Coda for Mitch

This week's Entertainment Weekly contains a long-overdue feature about the death of one of my favorite stand-ups, Mitch Hedberg. This was a guy with a totally unique style: quick one-liners, shy stage presence, and a cadence like a '60s beat poet. When I first caught his Comedy Central special a few years ago, I started out mildly intrigued and ended up with tears in my eyes. But despite the fact that stand-up comedy got increasingly mainstream in the last 20 years and every halfway-decent comic got himself a sitcom deal, Hedberg never made it big. His sudden death from a heroin overdose in March was a sad cliche: a cult-fave brilliant artist who was never appreciated in his time. So in his honor, here are my five favorite absurdist Mitch Hedberg lines:

* "People say that alcoholism is a disease. But alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having."

* "I like the FedEx driver because he's a drug dealer and he don't even know it."

* "I went to a doctor but all he did was suck blood out of my neck. Don't go see Dr. Acula."

* "I like escalators because they can never break. They can only become stairs."

* "I was gonna go get my teeth whitened but then I said 'Fuck that, I'll just get a tan instead.'"