#595 – Dick Bernard: The Comic

Under cover of night, I snuck a comedian out of town this morning….
Really, I wish I could tell stories like comedians can, but in this case my story is a true one. My daughter-in-law, Robin Menier, who lives and works in Woodbury and represents acts, had a comedian she represents as their house guest, and asked if I could give Tim a 5 a.m. ride to the airport.
It was a delightful assignment.
He’d been the head-liner at the House of Comedy at the Mall of America, and was enroute to Boston for a few days gig on a cruise ship heading up the northeast Atlantic shore, then off to Alberta for some gigs out there.
The bags are always packed.
I’ve never met a ‘real’ comedian and it’s a bit of a stretch to say I got to know Tim in a half-hour pre-dawn ride to Gate Four at Terminal One. But it is surprising what tidbits you can pick up in even a short conversation.
The big tid-bit was he was a heckuva nice guy, in the business since college, now late 30s, I gather.
He climbed the ladder like all do: doing the improv, studying how other comics did their thing, timing and all the rest.
He’d been a theatre major in college, which helped with the stage presence, I suppose, but like anything else, if you’re going to succeed at work, you have to work towards success.
We talked a bit about communication. He doesn’t watch much TV he said, which surprised me, and we compared notes on that, since I went through quite a few years sans TV (I’m considering going back to that TV-free life style again).
All comics have a routine, and he suggested his might be a bit abstract-random. He isn’t scripted, but likes more to just go from what life presents.
The dance between audience and performer is always of interest when it comes to comedians, and they know us as well as we know them.
There is a long and almost undefinable gap between being a dead-on-arrival act or, as my daughter-in-law Robin likes to say about eastern college kids highest rating of a comic, “wicked funny”, but the pros know how all that works. It goes with the territory. (I’m 50 years out of college, but this bit of Tim seems pretty wicked funny to me: here. I picked the college segment.)
5:30 a.m. I dropped Tim off, appreciative that I had met him, and energized for another day in our ‘burb.
And by the way, he’s Tim Young.
His agent, my daughter in law Robin Menier, represents Summit Comedy, offices in Woodbury, and can be reached at robin@summitcomedy.com or 1.800.947.0651.