Hedberg's “Do You Believe in Gosh” is Dead Funny

Hedberg's “Do You Believe in Gosh” is Dead Funny

by Casey DORRELL

Release Date: September 9th, 2008
Label: Comedy Central Records
Related: Mitch Hedberg - Strategic Grill Locations; Steven Wright - I Have a Pony

“Trust me, it's hilarious. Go into my head, then come back out and tell me I'm wrong,” challenges comedian Mitch Hedberg after a failed joke. And there are a lot of failed jokes on his posthumous release of stand-up comedy, which came out on September 9th. Thankfully, there just as many funny one-liners, and those jokes that do fall flat are saved by self-deprecating asides.

To be fair, the material, released over three years after Hedberg's fatal heroine overdose, was never intended for wider public consumption. It was a test-run of new material which he planned on perfecting and then recording in a more polished form in October. Because of his sudden death, that recording never happened. Instead we have, “Do You Believe in Gosh?” a short comedy album comprised of a handful of performances at a club in Ontario, California, released with the blessing of his partner, Lynn Shawcroft, on Comedy Central Records. (Yes, California has their own Ontario apparently so named by expats sick of the Ontario weather and elitism).

For those unfamiliar with the comedy work of Mitch Hedberg, he is aptly described by Comedy Central Record Rep, Jack Vaughn, as “one of the most famous comedians who's not really well known in the public sphere”. Relying on a comedy style that is sometimes described as abstract observational humour, his routines are a collection of seemingly random one-liners (“I'm sick of soup of the day, it's time we make a decision”), tangents (the new album opens with him ruminating on whether he should wait for everyone in the bathroom before starting) and surreal observations (“I like when they say shampoo is volumizing, cause my hair, it's fucking quiet”). All of this delivered with spacey mumbling, often while staring at the floor.