Josh Blue is a different sort of comic-way different At first, you don’t know whether to laugh with him or at him. It’s OK to do both. Josh Blue doesn’t care. Either way is fine with him, as long as you laugh.
Blue is a 27-year-old Denver comic who has cerebral palsy. Or, as he jokes on his website, he’s “the comedian that puts the cerebral in cerebral palsy.”
He tells audiences at the beginning of his act, “I was hoping you’d laugh good and hard tonight. This is my Make a Wish.” Pause as the crowd erupts in laughter. He picks it right up. “If I had another Make a Wish, I would do things a little differently.” Another pause, then he says to an attractive woman in the front row, “It would be you, ma’am.”
Blue, who this week won the reality show “Last Comic Standing,” NBC’s laugh-down for young comedians, will be on stage at the Gothic Theatre tonight. His career has taken such a turn for the fast track that a second performance has been added at 10 p.m.
His comedic death match on “Last Comic Standing,” in which 12 comedians competed until only one was left standing, wasn’t personal, he said.
“They’ve become my friends. They’re all good friends. It’s sad, but we all know what the situation is. We are all going for the same goal. It’s nothing personal; it’s the way the game is played.”
Two years ago, he won the top prize of $10,000 at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. He’s also made appearances on Comedy Central’s “Mind of Mencia” and a handful of other network television shows. For his win on NBC, Blue will get a half-hour standup gig on Bravo, and a development deal with NBC that could lead to a sitcom.
Blue confronts his disability upfront, disarming his audiences along the way. It’s been that way since he was a kid.
“It was a way to defuse the situation,” Blue said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “If someone made fun of me and I could come back with something, it works out to my benefit.”
Plus, it turns out, he’s really funny.
Blue started in the standup-comedy biz seven years ago, doing open-mic nights where he discovered he was a lot funnier than most of his peers.
“I would go to open-mic nights and realize that I was not near as bad as half the people. I’d see some of these people go onstage time and time again and eat (expletive). I thought to myself, ‘If I were as a bad as you, I would probably kill myself.’ They come off (stage), ‘I’m really getting this now!’ I’m thinking, ‘Get a hold of yourself.”‘
He’s also an enthusiastic soccer player who appeared with the U.S. team at the recent Paralympics in Athens. The team was so bad, he said, “We didn’t have to worry about getting tested for performance-enhancing drugs.” On top of that, he got injured playing, and, he said, “The coach had the nerve to put me on the disabled list!”
On stage, Blue wildly swings his deformed right arm – the one he sometimes chastises as “Bad arm! Bad arm!” – and jokes that his mother is “the only person in the world who can tell when I’m drunk. She’s like, ‘Josh, are you walking straighter?”‘
In addition to his rising career as a standup comedian, Blue is a painter of some note, although he concedes, “I can’t draw a straight line. I don’t expect to draw a straight line. It’s all just colors. The thing my art has is movement. It’s like an unintentional intentional thing.”
An exhibition of his paintings opens Sunday at the Abend Gallery, 2260 E. Colfax Ave., which he will attend.
Having overcome so much in his life and career, not much worries Blue anymore. Except one thing. Tonight’s shows at the Gothic will be recorded for an upcoming DVD to be released this fall.
“I’m dreading doing TV. It’s given me nightmares. I’ve been doing this for seven years, and I have an hour of material. It takes so long to develop each joke. The difference is, now I’m very visible.”
On stage is where he’s happiest. “It’s an instant feedback. It’s like a drug when you get everybody rolling. I like to work the crowd a lot. People come ready to laugh. If you have a good show, you’re happy for the night. If you do a bad night, you feel bad until the next show.”
Nevertheless, he’s happy to be out there, facing audiences large and small.
“If I can make someone laugh while sending a message, that’s the best lesson.”
Staff writer Dick Kreck can be reached at 303-820-1456 or a dkreck@denverpost.com.
Josh Blue
Comedian Josh Blue will perform in Denver and Fort Collins this weekend:
DENVER|Gothic Theatre, 3263 S. Broadway, Englewood; 7 and 10 tonight, both shows sold out|$23|ticketweb.com, 303-788-0984
FORT COLLINS|Lincoln Center, 417 W. Magnolia; 8 pm. Saturday, sold out| $19.50|970-221-6730