[VIDEO] Comedian: Mitch Hedberg

Mitchell Lee “Mitch” Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 29, 2005)^[2] was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and unconventional comedic delivery. Hedberg’s comedy typically featured short, sometimes one-line jokes,^[3] and observational comedy, mixed with absurd elements and non sequiturs.^[4]Hedberg’s comedy and on-stage persona gained him a cult following,^[5] with audience members sometimes shouting out the punchlines to his jokes before he could finish them.^[6]

Mitch Hedberg was born on February 24, 1968, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Arnold and Mary Hedberg.^[7] He graduated from Harding High School in Saint Pauland was married to Canadian comedian Lynn Shawcroft^[8] on February 25, 1999.^[2]

Career

Hedberg began his career in 1989 playing open mic nights in southern Florida.^[3] Two years later, in 1991, he moved to Seattle, where, due to his continued efforts, his popularity increased. Hedberg did encounter some degree of difficulty: apparently he suffered from intense glossophobia, which sometimes led him to perform with his eyes closed. However, on her Twitter page, his wife Lynn refuted this claim.^[9]

He first achieved national exposure in 1996, performing at the prestigious Just for Laughs Montreal International Comedy Festival,^[3] which aired on Comedy Central. Hedberg appeared twice on The Late Show with David Letterman^[6] and became one of the show’s most successful American comedians. His eyes were closed during the Just for Laughs festival portion that was taped and aired on CBC and the Comedy Network.

Hedberg could be heard as the voice of Jimmy John’s radio advertisements during the months leading up to and after his death. He was also 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 tour-mate Dave Attell, featured a toast to Hedberg at the end of the show.

He appeared in the 2005 film Lords of Dogtown; the film, released after his death, was dedicated to his memory.

Death

Hedberg was known to be a drug user, referring to it in some of his jokes (“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too”). Hedberg was arrested in Austin, Texas, in May 2003 for possession of heroin.^[1] On March 30, 2005, Hedberg was found dead in a hotel room in Livingston, New Jersey.^[10] Hedberg was born with a heart defect for which he received extensive treatment as a child.^[1][11] It was initially speculated that this condition may have played a part in his death. The New Jersey medical examiner’s office reported “multiple drug toxicity”, in the form of a cocaine and heroin “speedball”, as the official cause of death.^[1] His funeral was held at St. Ambrose of Woodbury Church in Minnesota.

Style

Hedberg’s stand-up comedy was distinguished by the unique manner of speech that he adopted later in his career,^[12] his abrupt delivery, and his unusual stage presence. His material depended heavily upon word play, non sequiturs, paraprosdokians and object observations. His act usually consisted equally of compact one- or two-liners resembling those 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.

Because he suffered from stage fright, Hedberg often performed wearing sunglasses, with his head down, with his hair in his face or with his eyes closed in order to avoid eye contact with the audience. He would often stand upstage or perform with his back to the audience. He would also constantly move in one spot and, when holding the microphone in some skits, his nervousness would cause him to shake it uncontrollably.^[13]

Hedberg occasionally added disclaimers to the end of a joke to let the audience know that he shared their judgment of it, most notably acknowledging when jokes were poorly delivered or received with a resigned “all right.” He also toyed with audiences that failed to respond in the way he had intended them to, occasionally quipping, “That joke’s better than you acted.” During recordings for CDs, he would often say that he would find a way to edit a failed gag to make it seem well received, for example by “adding” laughter. Following such a failure on Strategic Grill Locations, Hedberg 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.”^[14]

Comedy Central Records announced the release of the first album of new Mitch Hedberg material on June 10, 2008. The album titled Do You Believe in Gosh? was released September 9, 2008 and contains material recorded at The Improv in Ontario, California in January 2005. Hedberg’s wife Lynn wrote the introduction, in which she stated that the performance was in preparation for an end of the year CD recording.^[15]

Quotations

• “Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. ‘Damn it, Otto, you’re an alcoholic.’ ‘Damn it, Otto, you have lupus.’ One of those two doesn’t sound right.””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.”

• “I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.”

• “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.”

• “I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would be really mad if she heard me say that.”

• “I like an escalator because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. There would never be an ‘Escalator Out of Order’ sign. Only an ‘Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.'”

• “I’m fucking sick of following my dreams. I’m just gonna find out where they’re going and hook up with them later.'”

