Here's a picture of me when I was younger

May 27, 2011 2:05 PM

The website of the late comedian Mitch Hedberg has been revamped and relaunched by his widow Lynn Shawcroft, with photos, videos, and selections from Mitch's notebooks. (via) (previously) (sadly)
posted by Horace Rumpole (30 comments total)

one of the truly funny comics - I'm glad this website exists. I've watched every MH youtube video, so I am glad to see some stuff on here I have never before seen.
posted by archivist at 2:15 PM on May 27, 2011

“An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”


"I haven't slept for three days, because that would just be too long..."


"You know, if I made orange juice, I would not be so hardcore on people. I would be more polite, like I would not print 'shake well' on the carton, cause you don't know how good people can shake, you know? I would write, "Shake to the best of your ability." Then I'd have a diagram that shows the uninitiated how to shake. "Alright, put it over here, then put it over here, then put it over here quicker."


"Swiss cheese is the only cheese you can draw with a pencil and still identify. No other cheese is like that. And you can try to draw American with a pencil, but someone's gonna think it's cheddar. But Swiss cheese is for sure. 'That's Swiss.' 'Yes it is. How'd you know?' 'Cause of the the fuckin' holes...'

And swiss cheese is the only cheese that you can bite into and miss."
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 2:23 PM on May 27, 2011 [10 favorites]

People who say drug abuse is a victimless crime need only look at Hedberg.
posted by Yakuman at 2:24 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Maybe it's having heard Mitch Hedberg perform, or maybe it's his style, but even in simple text form he's funny.

.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:26 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

Looking at those quotes made me realize the guy's magic was in his delivery. No one can retell a Mitch joke and get the sane effect.

Yakuman - A topic for another thread, please. Don't take this as an admonishment, but every time I want to revisit his life, people see the need to bring up his death.
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 2:31 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Awesome. Much gratitude to Lynn for doing this. I saw Mitch in Dallas shortly before his death, and while he was not at his best or brightest, I'm damn glad I got the opportunity.
posted by Ufez Jones at 2:32 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

"Once, while being driven from the Atlanta airport to the hotel, our cab driver started talking shit. He was creeping towards a racist rant. We were still a ways away from the hotel when it dawned on us that he felt super okay with being a hateful weirdo.

Mitch leans forward, “Hey Man. Up here on the right is a deli that sells Boar’s Head Ham. Can you stop so we can grab something to eat?”

“Sure”

Mitch returned with THREE subs. No one spoke for the rest of the trip.

Lesson learned. It’s impossible to spew racist crap while eating a delicious sandwich.

I miss you Mitch." —Lynn Shawcroft
posted by Toekneesan at 2:33 PM on May 27, 2011 [16 favorites]

"I used to take drugs.
I still do - but I used to too."
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 2:37 PM on May 27, 2011 [3 favorites]

Weird excerpt to choose from his notebooks: SHE CALLS AND ACCUSES ME OF BEING ON A DRUG BUT IT’S THE WRONG DRUG.

Did he do that many jokes about drugs (or about the language related with doing drugs)?
posted by filthy light thief at 2:41 PM on May 27, 2011

Los Enchiladas Please! It's slightly reassuring that she owns losenchiladas.com and it redirects to mh.net, but let me watch it!
posted by matimer at 2:51 PM on May 27, 2011

I almost wish I hadn't clicked the link, after I finished laughing I started being sad.
posted by MikeMc at 3:04 PM on May 27, 2011

Todd Glass doing Rodney Dangerfield doing Mitch Hedberg jokes.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:08 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Hedberg was mentioned in this if-dead-artists-had-lived thing today.
posted by box at 3:20 PM on May 27, 2011

I got to see Mitch at Giggles in Seattle, right about the same time he was appearing on That '70's Show. It was easily one of the best nights of my entire life. I still miss him.
posted by palomar at 3:36 PM on May 27, 2011

Looking at those quotes made me realize the guy's magic was in his delivery. No one can retell a Mitch joke and get the sane effect.

His delivery was fantastic, but the jokes were funny regardless. Just throw one out there, more than likely you'll get a laugh. Then you'll have to explain that it wasn't your joke, and then you'll have to explain who mitch hedberg was.

