I saw Mitch Hedberg perform a couple years ago at the Benedum. It was a Comedy Central sponsored show with Dave Attell and Lewis Black. I had waited to the last possible second, the day before, to get a ticket. I think I got to the ticket office at Noon. The show had been sold-out earlier in the day but a few tickets had become available. I ended up sitting in the third row.

Lewis Black went last and was better than I thought he’d be. I enjoy his work on the Daily Show but in larger doses he sometimes rubs me the wrong way. He was really good.

Attell was amazing. His timing, down to when he would take a drink, was incredible. I laughed the hardest for Attell. Even for all the jokes I’d heard before. One of the most striking things about Attell and Black was just how professional they were. You could see the years of working in clubs that had gone into refining their acts.

Then there was Hedberg. He went first. You should understand that the Benedum is the big theater in Pittsburgh. It’s where the Opera and the Ballet perform. This is as big as it gets before you get to arenas. Hedberg, notes in hand, was trying out new material. A lot of it bombed. A lot of it wasn’t funny. His reactions to our reactions were. He had some incredibly lame joke about Carnegie Mellon University where he referred to it as ‘Carnegie Cantaloupe’. Wait, I laughed at that one. Bad example.

Hedberg was as funny as Attell and Black. He deserved to share a stage with them, but he was so different from them. Black, and especially, Attell were so controlled on stage. Hedberg wandered all over the place. He went off on tangents. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. He was the most memorable performer of the night.

He was back in town in January. I didn’t go see him. I figured I’d catch him one of the next times he was in town. I guess that won’t be happening.

Thanks for the laughs, Mitchell.