R.I.P. Mitch Hedberg

Mitch Hedberg was one of those fantastically funny, untouchable guys that populated my youth, spinning out forever beyond my reach like stars. I was at a party when I still hung out with comics, like 14 years ago. I want to say it was Roger Rittenhouse’s place, but then, all the comics lived together in great clumps and it was hard to tell who lived where. We were just kind of together. It was a Sunday afternoon, and everyone was gathering, just coming off the road. Sundays are great for comics, because we’re done for the week. Your Sunday is our Friday. Mitch was there, wearing pajama pants, but not in a Michael Jackson way, because they actually looked right on him, like he was super laid back, or played piano in the Boomtown Rats. We were standing around in the back room smoking huge amounts of pot, and everyone was making jokes, the way comics do. Everyone’s trying to top each other. Like being funny is the only thing we are good at, and we won’t quit. Mitch said that he was disappointed that I had a boyfriend, because he’d always wanted me for himself. I couldn’t figure out if he was kidding, and even if he was, it was enough for me to harbor a secret crush on him for all these years. He ended up marrying this great girl that I knew, and then becoming the standup sunshine superman everyone knows him as. They moved to a house in Big Bear, and sometimes would crop up now and again in my memory. I wondered what they did between gigs, if they lived in a teepee, making beef jerky and living off the land. I saw them once at the airport, near the United Express gates, on my way out to the vast terrain comics call the road. Ralph was a tiny puppy then, and he got to go everywhere with me in a fancy little dog bag. Mitch and Lynn were petting him and they looked golden, all California and happy. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family and his friends, to all his fans, everyone who loved him. He was surely one of the most loveable people ever, and he will be sorely missed.