’s work you will instantly be able to tell that it is not just one joke, but what led to many jokes. The main joke as written by Mitch is more than a joke it’s a worldview and philosophy. It’s not even the incarnation of it he regularly used. Everything about that note he decided to write down instead of going back to sleep is and will remain timeless and perfect.