Josh Blue

Published: Thursday, September 1, 2005

Pick a winner: Josh Blue is headed for stardom.

Fifteen minutes before Friday's eight o'clock show at the Comedy Works, the line stretches nearly to Larimer Street. Tammy Pescatelli from Last Comic Standing is in town, and she's attracted a sell-out crowd of primarily white suburbanites excited about a night out in the city. Pascatelli travels with no openers, so several comics from the club's lineup are in the green room, waiting their turn to warm up the audience and optimistically discussing the inevitable re-emergence of the sitcom, since reality TV doesn't work in syndication. And then Josh Blue ambles in, wearing his #5 U.S. Paralympic soccer jersey.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Josh Blue," says John Novosad, aka Hippieman, taking a loving crack at his friend, who in the blink of an eye has gone from being as ubiquitous as cigarette smoke on the local comedy scene to a rare sighting between prime spots around the country. Josh smiles off the comment and starts talking with Jake Sharon, another comic who's manning the camera this evening, about filming his eight-minute set. When Josh did a spot for Comedy Central's Mind of Mencia several weeks ago, comedian Carlos Mencia introduced him to a few network bigwigs, and they've requested an eight-minute video of material that could get Josh a spot on Premium Blend, maybe even his own half-hour Comedy Central Presents special. So he wants to make sure things run smoothly.

"Well, if things don't go well, there's always the second show tonight," Sharon points out.

"I'm a one-take kind of guy," Josh replies, then coughs. Since he arrived back in town less than 24 hours ago, he's done two photo shoots and two interviews. He's sick with exhaustion, but as he paces in the back hallway looking over his set list, he can't help but be excited at the size of the crowd. MC Phil Porter warms up the audience, and then Josh takes the stage.

As Josh begins his set -- which now includes a Mind of Mencia-dropping intro -- a woman in the fourth row regards him with sad concern. Josh was born with cerebral palsy, and his right hand doesn't fully open; on stage he has a tendency to cock his right arm behind him at an awkward angle, and his speech is somewhat slurred. "You guys better laugh," Josh says. "Because this is my make-a-wish." While the rest of the audience roars, the woman recoils in shock.

"To tell you the truth," Josh continues, "I feel a little ripped off. I should have said the Olsen twins." At that, the sensitive woman laughs.

She stays hooked as Josh starts telling a joke about cops thinking he was drunk and throwing him in the drunk tank. "I kept saying, 'I'm not a drunk, I have cerebral palsy,'" he says. "They were like, 'That's a pretty big word for a drunkass.'"

Two applause breaks and several hyena-shriek rounds of laughter later, Josh finishes his routine and heads back to the green room.

The press on Josh Blue tells you that he puts the "cerebral" in cerebral palsy, that he helps listeners laugh at their own stereotypes and corrects misconceptions about people with disabilities, which is all true. Local TV stations have run feel-good spots on Josh and how he doesn't let his disability get in the way of his dreams -- he's also an athlete who traveled to Greece last year to play soccer in the Paralympics -- and that's well and good, too. But here's the thing you really need to know about Josh Blue: He's fricking funny. Period.

"I have the common sense to know that my disability is what makes me stand out," the 26-year-old explains. "But I don't want to be thought of as just 'the comic with cerebral palsy.' I want people to think I'm funny, and to make them laugh. A lot of my set is about having CP, but it's not like I can't address it -- plus, most comics do a lot of talking about themselves. If I didn't talk about it, it would be uncomfortable and weird for everyone. What am I going to say -- 'Well, I screwed the cat today'?"

Josh got his start at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, at a coffeehouse-style open mike that was primarily "poetry and love songs," he recalls. Josh performed off the top of his head and got a raucous response from the thirty people in the room -- an early indication of his skill at making comedy out of nothing. By the next open-mike night, the audience had doubled. Fans kept multiplying until Josh had a night where he "ate shit" and quit. "People were laughing and everything, but in my mind, I wasn't happy with it, so I stopped," he explains.

He went to Senegal for an internship at the Dakar Zoo, but thoughts of comedy lingered. When he returned to school, he convinced an advisor to let him focus on standup comedy as part of his major. In addition to studying and writing about the great comedians, Josh performed on a consistent basis -- and so was born the "Josh Blue Comedy Hour," with Josh facing the hellacious task of coming up wit - Westword (www.westword.com)

We are proud to announce that Josh has been Nominated as BEST DIVERSITY EVENT by APCA Students for 2006! Winners will be announced in February 2006. - APCA

