Feeling Blue
Comedian Josh Blue (see video clip) shows that there's nothing wrong with laughing at yourself -- even if you have a disability. Blue, who won NBC's "Last Comic Standing" in 2006, has cerebral palsy, which he incorporates into his brand of humor. One of my nurses told me about him last year after he won the competition, so I checked out a few video clips and found them funny. When I saw in the newspaper that he was to perform nearby, I decided to find out if he was as funny in person.
Although I was exhausted from a busy day yesterday and hardly felt like getting ready to go out in the rainy weather, I was glad I did because Blue certainly didn't disappoint. The two other comics who preceded Blue on stage, Kristin Key and Michele Balan, were very funny as well. But Blue's act was high-energy from the start; the guy must have walked three miles with all the pacing he did back and forth, across the stage. His disability was a key component of his act, whether poking fun at his out-of-control right arm and its effect on everything from voting to hailing a cab or taking on condescending people with his signature phrase, "Hey, buddddy!"
I couldn't help but admire him for being able to laugh about his disability. I try my best to do the same and have incorporated bits of humor into my autobiography (unfortunately, no news to report about that), but it's not always easy.
It was definitely an enjoyable evening. My only concern was that my seat was so close to the speakers that I worried about my defibrillator, as being in close proximity to magnetic fields such as those produced by speakers can potentially render defibrillators temporarily inactive.* The last thing I needed was to have a problem in the middle of the show -- it would have been a real shocker! Okay, I guess I don't have a future in stand-up (or sit-down, for that matter) comedy, but I had to at least try to say something funny in this entry.
*A call to the nurse practitioner on Monday morning assured me that I was most likely sitting far enough away from the speakers, though she suggested that in the future, I might want to consider sitting a bit further away.
