Being an overnight Internet sensation is great — as long as you don’t mind being labeled “that guy from that video” for a few years afterward.
Just ask Chris Bliss. The stand-up comedian and former rock-star juggler (yes, there is such a thing) first gained international notice when a video of him juggling at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal went viral, generating tens of millions of views in less than a month.
Now three years into a proper comedy career, the “Tonight Show” regular and former comparative-lit major has set his sights on other moving targets — namely, an act focused on standup and pet projects like building Bill of Rights monuments around the country via his website, .
We talked to Bliss in advance of his headlining sets at Comedy Works South at the Landmark (tonight and Saturday), chatting about his stand-up act, his stints opening for rock stars and more.
Q: You dropped out of college to be a juggler. Do you consider yourself more of a juggler or a comedian these days?
A: I’ve been a stand-up primarily since maybe three years ago. I started doing comedy in L.A., but used the juggling on the road as a prop to build a comedy act around. I’d do 10 minutes of bad comedy, then win the audience back. It took about three years to get it to the back of the act and be a passable headliner with a great close.
Q: It certainly seems to be working. You’ve been on “The Tonight Show” seven or eight times in recent years. How would you describe your standup?
A: All along, I thought I’d try to find out what’s funny to me and give it to the audience instead of finding out what the audience thinks is funny and giving it to them. The standup that I do isn’t autobiographical, but it is personal.
Q: Your website calls it “smart comedy for the information age.” What does that mean?
A: Everybody always comes up after shows and says, “You do very intelligent humor,” and it’s the absolute kiss of death to say it’s “intelligent” humor. People go to a comedy show to laugh. I was trying to find a way to say intelligent that had less syllables, so I came up with “smart.”
Q: You also used to open for Eric Clapton, Kenny Loggins, Julio Iglesias, Michael Jackson and others as a juggler. Did that experience prepare you for standup at all?
A: Well, the juggling has an advantage over comedy because it’s all set to rock music from bands like the Beatles and the Who. There were black lights and strobe lights and a huge lighting system with fog machines.
Q: What was one of your craziest experiences with that?
A: The first big rock tour I did was with Asia in 1981. I opened for the band in 15,000-seat arenas. We were in the Spectrum in Philly, and after the third song of my four-song juggling set, during the Who’s “Quadrophenia,” the sound guy pegged the board and almost literally knocked people back in their seats. I got a standing ovation after that, but four minutes of high-decibel crotch vibration was about all I could handle.
Q: The video of you juggling to the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” in Montreal got more than 30 million hits online. Did you have any idea it would go viral like that?
A: No way. This was right on the cusp of YouTube and Google video, so I didn’t know about those sites for the first month and was paying $12,000 a month to keep up the bandwidth on my own site. I got 40 terabytes of downloads in the first month. It was definitely an ego boost, especially when Ringo Starr put it on his Web page. Of course, it was next to another video of a bulldog riding a skateboard.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
Chris Bliss
Comedy. Comedy Works South, 5345 Landmark Place in Greenwood Village. Today-Saturday. 7:30 and 9:30 tonight; 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday. $25. 720-274-6800 or .