Blue's irreverent comedy shakes up lunch-time crowd
At EvCC there has never been a more radical and comically tear inducing performer than what the students and staff experienced in Josh Blue’s performance Tuesday, Feb. 28, in the MPR.
Anyone who missed it heard about it, and anyone who saw it had sore laughter muscles afterwards.
Josh Blue is a rising star in the comic world. He was born with cerebral palsy and it is obvious that he uses this as a motivator and turns it into a positive factor. He incorporates his disability into his performances.
Blue is also a member of the U.S. paralympic soccer team, and he loves to poke fun at this as well. He got into standup comedy because since a young age was always told he was funny. It seemed like a natural thing to do.
During his routine he used very vulgar language to create a unique atmosphere for his jokes and to help get his points across. The bits he told mainly focused on his past experiences. Politics and religion jokes were put into the mix as well.
The crowd played a big role in most of Josh’s jokes. The result was roaring laughter for a full hour. A few memorable jokes included his palsy punch, his idea of joshing around, and his crazy guy on bus joke; he being the crazy one.
Josh Blue’s performance was some sick stuff that left all watchers balling with laughter and clapping with excitement. He will be appearing on The Mind Of Mencia on Comedy Central, so be watching for that. I cannot wait to see him again, soon, for another outstanding show.

By Mark Lamb - Staff Writer/Photo by Kelly Read
- Everett Community College -The Clipper

Local Comedian Uses Disability For Laughs
(CBS4) DENVER A local comedian has turned his disability into the driving force behind his routines. Josh Blue makes fun of the fact that he has cerebral palsy.

Blue has built a following at Denver's Comedy Works and is getting national attention after winning the $10,000 grand prize at the 2004 Las Vegas Comedy Festival.

Blue has also appeared on Comedy Central's "Mind of Mencia" and competed at the 5th annual Boston Comedy Festival.

He started as an amateur comedian while a student in Olympia, Wash.

"It's just something I realized pretty early," Blue said. "People are going to be staring at me my whole life, I might as well get paid for it and be entertaining."

Blue is also a start on the U.S. Paralympics Soccer Team.

WATCH VIDEO CLIP
http://cbs4denver.com/seenon/local_story_128120930.html




- CBS Channel 4

Josh Blue was fantastic. He was great to work with and hilarious. He has been the best comedian ever to perform at Lewis & Clark. His show was a great success!

- Shayne Rivera

11.03.04
By STEPHANIE OLSEN Colorado Daily Staff

My persona on stage," begins Josh Blue, "is…I'm a bad (man)! That's how I come across. That's not me in real life, I don't think of myself that way. I want to come across as ... just because I have a disability doesn't mean I can't be the baddest man out there. I come out on stage like I own the stage and I walk off like I own it too."
Blue, a comedian based out of Denver, has cerebral palsy and has made his condition a central part of his comedy routine. "I talk about what I know," Blue claims, "and I know disabilities. It is definitely an everyday experience for me that I have to deal with and I put my own unique twist on it."
Blue works to battle stereotypes through his comedic performances. He works off of people's ignorant ideas that just because a person has a physical disability they must also have a mental disability. And there is nothing mentally disabled about Josh Blue. Quite the opposite, he is right on target and our conversation was nothing short of hilarious.
Is it ever uncomfortable when Blue is talking about his disability and other people's stereotyping? Apparently not. "I found that I have made it comfortable enough where people can sort of let go and see that I am bringing this to the table and letting you laugh at it," says Blue.
The first time Blue came into comedy was in college at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Blue described himself as the class clown and one day decided that he might enjoy stand-up and wanted to give it a go. It may have been the best decision he ever made.
"The first time I did stand-up was when they were having an open mic in the housing community center where everyone was doing their love poems and horrible songs," remembers Blue, "I got up there and was like, 'What's up!' and did ten minutes of jokes and it was very well received."
Blue was hooked. He decided to major in stand-up at his college and found a professor that was willing to see him through. This was only the beginning of what is shaping up to be a very successful career for Blue.
A series of stepping-stone moves propelled Blue to where he is today. He performed at various comedy clubs, performing at open mic nights. The more he performed, the more club owners, waitresses, and bartenders noticed him. He made it to the Comedy Works in downtown Denver and for a time hosted his own show, "Just Josh," on Monday evenings there.
In addition, he has participated in and won many various comedy competitions across the country, most notably the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. Just a few weeks ago Blue won the Royal Flush Professional Comedy Contest in Vegas, beating more than 60 professional comedians from all across the country - a feat Blue is still digesting.
All things considered, there is no doubt that Blue is good at what he does. While Blue has a standard routine, it is constantly changing as new jokes come to mind. As well, Blue has gotten to like improvisation more and more, doing question-and-answer sessions with the audience. Mostly his comedy comes from various wacky experiences.
"I seem to attract the freaks," admits Blue. "It gives me all kinds of ammo."
In the tough life of a comedian, various aspects keep Blue coming back for more each night.
"I love it," says Blue, "I mean I can't even really call it a job because I love it so much. One I get to make people laugh, which is a definite society need, and two I don't just think I am making you laugh. I think when you leave the comedy club you've learned something, whether you know it or not. So maybe the next time you see someone with a disability maybe you won't talk slow to them or you won't just assume they are retarded."
Blue seems to be reaching a lot of goals in his career, but is not going to let any of the fame go to his head. After all of the winning at comedy festivals, Blue keeps a healthy perspective.
"I don't want to get too big for my britches before I'm ready," Blue jokes.
When asked what is next, he wasn't afraid to admit that it could all end tomorrow. A highly unlikely scenario, but important to realize nonetheless. At 25 years old, Blue understands he is young and has a lot of growing to do.
"I'm performing in as many situations as I can," says Blue, "from the great club Comedy Works, to bars around town, so I can see how to adapt to different situations ... I know I am going to be learning the rest of my career, you can never learn it all no matter how good you think you are or other people tell you you are."
Blue has an attitude that spells success because he knows he hasn't yet reached his peak and is always willing to learn more. Fortunately we get to benefit from it, and are assured to have many more years of Josh Blue's comedy.
In the meantime, Blue is just "loving the hell out of it," and audiences far and wide are loving the hell out of him.
- Colorado Daily

By Ed Will
Denver Post Staff Writer


Denver comedian Josh Blue talked excitedly by telephone from Philadelphia during a stop on his theater tour with big-time joke slinger Carlos Mencia.

But Blue wasn't excited about opening Mencia's shows in front of nearly 3,000 fans.

No, he was psyched about an eight-day show of his art at Denver's Abend Gallery. The exhibit, his first, doesn't even open until April 7.

"The thing I'm really excited about now is the art gallery," said Blue, who puts his humor on display Wednesday at the Comedy Works. "It's weird. I've always had this dream of doing an art gallery thing, and it was just finally, 'All right, let's do it.' "

Blue differs from most artists, and not just because he is realistic about his work.

"I know I'm not going to draw a straight line," said Blue, who has cerebral palsy, a disorder of the central nervous system. "And that actually plays into it quite well, because everyone says my artwork looks like it is all in motion. And that is just because there is so much energy going into every brush stroke or pen stroke."

Not only is Blue an artist and an emerging national comedian, he also plays for the U.S. Paralympics soccer team. (Yes, he's literally a stand-up comic, but he doesn't drive.)

"I like to be good at what I do," said Blue, 27. "It's frustrating when I'm not. But if I get an idea in my head, you better not try to stop me, because that is just going to push me harder."

The idea to do stand-up popped into his head when he was a sophomore at Evergreen State College, the Olympia, Wash., school that also produced "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. He studied theater, creative writing and visual arts, including wood sculpture, painting and drawing.

Blue's first comedic gig came at a weekly open-mic night at the campus housing center.

"It was one of those things where I went on after someone singing love songs," Blue said. "Then, the person after me was doing love poems. ... It was horrible. I was very, very bad.

"I should take that back. I was bad by my standards now."

But his debut had a large cool quotient, too. The first night he performed, 20-25 people watched. The next week some 75 people showed up.

He basked in success for two more outings. Then the inevitable happened. "I didn't know at the time that that happens to everyone, so I stopped for a year and a half," Blue said.

In his senior year, Blue had to create a production for a theater class. He decided to do stand-up and have actors on stage acting out his bits. Well-received, the show rekindled Blue's interest in comedy.

"At Evergreen you can create your own major and your own classes," he said. "So I actually studied stand-up comedy. Which was basically me renting videos from Blockbuster and drinking beer and getting high. But it worked out. Here I am now."

Blue's self-designed curriculum required him to try to perform once a week. He did open-mic nights at a club in Tacoma, Wash. Then he ended up with a weekly show at a coffeehouse.

"Every Wednesday night I would do a whole hour of comedy," he said. "I can't even do an hour now. I don't even know what the hell I was talking about. It was brutal. I see videos of that stuff; it hurts me to my soul."

After graduation, Blue moved to Denver, where he began his second self-imposed exile from comedy. He spent his first summer here working at an Easter Seals camp. When the camp closed, he found a job in Denver working with developmentally disabled adults. "I wasn't doing the comedy thing at all for six months," he said. "And it was just eating at my soul."

He eventually started showing up at open-mic nights around the city, entering and winning talent contests at bars.

"There would be like weekly contests with $25 prizes or whatever, but I would win every one," he said. "What I did was, I just saved all my money from my other job. Then I was, 'All right, I'm going to go pursue this now.' And I haven't had a day job since."

That was in 2001.

