Mitch Hedberg Essentials

The late Mitch Hedberg worked hard to make it look like he wasn't working at all—as if his jokes about how "a severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer" occurred to him on the spot and just slipped out of his mouth. Though he projected a laidback image, he thought hard about minute things that most people often overlook (sesame seeds, for example), and as a joke writer, Hedberg was the standup equivalent of punk pioneers the Ramones. He removed anything extraneous from his bits about sandwiches and Pringles so he could get to the punchline as quickly as possible, before moving right along to tee up the next one.