Photo: Josh Blue - joshblue.com
Josh Blue
Josh Blue
Josh Blue differs from most comedians who graduated from the School of Hard Knocks to feature performer and headliner status. Blue got an actual diploma.
“I went to the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and I just came up with the idea on my own of doing stand-up as a major,” remembers the bushy-haired and bearded comic who will play The Improv (20110 Lower Union St., Brookfield in The Corners of Brookfield, 7 p.m. Wednesday April 26 and 8 p.m. Thursday April 27). “I found a professor who would back me on it and wrote the curriculum of what I was planning to do. They approved my curriculum and checked in to make sure I was completing my tasks.
“Safe to say, I passed my evaluation,” Blue concludes on the unconventional academic path that brought him to his profession. “Well, it’s just the best job in the world that you can do. There's no real downside beside the travel,” Blue declares of the satisfaction he derives from being paid to make people laugh. Blue’s educational background, however, isn’t the first thing anyone new to his act is apt to notice upon catching him for the first time.
Regarding the verbal facility he uses to make self-effacing (and empowering) sport of his physical disability, Blue recalls, “My rhetoric and disarming skills grew as I grew. It was a way to be liked as a kid. You can’t bully someone who is funnier than you, and I think that’s something I learned young.”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Blue has never set out to be a comic only for handicapped comedy lovers. “It just organically happened because they saw me talking about things in life that they were familiar with,” he insists. “It was never my goal to go out there and say, ‘I want to make people with spina bifida laugh,’ but it was just an organic thing that happened. Obviously, I really love having disabled fans, but it wasn’t my goal to do that.” Just as Blue doesn’t gear his humor to a solely handicapped fan base, neither is his physical being the sole fount from which he draws for shtick.
Fodder for Punch Lines
On being a father of children who offer fodder for their dad’s punchlines, Blue confides, “Having teenage kids can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but not taking things too seriously has really helped our household become closer.” And the easygoing attitude Blue exhibits in his comedy translates to his parenting style, too. “Well, we have a lot of laughter in the household to start, and we deal with things through having a good time and having that be the way of life versus fighting over things.”
And though Blue may be the sort of papa who made his kids eat the vegetables on their plates, the appearance of the produce on the T-shirts he often sports onstage isn't one he likes.
“Honestly, I hate broccoli,” he admits. “But no, there is no reason behind it. It’s the one question that everyone asks, and the honest answer is, it has nothing to do with anything. It’s just something I thought of one day.”
Here Blue tells the tale of how the help he once offered an elderly lady negotiate her cart full of groceries over a curb was rejected (with a brief admission of his enjoyment of marijuana), among other topics ...