• “I went to the store to buy a candle holder. They were out, so I bought a cake.”

• “I went to a store that said they specialized in hard to find records and tapes. Nothing was alphabetized!”

[VIDEO] Comedian: Zach Galifianakis

Zacharius Knight “Zach” Galifianakis (pronounced /ˈzæk ˌɡælɨfəˈnækɨs/ GAL-if-ə-NAK-iss; born October 1, 1969)^[1] is an American comedian and actor, known for numerous film and television appearances including his own Comedy Central Presents special. While initially more of an “underground” comedian, he garnered mainstream attention with his role in the successful 2009 comedy film The Hangover.

Galifianakis was born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina and attended Wilkes Central High School.^[1] His mother, Mary Frances, ran a community center for the arts, and his father, Harry Galifianakis, was an oil heating vendor who emigrated from Greece at the age of three.^[2][3] Galifianakis was raised in his father’s Greek Orthodoxfaith.^[4][5][6][7] His uncle, Nick Galifianakis, was a congressman from North Carolina between 1967 and 1973. Zach attended North Carolina State University, but did not graduate.^[8]

Galifianakis’s career began on television in 1996, when he played the recurring role of a stoner named Billy in the short-lived sitcom Boston Common. In 2001, Galifianakis co-starred in the film Out Cold. He has had small roles in Corky Romano, Below, Bubble Boy, Heartbreakers, and Into the Wild. In 2007 he appeared as himself in Super High Me. He had several films come out in 2008: What Happens in Vegas, Little Fish Strange Pond and the documentary Largo.

Galifianakis performed in episode 15 of season 5 of Comedy Central Presents, first aired 17 September 2001, including stand-up jokes, a segment with a piano, and concluding with an a cappella group (The Night Owls, introduced as his “12 ex-girlfriends”) singing “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles while he made jokes with flip charts and pranced around in tights.^{[citation needed]} In 2002, he was the host of his own talk show called Late World with Zach. His next television role was as a coroner named Davis in the Fox drama Tru Calling, which lasted from 2003 to 2005.^[4] He has also appeared many times on Jimmy Kimmel Live and has made three appearances on Reno 911! as “Frisbee”.

Galifianakis was, together with Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, and Maria Bamford, one of the four Comedians of Comedy, a periodic packaged comedy tour in the style of the The Original Kings of Comedy and theBlue Collar Comedy Tour. He has recently^[when?] left the tour and has been replaced by Eugene Mirman.

Galifianakis starred as Alan Finger on the Comedy Central show Dog Bites Man, a fake news program that caught people during candid moments as they acted under the impression that they are being interviewed by a real news crew. In addition, he was on an episode of the Comedy Central show The Sarah Silverman Program as Fred the Homeless Guy. He also had a recurring guest role as a doctor on the animated Adult Swim show Tom Goes to the Mayor and appeared in several episodes of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! as Tairy Greene, the Snuggler, et al. In Season two of Wonder Showzen, in the episode entitled “Horse Apples”, Galifianakis played the role of Uncle Daddy, an effeminate redneck who hosted his own garage-workshop show wherein he subconsciously dealt with his difficulties reconciling religion and culture with his probable homosexuality.^{[citation needed]}

In 2006, Galifianakis was featured in Fiona Apple’s music video for the song “Not About Love” where he is seen lip-synching the lyrics to the song. A year later Kanye West employed Galifianakis and indie rock musician Will Oldham for similar purposes in the second version of the video for his song “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”. In June 2006 Galifianakis released the single “Come Over and Get It (Up in ‘Dem Guts)”, a comedic rap/hip-hop/dance song which features Apple’s vocals. More recently,^[when?] Galifianakis performed on a tour called the “Comedians of Comedy” with Brian Posehn, Patton Oswalt, and Maria Bamford. They chose to perform at live rock clubs as opposed to comedy clubs to try to reach a different audience. Much of the tour was taped, and has been featured in both a short-lived TV series on Comedy Central and a full length movie that has appeared at SXSW and on Showtime. A DVD featuring Galifianakis’s work, Live at the Purple Onion, was released on March 6, 2007. He also took part in the Funny or Die Tour with fellow comediansDemetri Martin, Nick Swardson, Andrea Savage and Will Ferrell.^{[citation needed]}

Galifianakis divides his time between two residences, one in Venice Beach, CA, and a 60-acre (24 ha) farm in the foothills of North Carolina that he hopes to turn into a “writer’s retreat”.^{[citation needed]}

On 22 February 2008, he made an appearance on the Jackassworld.com: 24 Hour Takeover. He interviewed various members of the Jackass cast.

Galifianakis starred in the independent film Visioneers which played in select cities in 2008. This was Galifianakis’s first starring role in a film and was given a direct-to-DVD release. That same year, Galifianakis appeared in a web video series of advertisements for Absolut vodka, along with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, creating a parody of the Golden Girls in which one has a deep anger issue, breaking the fourth wallin exasperation and outright violence on the set.^[9] He also just completed^[when?] the pilot Speed Freaks for Comedy Central.^[10]

Galifianakis co-starred in the comedy The Hangover, released in June 2009.

Galifianakis has a series of videos on the Funny or Die website titled “Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis” where he conducts staged interviews with popular celebrities between two potted ferns. He has interviewed Jimmy Kimmel,^[11] Michael Cera, Jon Hamm,^[12] Natalie Portman,^[13] Charlize Theron, Bradley Cooper, Conan O’Brien, and Ben Stiller. His interview style consists of typical interview questions, bizarrenon sequiturs and inappropriate and sometimes sexual questions and comments, at one point attempting to tickle Michael Cera and force Cera to tickle him.^[14]

Following the Hangover’s release, Galifianakis was prominently advertised in subsequent films that featured him in supporting roles. These included G-Force, Youth in Revolt, and the Oscar nominated film Up in the Air.

Galifianakis is currently a member of the regular cast playing a supporting role in the HBO series Bored to Death. He hosted Saturday Night Live on March 6, 2010, during the show’s 35th season, during which he shaved his beard mid-show for a sketch, and then closed the show wearing a fake beard.^[15]

Galifianakis has been cast in several upcoming projects including Dinner for Schmucks, It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Todd Phillip’s follow up Due Date.

β-blockers–Better Playing Through Chemistry

By BLAIR TINDALL

October 17, 2004
Rollin Riggs

Ruth Ann McClain lost her job for recommending beta blockers

RUTH ANN McCLAIN, a flutist from Memphis, used to suffer from debilitating onstage jitters.

“My hands were so cold and wet, I thought I’d drop my flute,” Ms. McClain said recently, remembering a performance at the National Flute Convention in the late 1980’s. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, she added; her mind would not focus, and her head felt as if it were on fire. She tried to hide her nervousness, but her quivering lips kept her from performing with sensitivity and nuance.

However much she tried to relax before a concert, the nerves always stayed with her. But in 1995, her doctor provided a cure, a prescription medication called propranolol. “After the first time I tried it,” she said, “I never looked back. It’s fabulous to feel normal for a performance.”Ms. McClain, a grandmother who was then teaching flute at Rhodes College in Memphis, started recommending beta-blocking drugs like propranolol to adult students afflicted with performance anxiety. And last year she lost her job for doing so.

College officials, who declined to comment for this article, said at the time that recommending drugs fell outside the student-instructor relationship and charged that Ms. McClain asked a doctor for medication for her students. Ms. McClain, who taught at Rhodes for 11 years, says she merely recommended that they consult a physician about obtaining a prescription.

Ms. McClain is hardly the only musician to rely on beta blockers, which, taken in small dosages, can quell anxiety without apparent side effects. The little secret in the classical music world – dirty or not – is that the drugs have become nearly ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that their use is starting to become a source of worry. Are the drugs a godsend or a crutch? Is there something artificial about the music they help produce? Isn’t anxiety a natural part of performance? And could classical music someday join the Olympics and other athletic organizations in scandals involving performance-enhancing drugs?

Beta blockers – which are cardiac medications, not tranquilizers or sedatives – were first marketed in 1967 in the United States for disorders like angina and abnormal heart rhythms. One of the commonest is propranolol, made here by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and sold under the brand name Inderal. By blocking the action of adrenaline and other substances, these drugs mute the sympathetic nervous system, which produces fear in response to any perceived danger, be it a sabre-toothed tiger or a Lincoln Center audience.

Even the most skillful and experienced musicians can experience this fear. Legendary artists like the pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Glenn Gould curtailed their careers because of anxiety, and the cellist Pablo Casals endured a thumping heart, shortness of breath and shakiness even as he performed into his 90’s. Before the advent of beta blockers, artists found other, often more eccentric means of calming themselves. In 1942, a New York pianist charged his peers 75 cents to attend the Society for Timid Souls, a salon in which participants distracted one another during mock performances. Others resorted to superstitious ritual, drink or tranquilizers. The pianist Samuel Sanders told an interviewer in 1980 that taking Valium before a performance would bring him down from wild panic to mild hysteria.

Musicians quietly began to embrace beta blockers after their application to stage fright was first recognized in The Lancet, a British medical journal, in 1976. By 1987, a survey conducted by the International Conference of Symphony Orchestra Musicians, which represents the 51 largest orchestras in the United States, revealed that 27 percent of its musicians had used the drugs. Psychiatrists estimate that the number is now much higher.

“Before propranolol, I saw a lot of musicians using alcohol or Valium,” said Mitchell Kahn, director of the Miller Health Care Institute for the Performing Arts, describing 25 years of work with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and other groups. “I believe beta blockers are far more beneficial than deleterious and have no qualms about prescribing them.”

But use of drugs is still largely secretive. “Inderal is like Viagra,” a woodwind player at a major orchestra said. “No one admits to using it because of the implication of weakness.” Robin McKee, the acting principal flutist of the San Francisco Symphony, agrees, saying, “It’s too bad we’re reluctant to talk about using such a great tool.”

Indeed, the effect of the drugs does seem magical. Beta blockers don’t merely calm musicians; they actually seem to improve their performances on a technical level. In the late 1970’s, Charles Brantigan, a vascular surgeon in Denver, began researching classical musicians’ use of Inderal. By replicating performance conditions in studies at the Juilliard School and the Eastman School in Rochester, he showed that the drug not only lowered heart rates and blood pressure but also led to performances that musical judges deemed superior to those fueled with a placebo. In 1980, Dr. Brantigan, who plays tuba with the Denver Brass, sent his findings to Kenneth Mirkin, a frustrated Juilliard student who had written to him for help.

“I was the kid who had always sat last-chair viola,” said Mr. Mirkin, whose bow bounced from audition nerves. Two years later, he won a spot in the New York Philharmonic, where he has played for 22 years. “I never would have had a career in music without Inderal,” said Mr. Mirkin, who, an hour before his tryout, took 10 milligrams.

For the last two decades, such use of beta blockers has generally met with approval from the medical establishment. “Stage fright is a very specific and time-limited type of problem,” said Michael Craig Miller, the editor of The Harvard Medical Letter. Dr. Miller, who is also an amateur pianist, noted that beta blockers are inexpensive and relatively safe, and that they affect only physical, not cognitive, anxiety. “There’s very little downside except whatever number you do on yourself about taking the drugs.”

BUT now that the drugs have established themselves as a seemingly permanent part of the classical music world, some musicians and physicians are beginning to question the acceptability, safety, efficacy and ethics of using them. One concern is that many musicians use beta blockers without proper medical supervision. The 1987 survey of orchestra musicians revealed that 70 percent of musicians taking beta blockers got them from friends, not physicians. Mr. Mirkin, the Philharmonic violist, first obtained Inderal from his father, who took it for angina. Others buy it while touring countries where they are sold over the counter.

Stephen J. Gottlieb, a professor of medicine who published a study on the effects of beta blockers in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1998, says beta blockers should be obtained only after a medical examination, since people with asthma or heart disease could develop problems like shortness of breath or a slowing of the heart rate. “One-time use of low doses of beta blockers should be safe in healthy people,” Dr. Gottlieb said, adding that the fatigue, hallucinations, tingling and vivid dreams listed as side effects in Physicians’ Desk Reference would be unusual in those using Inderal only occasionally. The risks are far more serious for those who use beta blockers consistently and take up to 700 milligrams of Inderal a day. Musicians typically take 5 to 20 milligrams in isolated doses.

