Milwaukee’s Mike Kobin is "Jokin'’’

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Photo via Mike Kobin - kobincomedy.com

Mike Kobin

Mike Kobin

“My personal opinion is if you can make a clever pun on something simple, it usually makes for a good dad joke as long it's not super corny.”

Thus, Milwaukee comedian—and dad—Mike Kobin defines one half of the premise underlying Dads Jokin', the showcase of local fatherly comics organized by Brandon Wein, hosted by Nathan Clemons and coming to The Improv in Brookfield at 7:30 p.m. on Fathers' Day, Sunday June 16. 

The other basis of the Jokin' show is humor based on being a male parent, a role Kobin shares with the three other Southeastern Wisconsin stand-ups with whom he will be sharing the bill: Rich D’Amore, Justin Leon and Mike Marvell. For Kobin, joking about raising his son comes easily because he sees a nearly mirror image in his offspring. 

“My son is almost identical to me in every possible way," Kobin notes, “which makes it easy to write about him because in the same sense I’m just writing about myself.” Not everything is the same about the senior and junior Kobin, however. “Some of the material I do is about how he has great hair and I’m bald which I blame him for me being bald from raising him and pulling my hair out.

“At the end of the day, he is a huge part of my life,” Kobin says of his son, “which ends up translating to my material, which I’m doing over an hour regularly now.” If Kobin's son is at least funny as his dad, it will be at least the third generation of humorists in their lineage, as evidenced by a favorite joke Kobin received from his own dad 

Fathers and Sons

“My pops, R.I.P,.  had one of my favorite dad jokes to this day: ‘What kind of tree fits in your hand? A palm tree.’ Perfect example of a classic dad joke,” Kobin concludes. But, as he sees it, the simple, direct brand of funny that characterizes dad jokes doesn’t mean that the men who share such jokes with their children should be disparaged as buffoons, as so much of entertainment media has done for over a half-century.

Yet, if he or a fellow father acts a fool and makes himself joke fodder, Kobin won’t shy from it. “I'll always say this. FUNNY is FUNNY PERIOD. I don’t care if you are a woman, man, Black, yellow, white; which I'm 70 percent of those, but at the end of day funny will recognize funny.” 

As for that 70 percent of which he speaks, Kobin is referencing the varied ethnic background about he found out from a couple of ancestry tests and noted last he was featured here. That knowledge has given him power to imbue his sets with a unique comedic perspective, but also to better care for his son. 

“I’d say the main thing it really changed in my parenting is I had a more understanding of possible diseases etc., so I know more what to cater too if, God forbid, something did happen with my son illness-wise,” Kobin shares, As for his discovery of being an adopted child who is  55% African-American, with Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American and more strains in his lineage, he muses on his singular experience. 

“I’ve always talked about being adopted and raised by a mixed couple and still being mixed myself. Plus, back then that was unheard of. not only mixed babies in general but a mixed baby being adopted by a biracial couple. It was so rare we were front page of the Journal Sentinel. I mean it was the ‘80s. That topic has always been some of material I’ve always done since I first started doing stand-up when I was 18 and had to have my parents there just so I could go on stage. They were an amazing couple and parent to support an 18-year-old who not only was having a kid but skipped college to pursue comedy. What wonderful humans.”

Kobin relates here but one incident in his trials as a parent and dealing wth other kids' parents: