Bad jokes or elaborate hoax?
Article by Dan Eldridge, photo by Lance Hammond
Resonance, February 2003
Neil Hamburger shuffles out from behind the flimsy black curtain and onto the center-stage of a small dance club, wearing a cheap rental tux and a defeated frown. This man would rather be anywhere but here.
He holds the microphone up to his mouth and lets out a long sigh of defeat before beginning. "Why didn't Santa Claus give Osama bin Laden anything for Christmas?" he asks the audience, which has already started heckling. "Because he blew up the World Trade Center!"
With hardly a chuckle and a profoundly bad sense of comic timing, Hamburger launches into joke after joke, each awkward observation and plagiarized punchline unfunnier than the one before.
The story of this tragically insecure comedian who calls himself "America's Funnyman" supposedly begins 14 years ago. A psychiatrist in a State-of-California-mandated program for troubled youth, the story goes, introduced a then 20-year-old Hamburger to the therapeutic benefits of performing at open-mic nights at a local comedy club.
"I can't say it was the best advice," Hamburger admits. His fake powder-blue carnation droops on his lapel and a few damp strands of black hair cling to his sweaty forehead. "I haven't had the best career But once I was up there I realized this is my destiny, and I've been doing it ever since."
Hamburger's "big break" came in 1996, when a scout for Chicago's Drag City Records discovered a self-released 7-inch in a thrift store. He tracked down the struggling comedian in the industrial Los Angeles suburb of Culver City and asked for a full-length album. The result was America's Funnyman, a 34-minute disaster recorded live in Albuquerque, Modesto and Las Vegas and featuring one or two funny jokes and a description of Hamburger's crumbling personal life. The sounds of pizza parlor video games and snickering audience members are audible on most of the tracks.
"I don't know the people at those other record companies, but I'm always open to doing things for anyone if they're willing to pay," Hamburger offers when asked if he secretly harbors more mainstream ambitions. "If I can get a couple more drinks a night at the shows, or an extra pizza slice or something like that, then we might have something to talk about there."
Of course, if Hamburger's outlandish piteousness seems like a bit too much to believe, there may be a good reason. Many fans (most of them in-the-know hipsters who appreciate the nod to the Andy Kaufman-created Tony Clifton) claim that Neil Hamburger is nothing more than a well-groomed hoax. Allegedly, he's a thirty-something record label owner from San Francisco who made the original albums on a cheap home recorder and only dons the tux and funny glasses for the 30 minutes that it takes him to complete a set.
Hamburger's a tricky guy to pin down. When pressed for details about his hometown, for instance, he grows elusive. "I'm essentially a homeless comedian," he says, with the expression of a trapped rabbit. "My home is the motel rooms of America and Australia and any other place that will have me. I do have a storage locker outside of Roseburg, Oregon, and I've got another one outside of Laverne, California."
Yet another inconsistency lies lies with Hamburger's supposedly relentless touring schedule. "I'm on stage 365 nights a year, 365 years a century," he claims. "If I'm not on stage, I'm behind the wheel of a car driving to the next show."
But a quick check with tour support at Drag City tells another story--specifically, that the 2002 tour consists of only four weeks of mostly West Coast shows.
However, according to Boni Jergen, a Mesa Community College student who refers to herself as the Official Webmaster of the Unofficial Neil Hamburger Web site, the reason for the discrepancy is that the "regional" pizza parlor bookings aren't advertised. 'At some of those smaller shows," she claims, "the crowd is more there for the pizzas than to see Neil."
So, what gives?
"Here's the thing," Hamburger says, leaning over this journalist's tape recorder and practically shouting into the mic. "I have no other marketable skills," he pleads, failing to make eye contact. "This is it. This is it for me."
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