Posted on   Friday, October 05, 2007    685 Views, 0 Comments

About Mitch Hedberg
Mitchell Lee Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 29, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and unconventional comedic delivery. His routines featured elocutive but often short, sometimes one-line, observational jokes on everyday life, mixed with absurd and at times hylozoistic and paraprosdokian elements as well as non sequiturs. Hedberg's comedy and on-stage persona gained him a cult following, with audience members sometimes shouting out the punchlines to his jokes before he could finish them.

Career
He began his career in 1989 playing open mic nights in south Florida. Two years later, in 1991, he moved to Seattle, where, due to his continued efforts, his popularity increased. However, Hedberg did encounter some degree of difficulty. It took him more than a few years to come up with a good deal of material, and he also needed to conquer his stage fright, which was so intense that it left a mark on him throughout his career, sometimes even leading to him performing with his eyes closed, which he often incorporated into his jokes. He first began achieving national exposure with a special on Comedy Central. Hedberg appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman ten times and became one of the show's most successful American comedians. Mitch was also a three-time performer at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival.

Hedberg could be heard as the voice of Jimmy John's radio advertisements during the months leading up to and after his death. He also was the voice of the Atlanta Thrashers "Hockey Love" ad campaign in 2002–2003. Every performance of the Insomniac tour, headed by Hedberg's friend and former tourmate Dave Attell, featured a toast to Hedberg at the end of the show.

Comedy Central Records will release a new collection of Hedberg's comedy. At the time, however, it was unknown whether it would be a CD, DVD or both.


Death
Late in the evening on March 29, 2005, Hedberg was found dead by his wife in his room at the upscale Westminster Hotel in Livingston, New Jersey. His death was first announced by Howard Stern on his morning talk show (on which Hedberg had appeared twice, including an appearance less than two weeks before his death) and later confirmed by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Many people who learned of his death thought it to be an April Fool's joke, because it was announced April 1st on his official website. Hedberg had reportedly been preparing for his first HBO special, which, according to his website, was a goal he had strived for as a comedian.

Hedberg was known to be a drug user, even referring to it in some of his jokes. He was arrested in May 2003 in Austin, Texas for possession of heroin. Hedberg was also born with a heart defect for which he received extensive treatment as a child. Though this condition initially had been cited as a possible cause of death, in May 2005 the New Jersey medical examiner's office reported "multiple drug toxicity," including cocaine and heroin, as the official cause of death. Results of the autopsy and toxicology reports were first reported by journalist Peter Hyman in the January 2006 edition of Spin magazine.


Style
Hedberg was set apart from his stand-up comedy peers by many traits, including his unique pronunciations, his abrupt style of punchline delivery, and an unusual stage presence. His jokes focused largely on wordplay, non-sequiturs, whimsy, and object observations. His jokes rarely featured obscene material, although he would often use a curse word as an exclamation. However, his material rarely suffered when he removed the curse words. His stand-up act is characterized by a strange, off-beat delivery.

As a result of his stage fright, Hedberg often performed with his head down and with his hair in his face in order to avoid eye contact with the audience. Earlier in his career, he would often stand upstage during performances or perform with his back to the audience.

His act usually consisted equally of compact one- or two-liners similar to the style of Steven Wright in addition to longer routines, often with each line as a punchline. Many of his jokes stemmed from his everyday thoughts or situations. He did not often craft jokes with long serious setups leading to a big punchline, or use callbacks to previous jokes.

Hedberg was noticeably self-aware of the status of his jokes, whether they were poorly delivered, underexplained, or just poorly received. He occasionally added disclaimers to the end of jokes to let the audience know that his reaction to the joke matched theirs.

Hedberg most notably acknowledged when jokes were poorly delivered or received in the form of a resigned "all right". He also toyed with his audiences after a joke did not gain the reception he had intended; occasionally quipping, "That joke's better than you acted." During recordings for CDs, he would often joke that he would find a way to edit a failed joke to make it seem well received, such as "adding" laughter to the end of the joke. Following a bombed joke on Strategic Grill Locations, Mitch suggested, "All right...that joke is going to be good because I'm going to take all the words out and add new words. That joke will be fixed."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg