Where is mitch hedberg from

He was of Swedish from his paternal grandfather , Czech, and German descent. He admitted to having no interest in school and just barely graduated high school. Alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having. Wearing a turtle-neck is like being strangled by a really weak guy In fact, if you wear a backpack and a turtle-neck, it's like a weak midget trying to bring you down!

My hotel doesn't have a 13th floor because of superstition, but people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on. My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, and I said 'No, but I want a regular banana later I like escalators because they can't break down. They can only temporarily become stairs. I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.

It did not need to exist. If I worked at a grocery store and I saw a duck come in and take a loaf of bread with his beak, I'd let him go. He died of an accidental drug overdose in But Mitch always considered it an art form; it was how he expressed himself. I was almost 30 when we got married. I was my own, fully grown individual. But Mitch showed me a way to look at the world just a little bit differently.

And I think his comedy did that for a lot of people. To me, Mitch was a wordsmith and he was really silly, which I love. He chose subjects that were timeless. He searched for an original voice of his own.

In this way, Mitch was able to take an audience to a place where our world is looked at in a different, more magical way. When Mitch died, it sent guilt, shame, grief, regret and fear coursing through my body every second of every day. I have no idea how I survived it.

Though Mitch Hedberg of course has his moments, it's too free and scattered to make much of a film. After Mitch Hedberg's movie failed to gain interest, his acting career didn't do much better. Fox and Hedberg never found a project that worked, so he was dropped from his deal. Though he still had success on the road and on his many Letterman appearances, his Comedy Central special was a little tough. Doing his first Comedy Central Presents was a big deal, but the audience was full of people totally unfamiliar with his style.

If you watch the edited version of the special , it's great. The audience is onboard and loves his completely original delivery. But if you watch the unedited version, it's totally different. At first, the audience just doesn't get it. After his joke, "I wanted to buy a candle holder but the store didn't have one, so I bought a cake," the audience responds with tepid laughter and a weird slow clap. So Hedberg openly says, "You gotta get into my jokes harder I have 21 minutes left.

That's a long time. At one point, he just sits down on stage, looking defeated, but keeps going. He finishes his planned set, then tells the audience he's going to do a few more jokes for "editing purposes.

In the end, Mitch Hedberg won the crowd over, but it was hard work. Though the Comedy Central special was disappointing, Mitch Hedberg still had great success on the road.

He toured constantly and was a favorite among other comedians. Hedberg performed at Birbiglia's CD release party. But he didn't just perform: he flew himself there and refused to be paid. When Hedberg played a weekend of sold-out shows in Chicago, he let Buress and about four other inexperienced comedians open for him.

That never happens in the industry. But Mitch Hedberg was happy to give any stand-up a chance. That set started Buress' career as a stand-up, and he'll forever be grateful for the kind-hearted comedian. Toward the end of his life, Mitch Hedberg was constantly touring. He'd do three shows a night, then go to the next place and do another weekend of shows.

His wife said Hedberg never passed on a job. He'd been rejected so many times, he felt like he had to accept while he had the chance or all the rejections would start coming back. So he relentlessly traveled and performed until his last days. Tragically, Mitch Hedberg eventually died after a fatal mix of heroin and cocaine.

Perhaps the worst part of it is that he knew he had a problem, but rather than kick the habit, he attempted to moderate it. Hedberg was arrested for possession in May , which is often a wake-up call for people to stop what they're doing, or at least try to. Mitch Hedberg had other ideas. In a interview with Las Vegas Weekly , Hedberg claimed he was going to do much less, so people couldn't associate him with drugs anymore.

As he said, "You can't do copious amounts of drugs and stay alive Everyone would be happy, right? He also thought it might help his career, theorizing during that interview that since he got arrested for drugs once, any mistake he makes in the future will get blamed on drugs. So, to make himself look better, he was planning to do less drugs and be really quiet about the ones he did do. He died a year later — due to drugs — so unfortunately, his plan didn't work.

Mitch Hedberg had a very deliberate delivery style — he didn't talk fast, and he didn't rush into punchlines. When it was time to deliver the joke, he knew when to deliver it. Some of his fans, on the other hand, had no such style and just wanted to hear their favorite joke.

And if Mitch was, in their mind, lagging behind on delivering it, they would cook it up themselves. According to Entertainment Weekly 's article on the man, some of Hedberg's fans were so into him, they knew just about all his jokes by heart.

If they felt their hero was taking too long to tell his joke, they would yell out the punchline for him. Like so : "This jacket is dry-clean only Hedberg seemed to take it in stride, though he was known to chide fans who did that, scolding them with lines like, "Didn't you hear of a dramatic pause?

That way, he could stay one step ahead of his fans. It's strange to hear that a guy who made his living performing in front of people was also terrified of doing so, but Mitch Hedberg was just that.