Search - Mitch Hedberg :: Mitch All Together (W/Dvd)

Joy S. from FULTON, KY
Reviewed on 8/17/2010...

I loved this guy! Had never heard of him until lately. Listened to the cd first & if I hadn't seen his picture would have had trouble figuring out his nationality. His voice & delivery were so quirky. Watched the dvd and really got into him. Not fair to compare him to anyone, but if I had to, it would be Steven Wright. Droll and so very very funny. Shocked to learn last week that he died in '05. Seems a shame he isn't still here, thinking and sharing his special skewed view of the world.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Comedy Gold

Beardyjin | New Orleans | 04/03/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mitch Hedberg has long been a bit of a cult-comic, having made numerous appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman & Howard Stern. In the late 90s Hedberg was courted by several networks for a sitcom and heralded by Time Magazine as "the next Seinfeld," due to his growing popularity and offbeat observational style of humor, but no sit-com ever materialized and Hedberg continued to build up his cult status on the road. His laidback style and unique one-liner deliveries made him both a favorite of his fellow comedians and on college campuses even though he didn't get mainstream recognition.



This is Mitch's second and final comedy CD (Hedberg died in March 2005 from a heartattack). But he left us with an outstanding CD that has 40minutes worth of great material. Mitch took a few of his good jokes from his first CD and made them into outstanding jokes on this CD. The title is taken from a joke on his first album, which he really should've included again on this one. Mitch's first comedy CD was flawed and stilted, but practice makes perfect and Mitch fires on all cylinders for this CD with expert timing and deliveries. He has the audience eating out of his hand and he'll have you pushing repeat once the CD ends."

Totally original, smart --- and funny

Jesse Kornbluth | New York | 01/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"'I used to do drugs,'' Mitch Hedberg liked to say. ''I still do drugs. But I used to, too.'' On March 29, 2005, that line stopped being funny --- Mitch Hedberg was found dead in a New Jersey motel room. He was 37 years old.



Mitch would be the first to note the incongruity between his status as a rising comedy star and his career-and-life-ender of a presumably accidental overdose. The distance between appearance and reality, between language and truth --- that space was his playground. He was comedian-as-philosopher, comic-as-linguist. Give Mitch an everyday occurrence, and he'd hold it up to the light and deconstruct it. His humor was quiet, non-physical, smart --- there wasn't a dirty joke in his repertoire.



His art started with his self-presentation. He was tall and gangly and not altogether comfortable onstage, and he emphasized his discomfort. His hair was long and parted in the middle, so it flopped over his face when he looked down at the floor, which he did a lot. The lenses of his glasses were tinted light blue, the better to hide behind. He sometimes wore a Backstage Pass when he performed, "so when I leave the stage, I won't have problems."



Some comedians tell stories, others create characters. Mitch worked in a more demanding tradition --- the one-liner. And not one-liners that needed a set-up. The pure one-liner, the Zen one-liner, the one-liner that just sits there, surrounded by silence until you add your contribution, which is laughter. If you happen to admire the comedy of Steven Wright, you are Mitch's ideal audience.



Mitch had a distinctive way of speaking that made him funnier than he can ever be on the page. His sentences were adventures; he would emphasize seemingly random words, which made him sound as if English were his second language. His accent was part Southern, part hipster, a neat trick for a kid from St. Paul.



Mitch never needed more than an introduction. After that, he could win his own game. Listen:



"An escalator can never break --- it can only become stairs."



"I don't have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would be really mad if she heard me say that."



"When someone hands you a flyer, it's like he's saying, 'Here, you throw this away.'"



"I order a club sandwich all the time, but I'm not even a member."



"When I was a kid, I lay in my twin bed, wondering where my brother was."



"Do you think that when a guy got the idea for a bong that a black light popped on?"



"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read."



"I have no problem not listening to The Temptations."



"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just gonna ask where they're going and hook up with them later."



All of these are from "Mitch All Together," which is like his greatest hits. It contains a DVD of his live performance and a faster-paced, looser CD of his best bits. Neither tops 40 minutes. Not a lot of stuff for a comedian who had been at it for more than a decade. But...funny? To hear Mitch is to love him. And to love Mitch is to know you'll be returning later with friends in tow.



He was, by his wife's account, as amusing offstage as on: "I remember when we'd be at a post office in some town. I'd be getting stamps or writing an envelope, and I'd hear Mitch laughing and acting suspicious. When we left, he'd tell me about how he'd seen some woman sending some mail and he'd copied down her address. He bought a birthday card and wrote something like "Amy, thanks for all your hard work!! See you on the 11th!" and then put a $100 bill in it and mailed it...He loved the idea of someone being totally confused when they opened it. I remember him doing this all the time..."



Another of Mitch's ideas: sending cash to Tori Spelling.



Oh, dear. There I go, trafficking in Mitch's beyond-laconic style. As will you: Mitch Hedberg gets under your skin and into your speech pattern and the way you think and see. In this way, he lives on. Immortal. And yet, sadly, dead. The incongruity would make Mitch smile."