Burger King of Pain

Thaaat’s my life!”

So goes the catchphrase of one Neil Hamburger, or America’s Funnyman. He’s perhaps the last of the old-school comics, a man who still wears a tux when working the crowd. Never mind that it isn’t actually America that gave him that title or that the tux is secondhand. These are both facts he’s quick to concede, so there’s little reason not to take at face value what he has to say about his current series of shows in Los Angeles.

“A series of canceled shows,” he says. “I guess you can blame it on the economy or terrorism, but certainly not because of the show being substandard.”

Hmmm. Maybe there is reason to doubt Hamburger. Audiences can judge for themselves whether substandard is an apt adjective by listening to Hamburger’s stand-up act on any of the conspicuously laughter-free albums he’s released over the years. Sample joke: “But really, times have changed with the Internet and everything. I mean, it used to be when you were bad you’d go to hell. Now you die and go to AO-hell.” Oblivious to the ensuing tough-crowd groan, he follows up with a bit about Ulysses S. Grant and herpes.

Among the titles in Hamburger’s oeuvre are 1998’s Raw Hamburger, his first foray into risqué material; and 1999’s Left for Dead in Malaysia, so titled because he was ditched by former manager Art Huckman at this out-of-country gig. Most recently, he found religion with last year’s Laugh Out Lord, a co-release from Drag City Records and the cassette-only religious imprint Glory Home Records. When it comes to Christianity, there’s a guy with the initials J.C. with whom Hamburger can easily identify.

“He got a lukewarm-to-poor response from the people at the time,” Hamburger says. “He had a good message to spread, and people didn’t appreciate it — and the next thing you know, he’s gone. They punished him and killed him, and that’s that, and then people were sorry that they didn’t pay a little bit more attention to what he had to say. I think the same can be said about my act and the jokes that we’re telling here.”

So far, Laugh Out Lord hasn’t achieved the sales figures of today’s more popular comics such as Adam Sandler or “Weird Al” Yankovic. Although he says there has been some radio play in certain secondary markets, Hamburger remains unaware of Laugh Out Lord‘s exact sales to date. “Somewhere between half a dozen and 450,000,” he estimates.

Marketing such a CD is a complicated task, especially considering that the whole package carries with it the unmistakable scent of an adult bookstore.

“I’m not so involved with the manufacturing process, but a lot of times with the albums you’re trying to keep the profits high, so you get the printing done by whoever will do it at a good price,” Hamburger explains. “We have found that the companies that manufacture some of the porno magazines have high-quality color separations. What you’re smelling at the adult bookstore isn’t so much the human smell that you think it is. It’s just the smell of the ink, which is often not cured properly, as it might be at a regular bookstore.”

Hamburger’s blue jokes aren’t helping his cause any, either.

“We approached this company that imports cheaply printed little Bibles from Mexico, and we tried to work out a deal, like, if you buy two of these Bibles, you get the CD for free,” Hamburger says. “Unfortunately, the demands of the marketplace meant some of the jokes on this record had to be off-color and not necessarily in line with the teachings of the church. Because of these toilet-humor jokes, the churches that we brought this Bible deal to were not interested at all, and it was just a colossal waste of time.”

It leaves Hamburger in something of a catch-22, because that’s the kind of humor he perceives to be the most consumer-friendly.

“It’s not my fault,” he insists. “It’s not my cup of tea personally, but I’ll say any filthy words they want me to, as long as it keeps me paying for my storage locker.”

Incidentally, that storage locker is what Hamburger calls home when not on the road. At the moment, he’s engaged in a lawsuit with that establishment involving different interpretations of the terms of his lease. Hamburger says he has a ten-day grace period; his landlords claim they were justified in confiscating the storage locker’s contents (20,000 unsold cassette copies of a comedy album geared toward truckers) and selling them to a scrap-plastic dealer.

Then again, thaaat’s his life. Speaking of that catchphrase, it’s something he’d like to make into a movie or a sitcom in the near future. “Probably something about a comedian and various adventures that he has, if that could be commercial,” he muses.

What about a reality show like Fear Factor? “Sure, why not? Is that the one where you catch yourself on fire or something?” Yes, and you get to eat bugs, too. “I’ve eaten so many bugs. You get these clubs, they’re supposed to give you a full meal and drinks and things backstage, and usually it’s just a pitcher of water with bugs in it, and if it’s a hot enough night you end up eating the bugs and drinking the water.”

Such practices are at odds with Hamburger’s diet, which for a variety of reasons is largely vegetarian. “Every thirty days, I buy a case of canned fruit cocktail, which I keep in the trunk of the car and eat as a means of survival,” Hamburger explains. “You’ve got all the basics for the day, like the grape family and the cherry family. You cover all the vitamin groups that keep your vision sharp and your mind clear.”

That’s important in a profession that demands a sharp wit, constant inventiveness and a comprehensive grasp of current events.

“You’ve got to get the newspaper and see what’s going on and see if any of it at all is funny,” Hamburger says. “We have some Spice Girls jokes, so it’s a fairly up-to-date act. The one that died, what was her name? She was the one that I really thought was the talent of the bunch and, of course, when she died, they continued on as a trio, and it just wasn’t the same.”

It’s not as if Hamburger has sentimental attachment to the majority of his material. In fact, he says he regrets a lot of his jokes. “All of them,” he announces. “Well, because it’s just not leading to the million dollars. They said keep your fingers crossed and eventually you’ll get somewhere. You know, every time you see these Oscars, they get these entertainers and they get up there and they all say, ‘You just have a dream, and you just stick with it.’ Well, I’ve got a dream, I’ve been working hard, and I don’t have an Oscar. I don’t even have a home. These people, it’s just irresponsible on their part, really.”

At least Hamburger doesn’t have to deal with stalker fans, though hecklers are another story. “You have people that will follow you out the door to tell you they didn’t like what you did, and to me that’s freaky,” Hamburger says. “If you don’t like something, you just leave. I saw a concert a few years back, a group called REO Speedwagon at a state fair, and I thought the performance was substandard, but did I ask for my five dollars back? Did I ask for a refund on the soft drink I had during the show? I didn’t. And I don’t see why the audience does that to me.”

On television, though, hecklers are kept at a safe distance, which is why Hamburger has fond memories of his brief set on Jimmy Kimmel Live. But even though that appearance might have been a boost to his career, Hamburger’s subsequent appearances have been limited, which is to say nonexistent. “Following that, National Lampoon’s Funny Money, which is a comedy game show on the Game Show Network, was interested in having me on that show. Then the executives took one look at my act and said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to let this guy on our show.’ Maybe it was too slow for them. They want these zippy sort of people, the young guys that are hyped up on that Gatorade.”

Because that circuit seems to have fizzled, Hamburger is now working on a series of public service announcements he’s hoping will increase his visibility. During the show taped for Laugh Out Lord, he even gives a demonstration in hopes that the record will reach the sort of people with the power to make that happen.

“We are working on a series of public service announcements for the Air Force to try to get the kids to join up,” he explains. “We were going through a list of causes and organizations that needed public service announcements, and that was first alphabetically. If that doesn’t work, we’ll go on to the Army, and so forth.”

Until the PSA proposals roll in, though, Hamburger will be sticking with stand-up.

“That’s all I can do,” he says. “It would be hard for me to cook you breakfast, but it’s easy for me to make people laugh. And I haven’t been subpoenaed onstage for at least three months, so things are looking up.”