R.I.P. Mitch Hedberg...

I just found out that one of my all-time favorite comedians was found dead yesterday. Mitch Hedberg was a comic genius, and his passing is truly a loss to the world of entertainment and comedy.

To be honest, I feel a little weird writing such mushy stuff about the passing of a stand-up comedian. But I thought about it for a while .... and realized that he's really the first celebrity or well-known person whose death actually makes me sad. His comedy has made me laugh 'til my sides hurt more times than I can remember... his jokes cheered me up on numerous occassions... His humor influenced almost every one of my close friends and shaped the way we think of jokes and comedy. My singing group in college even named our album after one of his jokes ("Dry Clean Only").

An excerpt from the MTV news link above states:

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.

R.I.P., Mitch.

-e