Mike Schmidt turns your evil thoughts into stand-up
Dinah Langsjoen
Mike Schmidt has spent the last two and a half years perfecting his dynamically offensive set of material, establishing himself as one of the most respected (and gut-wrenchingly brutal) comics in Madison. Even those who groan over Schmidt’s creepy gags on breast cancer, drowning children, or getting raped by aliens may still find solace in his more lighthearted rants on marriage, making fun of Christians, and picking up women in cat sweaters at ShopKo. Schmidt’s a criminal defense attorney by day, and his morbid humor often contradicts his court-appropriate getup of spectacles, collared shirt, and a sweater. Schmidt's ironclad deadpan delivery can often be witnessed at the Comedy Club on State’s Big Deuce Open Mic on Wednesday nights. The 30-year-old comic recently sat down with The A.V. Club to discuss the innocence of children, his fondness for waterslides, and how a couple of near-death experiences steered him toward comedy.
On getting into comedy in Madison
Mike Schmidt: I’d always wanted to do it, but I put it off. My wife bought this book for me called The Stand-Up Comedy Bible, which was great for working up the guts to do it, but not so much for coming up with jokes that I would want to tell onstage. One year I was sitting at a stop sign and got hit by a van going 55 miles per hour, and then a couple of months before that my lungs spontaneously collapsed. I figured that I should give it a shot, just in case I die horribly, soon. So, in 2007 I went to a comedy open mic on Park Street at a bar called The Klinic. I e-mailed ahead of time to get on a list, which I found out later was definitely not necessary. Chris Waelti and Adam Waldron were in charge of it. They put me in a spot pretty early, I told my jokes, and that was it.
On comedic timing
MS: I was listening to Warren Zevon, “Werewolves Of London” in particular, which is probably the Zevon song that everyone likes. I listened to his timing: “I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s. His hair was perfect.” With two sentences, he managed to paint—in the imagination of millions of people—a werewolf that’s well-dressed, with a fancy haircut, and he’s drinking at an overly trendy fad bar from the '70s and '80s. I figure that if I can’t get a joke to be funny in two sentences, then I’ll just stay away from it. Because that’s a sign that it might take more work than I’m up for.
On whether or not he really hates kids
MS: It’s always okay to make fun of rich people and white people because the implication is that everyone is jealous of them, but there is one social class that has it even better than any rich white person: children. I mean, when a child goes to McDonald’s, that’s the nicest restaurant in town and it gets to go all the time. You can tell a kid something horrible and then you can say, “Guess what? We’re going to Chuck E. Cheese,” and everything gets better. I envy this, because as I grow older, so many tiny things can ruin entire months of my life. They don’t know how good or bad they have it, and for that I envy them.
On the state of Madison comedy
MS: Once we were able to have an open mic at the Comedy Club on State itself, more people gave it a shot. And when more people give it a shot, everyone gets better. People get to see more styles. Really, stand-up comedy isn’t hard at all, it’s just not what it looks like. When I would do an open mic with only comedians in the audience—which it used to be at The Klinic—it’s harder to get myself to write five minutes of brand-new stuff each week, because they’re either going to be thinking about their own jokes, or they’re just going to laugh at the most horrible thing I say and I won’t get as good of feedback as I could. But with the Wednesday open mic—where there’s an actual audience full of regular people and regular fans of comedy—it gives comedians one extra shot per week to try the material and practice their stage personas. So everyone is moving forward faster because they have more opportunities to work on it.
On whether or not telling his dirtiest jokes makes him feel guilty
MS: Oh, I have one. Now, I only do it when an audience is really raunchy, having a good time, and daring me to go further than they would like. Based on their reaction to my opening joke, I’ll either follow with a dirtier, or cleaner one. After about 15 dirty jokes, they might get this: “Do you ever wonder if maybe Down syndrome is just a lie meant to cover for the fact that millions of American women are all having affairs with the same dumb Japanese guy?” What that’s meant to do is fire a warning shot. I want them to realize that I can make it worse, but they don’t want it. The other nasty one that I tell is, I think the hardest part as a man about going through a miscarriage is pretending to be disappointed. "What? You’re in the bathroom? And 120,000 dollars fell out of your vagina? That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard." Occasionally the audience wants blood, something really horrible. I’m a little ashamed of those jokes, but people laugh at them because they’re exactly the kinds of stupid thoughts that enter a person’s brain every day.
For instance, if you’re cleaning up a piece of dog poop, your brain will go "Don’t put that in your mouth!" And it will draw a mental picture of you putting poop in your mouth. You don’t want to do that and you never will. But when your brain is figuring out what you should or shouldn’t do, it weighs the options and you can’t really tell it not to. Part of my comedy is hooking into the evil little thoughts that I know the audience has, but doesn’t realize that everyone else has. It’s not their fault for thinking that way. With the miscarriage joke, sometimes a guy might think, "I didn’t want to have a kid with her anyway." But nobody ever says that, no one congratulates someone on a miscarriage. I guarantee that there have been times when a couple you know has a miscarriage, and you think, “Well that’s for the best. I can’t see them having a kid right now.” Of course you’ll never tell them that, but they might even think it themselves.
On new opportunities
MS: I’ll be performing at a bunch of casinos in the Upper Peninsula this week. Last summer I got to stay in my first hotel with a waterslide as a comedian and it was amazing. After staying in a hotel with a waterslide, what’s the point in doing anything else?