He started doing open-mic at the Comedy Works and quickly came to the attention of club owner Wende Curtis.

"When he was working our new talent program there started to be a buzz about him," she said. "He just had it. He had stage presence from the beginning. He has always been real confident on stage. And he also kind of knew the anatomy of a joke early on."

Blue worked his way up the club circuit, headlining shows beginning in 2004.

Curtis offered one other clue about Blue: "Josh is a babe magnet. It's really incredible to watch the women around him."

And that is almost exciting as being invited to perform before show-business big shots next month at the HBO and U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen.

Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- DenverPost.com

CINTHIA RITCHIE
COMMENT

Published: March 5, 2006
Last Modified: March 5, 2006 at 03:17 AM


We laughed, oh, how we laughed, more than 100 of us sitting together in that dim room, leaning forward and holding our bellies, laughing. Because it was too funny, the idea of a man stumbling before us, arm jerking wildly, hair flying, his expression that of a slightly crazed Jesus.


It was Friday night and we were gathered together at UAA's campus den watching comedian Josh Blue do his cerebral palsy jokes. They were funny, not because having cerebral palsy is funny, but because we all recognized ourselves in his struggles. We recognized the hidden, vulnerable parts of ourselves, the scary parts, the almost unbearable knowledge that our bodies are puny and weak and no matter what we do or how strong we think we are, our hearts pump dumbly inside our soft chests.

We laughed because it was funny, it was hilarious to listen to someone speak so freely and easily about his challenges and humiliations. We knew exactly what he meant. We all had wanted something and not gotten it, we all had felt embarrassed and ashamed in front of others. We all worried about what others thought, and we all knew how superficial and silly this was.

I laughed the hardest, laughed until I slipped out of my chair and ended up on the floor. I laughed until I was lying flat, so weak I could barely breathe. Tears streaming down my face, belly aching, because I knew exactly what he meant, I knew how our bodies can betray us, and how awful and demeaning and funny that can be.

I laughed because, you see, I also have a disability.


People who know me know this: I talk funny. Most of them don't know exactly why, and they're too polite to ask. Instead, they wrinkle their foreheads, squint their eyes. Often they step backwards, as if what I have might be catchy. I doubt they do this on purpose, and to make up for this slight, I often step back as well as if to say: Yeah, OK, I catch your drift.

Or maybe they step back as a form of self-protection. Because I have spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological vocal cord disorder, my speech often comes out hard and forced. I have to dig inside my vocal cords, find an even place and pounce out each letter.

"Na-ice to ma-et you," I might say when I first meet someone. I have a tendency to add extra syllables, and use a lot of a-letter sounds in order to free those fickle words from my throat. This isn't a pretty process, and I've seen my face in the mirror as I've struggled to speak, seen the grimaces and jerks, the small sprinkles of spit that sometimes let loose.

Thank god for laughter. Not just regular laughter, but the heated, prickly laughter of the forbidden, the unmentionable, that kind of gut-splitting laughter that bridges uncomfortable moments into something a bit more tolerable. Because things often get sticky. Once, when I called my sister after a taxi refused to pick me up because they thought I was drunk, she listened to my self-pitied tears for a few moments and then sighed.

"So, what's the big deal? You got home, didn't you?"

"Ba-ba-ba-but," I sputtered.

Then she told me something remarkable, something I've always remembered, this sister of mine who regularly attended church, who was brave enough to believe in God.

"Maybe that taxi would have gotten into an accident," she said. "Maybe you would have been killed. Maybe what you think is humiliation is really a moment of grace."

I didn't believe her until a few month later, when I was buzzing merrily down the highway doing 85 mph and was pulled over by a cop. He heard my stumbling speech and immediately ordered a breathalizer test. When it came up clean, I showed him my official Spasmodic Dysphonia Association membership card and he became so flustered and apologetic that he forget to give me a ticket. He even offered me half of his Milky Way bar. Leaning against the bumper of that cop's car eating that melted candy bar, I thought, "moment of grace." And suddenly it all made sense. Having a disability isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. Like the sun and the cop's voice as he told me about his family, it just is.


This isn't really about me and my sad little voice or Josh Blue and his cerebral palsy. It's about everyone, all of us, and how we all have something that holds us back, some sore spot, something in our head or hearts that says we can't, that we shouldn't, that if we do, we'll make fools of ourselves. We are all disabled in one sense or another, by bad marriages or bad childhoods, dull jobs or even duller lives. We are crippled by doubt and insecurity, by expectations and weight of our own desires.

I remember years ago, a friend wouldn't go to our employee Christmas party because she had gained so much weight. I didn't go to that party either. I was too afraid of having to talk to people I didn't know, too afraid of those first few uncomfortable moments when people re - Anchorage Daily news