Mitch Gets the Last Laugh

Anytime you're writing about someone posthumously, you brings a tinge of melancholy along for the ride. It's especially ironic when you're writing about Mitch Hedberg, one of the funniest men ever to hold a microphone. He was a stranger to me when he passed, though he'd played Virginia Tech while I was a student there. I have listened to his albums with many a special person, an act that has sealed those moments in memory like a lick-closed envelope, and there aren't a lot of artists I can say that about. I was thrilled to find out that "he" was set to release an album's-worth of new jokes, recorded mere weeks before his overdose, but even that news was dulled by the knowledge that Do You Believe in Gosh? really is the last of it. I teared up some during the first listen because, unlike Strategic Grill Locations (where he sounded high) and Mitch All Together (where he sounded coked up), here he just sounds happy. Like he's laughing at these particular jokes for the first time. Like he's genuinely enjoying himself and ecstatic to be breathing the air in that particular place at that particular time. And I wonder how these people in the audience reacted when they'd heard that Mitch died just shortly after being so tickled by him in person, and how their laughs are captured here like auditory fossils telling the tale of a sunnier time.

Listen:
Door Deal
Restaurants
[from Do You Believe In Gosh?|buy]