Mitch Hedberg – Do You Believe In Gosh? by Keith Lowell Jensen

The obvious joke of course, would be to call Mitch Hedberg the Tupac Chakur of comedy, now that he, like the slain rap star, is issuing posthumous recordings. Here at SacramentoComedy.Com, we have no problem whatsoever with making the obvious joke, so lets just go with that shall we? Okay, great: Mitch Hedberg is The Tupac Chakur of stand up.
Three years after his unfortunate departure we get his latest album, “Do You Believe in Gosh.” Mitch does Tupac one better however, as his new album is NOT remixed by Eminem.

“Gosh,” is a sweet surprise for Hedberg fans. These recordings, taken from a live appearance taped at the Improv in Ontario, California, would have been something special even if they had not been preceded by tragedy.

Hedberg shows his ability to work a crowd, to play with the room around him and is quite charming in dealing with a drunk and overly enthusiastic fan. His stylistic delivery is dropped in places, in favor of a very conversational tone that one might not expect. Looking into the audience he comments, on an empty table with a single hat in the middle of it. “Someone’s got a hat that they’re not weaing. Either that or that table is fucking hip. That is downtown table. Man that table is bad ass. That table can tango. Either that, or it has a bald spot.”

Then there are the jokes: The absurd, the surreal and occasionally the confounding. Mitch himself dismisses a failed attempt as being “fuckin’ dumb,” which leads to the hilarious conclusion; that sometimes even he didn’t quite get why his randomness was so damn funny. It almost hurts to relay them from here, knowing you’re better off hearing them from Mitch, but we’ll leave you with one more gem before you rush off to purchase (or illegally downlowd, hell Mitch won’t mind) the disc. “I have a vest. If I had my arms cut off, it would be a jacket.”

The coolest feature is the packaging. “Do You Believe In Gosh” comes with a booklet featuring scans from Mitch’s actual notebook, full of random thoughts, jokes in their pupae stage, in the comic’s own writing. On one page Mitch has scrawled the phrase that became the album’s title. It is a perfect tribute to one of stand up comedy’s brightest stars. – Kieth Lowell Jensen

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