Will always miss him.
posted by justgary at 3:36 PM on May 27, 2011 [5 favorites]

The Mitch Hedberg joke that I always remember is

That would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, "It's cool, he's with me."

I think of that joke every time I think about how we deal with food in America, especially in schools: all that sugar in chocolate milk is okay because it's in milk and milk is healthy!
posted by thebestsophist at 3:44 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

So I started reading some of the material in Bathtub Bobsled's comment to my wife, and she said "That's Mitch Hedberg." I said "How do you know?" and she said "You were talking exactly like him."
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:28 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

His delivery was fantastic, but the jokes were funny regardless. Just throw one out there, more than likely you'll get a laugh. Then you'll have to explain that it wasn't your joke, and then you'll have to explain who mitch hedberg was.


I agree, the delivery is fantastic but doesn't mean that the jokes don't stand on their own. I'll often toss them out as FB statuses without crediting him and I'll get a mix of you're funny/me explaining it's not me/and people who immediately reply "Miss Mitch."
posted by sweetkid at 4:31 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

My eight year old, who has never seen Mitch perform, has heard bits of his routines often enough that to this day, if he sees a bag of potatoes in the kitchen he says we should throw one in the oven, just in case.

Damn, I loved me some Mitch.
posted by dejah420 at 4:53 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

"I was in a casino, minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You're gonna have to move. You're blocking a fire exit.' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit. Unless you're a table."
posted by Mitheral at 5:13 PM on May 27, 2011 [10 favorites]

I hate to say it, but didn't the previous version of the official website have a lot more mp3?
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 5:40 PM on May 27, 2011

I was listening to Cannonball Adderly's spoken work intro to "Mercy, Mercy" this afternoon, and I thought it was Mitch talking. I always wondered where he got that cadence from -- it's not St. Paul. I guess it's Cannonball.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:48 PM on May 27, 2011

Did he do that many jokes about drugs (or about the language related with doing drugs)?

Not a lot. His style was to extract the absurd from everyday realities, or infuse the everyday realities into the extraordinary circumstances in an absurd but easily relatable fashion. He had some one offs with drug subject matter, but he talked more about ducks and soft drinks.

One I can think of off the top of my head is:

When taking acid it opens your mind. I now know butter is way better than margarine. I saw through the bullshit. Sometimes acid will make me hallucinate. I'll see what looks like these beams of light, and I'll hear sounds... Like car horns."

Again, it's off the top of my head, so I may have screwed it up.
posted by Bathtub Bobsled at 6:26 PM on May 27, 2011

"I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that."

Mitch was great.
posted by Robin Kestrel at 7:03 PM on May 27, 2011 [2 favorites]

Because of acid, Mitch Hedberg now knows that butter is way better than margarine.
posted by dejah420 at 7:07 PM on May 27, 2011

Astro Zombie: "I was listening to Cannonball Adderly's spoken work intro to "Mercy, Mercy" this afternoon, and I thought it was Mitch talking. I always wondered where he got that cadence from -- it's not St. Paul. I guess it's Cannonball"

You should go and watch The Producers - Mel Brooks' original 1968 movie. Dick Shawn's character of Lorenzo St. DuBois speaks with just that cadence. For that matter, here is a clip. I always wondered if Hedberg had seen that movie.
posted by John Smallberries at 7:40 PM on May 27, 2011 [1 favorite]

No one can retell a Mitch joke and get the sane effect.

I love that typo.
posted by Trochanter at 7:50 PM on May 27, 2011 [5 favorites]

Loved him. Thanks for the link.
posted by annsunny at 9:22 PM on May 27, 2011

I wanna get an easy to remember phone number, like 222-2222. That way, when someone asks for my number, I'll say "just press 2 for a while. When you hear me say hello, you'll know you've pressed it enough times."
posted by ShutterBun at 12:49 AM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was legitimately behind the Dufresne party at a restaurant a couple of years ago. Thankfully, no search party was necessary.
posted by zorrine at 3:41 PM on May 28, 2011 [1 favorite]