Bernie Mac

Saturday August 9th, 2008 - Oak Lawn, IL

I don’t know if I was more shocked or saddened to hear of Bernie Mac’s tragic passing today but I absolutely was drenched in both. Someone sent a text message to my phone in the morning when I was still asleep and when I saw it I couldn’t go back to sleep again.

I have nothing but total respect and admiration for the man. He came from a dented can background just like I did and I’m sure being poor and black gave him his own problems I didn’t have to deal with. Even still he rose above it and spent his life making others laugh and that’s about as noble a life’s pursuit as there is. He succeeded on a national level too.

One quote I saw attributed to him was "I came from a place where there wasn't a lot of joy. I decided to try to make other people laugh when there wasn't a lot of things to laugh about." That one hit me hard because I feel the same way. That’s why I became a comic.

I did get to meet Bernie in person several years ago. We were both in the audience for a taping of the Oprah Winfrey show when Oprah did a show about comedians. I remember Sinbad and Dom Irerra as two of the guests but that’s about it. I was there with a Chicago comedienne named Patti Vasquez who had the tickets and asked if I wanted to go along.

Before the show there was some time to kill so the production assistant offered a chance for anyone who wanted to try comedy to get up and do it. Two people went up and didn’t set the world on fire and the woman said “We have a little more time for one more shot.”

I couldn’t resist and raised my hand and went up and did ten smoking hot minutes and it lit the room up. I got a giant ovation and the woman stuck a mike in my face and asked if I had ever been on stage before. I said “No, I work at an office and always wanted to give it a shot. I didn’t think it was that hard at all.” The audience went crazy and I sat down.

After the show everyone was hanging around kind of mingling and a guy came up to me with a big smile on his face and said “Man, you ain’t no first timer. You’re a comic. I’m a comic too and you had callbacks and everything. You pulled it off on them, but not ME.”

He said his name was Bernie Mac and I laughed and told him I’d been caught and I also told him I’d heard nothing but fantastic things about him which was true. Michael Jordan used to be a huge fan when Bernie hosted an open mike on the south side many years ago.

There was nothing pretentious about him at all. We were just two comics talking shop.
I’d have to say he was as big a standup comedian on the national scene to come out of Chicago since Bob Newhart. He did TV and movies and really had it going on a bunch of levels. I am really saddened to hear of his untimely death and I can’t see why it had to be.

I’ve been reading all of that BS in the papers today about ‘heaven just got funnier’. I say so what? Heaven doesn’t need to be funny. It’s heaven. WE need the funny here and now more than ever and now we lost a real soldier. Much respect to Bernie and his family too.