But some performers object to beta blockers on musical rather than medical grounds. “If you have to take a drug to do your job, then go get another job,” said Sara Sant’Ambrogio, who plays cello in the Eroica Trio. Chemically assisted performances can be soulless and inauthentic, say detractors like Barry Green, the author of “The Inner Game of Music,” and Don Greene, a former Olympic diving coach who teaches Juilliard students to overcome their stage fight naturally. The sound may be technically correct, but it’s somewhat deadened, both men say. Angella Ahn, a violinist and a member of the Ahn Trio, remembers that fellow students at Juilliard who took beta blockers “lost a little bit of the intensity,” she said. Ms. Ahn doesn’t use the drugs, she said: “I want to be there 100 percent.”

Indeed, the high stakes involved in live performance are part of what makes it so thrilling, for both performers and audiences. A little onstage anxiety may be a good thing: one function of adrenaline is to provide extra energy in a threatening or challenging situation, and that energy can be harnessed to produce a particularly exciting musical performance. Performance anxiety tends to push musicians to rehearse more and to confront their anxieties about their work; beta blockers mask these musical and emotional obstacles.

Some musicians are also grappling with the ethics of better performing through chemistry. In auditions, which are even more nerve-racking than regular performances, do those who avail themselves of the drug have a better chance of success than those who do not? Should drug testing apply to performers, as it does to some athletes and to job applicants at some companies?

“If you look at the logic of why we ban drugs in sport, the same should apply to music auditions,” said Charles Yesalis, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies performance-enhancing drugs. But the issue receives little attention because, unlike athletes, classical musicians are seldom called on to represent big business ventures. “If Nike offered musicians ad contracts,” Dr. Yesalis said, “more people would pay attention.”

Speaking from the Athens Olympics in August, Steven Ungerleider, a sports psychologist and the author of “Faust’s Gold,” said that beta-blocking medications are prohibited for some events, like riflery, in which competitors use the drug to slow the pulse so that they can fire between heartbeats to avoid a jolt. The drugs are banned in a number of other sports, including motorcycling, bobsledding and freestyle snowboarding.

But Dr. Miller, the Harvard physician, points out that beta blockers differ significantly from steroids, which use testosterone to increase muscle mass, strength and speed. Inderal enables rather than enhances, by removing debilitating physical symptoms; it cannot improve tone, technique or musicianship, or compensate for inadequate preparation.

As Ms. McClain’s firing demonstrates, the use of beta blockers by students is a particularly delicate issue. Those who openly use the drugs believe they have a responsibility to mention them to students suffering from severe stage fright.

“If I’m looking out for the welfare of my students, I cannot in good conscience not tell them about beta blockers,” said Ms. McClain, adding that she would be more careful about how she represented the information in the future.

Some teachers believe that coping with performance anxiety is an essential part of a classical music education and that early use of beta blockers deprives students of the chance to confront their stage fright. Robert Barris, a bassoonist and a co-chairman of the music performance studies faculty at Northwestern University, encourages students to address the roots of their anxieties while avoiding psychological dependence on chemicals. Unlike previous generations of musicians, these students can draw on a rich array of nonchemical treatment options. The new field of performing-arts medicine includes some 20 centers across the country, many of which treat stage fright with therapies that range from Inderal to more holistic approaches like hypnosis, yoga and aerobic exercise.

But several musicians interviewed for this article expressed impatience with these treatments, which can seem slow and uncertain compared with the instant gratification and convenience offered by the beta blockers. “Holistic solutions take work and time to be effective, whereas Inderal is a quick fix,” Mr. Barris confirmed. As it happens, he takes Inderal by prescription for a heart ailment, and he said that he works to combat any soporific effects the drug might have on his musicianship by putting extra energy into his concerts. “No one wants to listen to a secure, accurate but disconnected performance,” he added.

Jim Walker, a former principal flutist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic who has recorded more than 400 movie soundtracks, says that preparation is the best medicine. Still, he describes himself as an Inderal advocate, with the caveat that the drug be approved by a physician. Some of his best students at the University of Southern California, he said, are too nervous to deliver a representation of how well they really play and might stand to benefit from beta blockers.

“It’s absolutely legitimate to recommend Inderal to a student who’s unable to perform because of nerves,” he added. “If I’d never heard the story about Ruth Ann McClain, I’d be far more blatant in recommending it.”

Blair Tindall, a professional oboist, is writing “Mozart in the Jungle” for Grove/Atlantic Press. Elaine Aradillas contributed reporting for this article.