IN CONCERT: Mitch Hedberg & Stephen Lynch

Last Thursday, I went to see Mitch Hedberg and Stephen Lynch co-headlining a show at the Wiltern in L.A. And for the most part, it was incredibly entertaining.

Stephen Lynch is one of my two favorite comics (along with Brian Regan, with whom he shares almost nothing in common). Lynch is a musical comedian, and he takes you completely by ambush. He's got this sweet, angelic voice, and he begins most of his songs with touching sincerity, and then, with impeccable comic timing, takes a right turn into the most hilariously mean and angry and vulgar lyrics. To take an example from one of my favorites, "Grandfather" (which sadly he didn't perform):

When Grandfather dies, life will be strange
When Grandfather dies, my whole world will change
When Grandfather dies, I'll scream and I'll yell
Cause I'll be fuckin' rich as hell

He performed a few new songs, most notably one about how horribly ugly his (fictional) newborn baby was, and did some classics, like "Special Ed" ("Oh, Special Ed/Mama dropped him on his head/Now he thinks he's a piece of bread") and "Priest" (about some horrors perpetrated on an altar boy), and he brought out his frequent collaborator Mark Teich for a couple songs, best of all "D&D":

I got my 12-sided die and I'm ready to roll
With a wizard and my goblin crew
My friends are comin' over to my mom's basement
Bringin' Funyuns and the Mountain Dew
I got a big broadsword made out of cardboard
And the stereo's a-pumpin' Zeppelin
It's that time of the night we turn on the black light
Let the Dungeons and the Dragons begin
It's D&D!!
Fightin' with the legends of yore
It's D&D!!
Never kissed a lady before (nope!)

Lynch has a great stage persona, by turns charming and confrontational. But a good deal of his stage banter, though played as ad-libbing, came off as transparently well-rehearsed (such as a bit where he took the black foam covering off the microphone, put it on his beer bottle, and pretended it was an afro, or a bit in the middle of a song where he and Teich -- and another collaborator who I believe was his brother, Drew Lynch, but I'm not positive -- broke into a New Kids on the Block-style synchronized dance, singing "Whoa-oh! Oh oh, whoa-oh!"). Worst was during the song "Superhero", in which he asked the audience to suggest superhero names. Someone yelled out "Butt-Sex Man," which is the exact same name someone in the audience suggested on Lynch's live album (also called Superhero). And even though he admitted he'd heard it before, he went on to make the exact same jokes around the name that he did on his album.

That said, he's incredibly likeable, and his songs are wickedly clever and funny, and I had a blast.

Then Mitch Hedberg came out, and he was also a blast. He's got a much more rapid-fire style, throwing out one-liners and short jokes one after another after another, mostly surreally observational stuff in the tradition of Steven Wright ("I have an idea for sweat shops: air conditioning"). And his delivery is so strange and funny and unique. He has this way of over-articulating words (you can clearly hear both Ts when he says "little"), or emphasizing the wrong syllable ("syl-la-BULL," he might say), that makes every sentence a crack-up.

But this is where the audience began to ruin the show for me. Hedberg has a (well-earned) reputation for being a stoner. And the crowd was packed with the exact kind of idiots you'd be afraid would attend a stoner comedian's show. They talked to him while he was onstage. No, they yelled to him onstage. Non-stop. They were entirely unable to comprehend that he was doing a job, and they were fucking it up. Apparently, if you're stoned, you think everyone else who gets stoned is your buddy, and you can engage them in conversation no matter what the situation. They called for certain jokes, and then didn't laugh, or cheered with recognition rather than laughing. They demanded, "Smoke a bowl!" They told him to bring Lynch back out. They said his name over and over. They spouted unintelligible mush-mouthed nonsense. Loudly. Non-fucking-stop.

And Hedberg was partly to blame, because he responded to them. He engaged them, rather than shutting them down like the disruptive hecklers they were. When they shouted "Banana!" he asked, "Which one?" and then performed both of his banana jokes*. When they told him to smoke a bowl, he pulled a pipe out of his pocket and lit it up.

What person does that? Heckling, I mean. What person goes to a concert specifically to yell at and interrupt the performer onstage? Especially when they apparently like the performer. Who does that? Who says, "I'm going to the Mitch Hedberg show, which would be totally awesome, except for the fact that I'm going to shout like the idiot I am and spoil it for him and everyone else in the audience"? Answer: a lot of people, judging from this concert. In the double digits just in this one crowd, easily.

It was truly a shame. Hedberg was very funny (if underprepared; he constantly referred to a notebook, and even said at one point, "Next time I should memorize my jokes"); I laughed frequently, long and loud. And he has a wonderfully charismatic stage presence. Possibly too charismatic, judging from the number of people who thought they were his best friend. I'd like to see him again someday, under better circumstances.

And I would've bought his latest CD, if it hadn't been priced in the rip-off range. Some concerts, the artists sell their albums at reduced prices; some concerts, the artists jack up the price. This was the latter kind of concert. The CDs were $15 (which may sound reasonable to you, but only if you routinely enjoy getting shafted on music prices), and Lynch's DVD, which is going for $10.49 on Amazon, and which I picked up used at a local store for $9.99 yesterday, was being sold at the concert for $20.

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*I'm paraphrasing these two jokes. Also, they sound much funnier in Mitch's voice. "Someone asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, and I said no. But I wanted a regular banana in a little while, so I said yes." "On traffic lights, green means go ahead, and yellow means slow down. But bananas are the opposite. A green banana means wait a while. And a yellow banana means, go ahead, eat it now. And a red banana means, where the fuck did you get that banana?"