Shobis

I was channel surfing one morning when I chanced upon the late Mitch Hedberg's Comedy Central special on Jack TV. I remember seeing him for the first time on the Late Show with David Letterman and went, Wow! What a friggin genius!. He just rattles off jokes in a spaced out delivery that had no segues between jokes whatsoever. His jokes were never off-color, almost always free of four-letter words. Theyre mostly wordplay and non-sequiturs and clever twists on everyday observation. Just like Carlin without the hate. "When we were on acid, we would go into the woods, because there was less chance that you would run into an authority figure. But we ran into a bear. My friend Duane was there, raising his right hand, swearing to help prevent forest fires. He told me, 'Mitchell, Smokey is way more intense in person!'"

My favorite comics are the ones who just stand there and deliver with no gimmicks, no making faces, nothing over-the-top. Hedberg's delivery was such that you half-expect him to fall asleep on you in the middle of a sentence. He was a master of the one-liner. In fact, his entire act is almost made entirely of one-liners. "I wrote a script, and I gave it to a guy who reads scripts, and he really likes it, but he thinks I need to rewrite it. I said, 'Screw that, I'll just make a copy!'" Too bad I didnt catch it from the beginning. But Jack TV always replays the good stuff.

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I really feel sorry for Brad Pitt. Have you seen his recent photos with Angelina? Heartbreaker says he looks like an alalay. He's just a man. A rich, good-looking man to be sure, but just a man nevertheless. Angelina is a force of nature. She's a typhoon, she's a tornado, the Aurora Borealis. She's the Van Allen radiation belts. No way can Pitt get that close to her without being destroyed. I feel for you, man. Good luck.

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Oscar night. Yaaaay. Not. I havent seen any of the nominees. Im just looking forward to what Jon Stewart will do in the show's opening. Then I'll go to bed.