Friday, April 1, 2005

Entertainment: Hedberg Dead at 37

Comedian Mitch Hedberg was found dead in a New Jersey hotel room Wednesday morning, according to Minnesota's Pioneer Press. He was 37.

The cause of death has not been determined, and details concerning his death have yet to be released. The Pioneer Press reported that Hedberg's family has been told he suffered a heart attack.

Much like Steven Wright, Hedberg was a master of the sharp-as-glass-shards one-liner ("Rice is great when you're hungry and want 2,000 of something"; "I would imagine if you understood Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy"; "When someone hands you a flier, it's like they're saying, 'Here, you throw this away.' ") His comical, almost-too-obvious observations about life's subtle peculiarities inspired Time magazine to declare the stand-up comic "the next Seinfeld" in 2000.
This was the best stand-up I've ever heard--and truly great stand-up is hard to find. I saw Lewis Black on Wednesday night and laughed hard for 90 straight minutes. I probably won't be laughing much more in 2005.

1 comment:

Pepper said...

This is truly sad. I just watched him perform some stand up on Comedy Central a month ago. His routine about being concerned when a family doesn't acknowledged that their name has come up on a restaurant's waitlist is perhaps the funniest bit I've heard in years.

Then maybe it says something about me that the loss I mourn the most of the last 48 hours isn't the Pope or Terri Schiavo, but a comedian.