LOL WITH IT: Philly's Phunniest 2012 - James Hesky

Twenty-six year-old Temple grad James Hesky has just been named Philly's Phunniest 2012 at Helium. Hesky - who works with special-needs adults - has been doing comedy in earnest for just four years. I got to chat with him the day after he won the thousand bucks and the title.

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LOL WITH IT: Philly's Phunniest 2012 — James Hesky

POSTED: Friday, August 24, 2012, 12:20 PM

Filed Under: Comedy LOL With It

Twenty-six year-old Temple grad James Hesky has just been named Philly’s Phunniest 2012 at Helium. Hesky — who works with special-needs adults — has been doing comedy in earnest for just four years. I got to chat with him the day after he won the thousand bucks and the title.

City Paper: Congratulations James! Tell us about your comedy background.

James Hesky: I always loved comedy growing up. I used to make my parents come into Blockbuster with me so they could rent George Carlin VHS [tapes], because they were all NC-17. I heard about the Northeast Philly Comedy Cabaret open mic, and I got my start there. I went out and did a couple of open mics, and I was awful — just like everyone is when they first start — so I wasn’t having a good time. I put it aside for a while. A couple years later I was getting ready to graduate from college, and I was like, “Well, now’s a good a time as any to try it again.” I had been keeping up a blog for me and my friends, and I thought, “Well I’m still exercising that muscle a little bit, so let’s try comedy.” Then I went out and I met guys like Conrad Roth and Chris Cotton and Danny Ozark and Monroe Martin. Those are some of the guys that got me started going to every open mic in the city Sunday to Thursday, sometimes twice a night.

CP: That seems to be common, the false-start comedy beginning. Why do you think that is?

JH: I think if you’re self-aware, you realize how much you suck when you first get started. And it’s so painful to be up there being absolutely terrible, eating it when you first get started. And stepping away gives you enough space to come back at it the right way. And you either learn or you don’t, but the people that stick with it learn that you can get up on stage multiple times a night and you can work through that pain a lot faster. When I bomb it’s like the worst feeling in the world, and I know when it’s not a good joke or I’m not getting the reaction that I want. It’s hard to put yourself through that over and over. When you got on-stage multiple times per week, it’s like, “Oh, I had a bad set, but I’ll be better later tonight or tomorrow.” You start to learn that there’s something there in the joke, you’re close to it, but there’s something missing. And learning that feeling is pretty important.

CP: What are your goals for the future?

JH: I’d like to start doing some festivals. I’m starting to do some feature work at certain places but I’d like to be a feature everywhere. The guys who are local headliners and regional features like Pat Barker, Chip Chantry, David James, and Pat House — they get to do some touring. That’s the next step I wanna reach. And after that, keep progressing and try to find a job in comedy and let comedy pay the bills.

CP: Do you see yourself sticking around Philly? Or moving to NY or LA?

JH: I don’t know. I’ve only recently started to think about it, but I need to make a concerted effort to start going up to NY. It’s not that far, and it’s good to have your hand in as many places as possible. The stuff that the Bird Text guys are doing is showing that you can stay local, you don’t necessarily have to leave the city in order to find some success.

CP: What was the first gig where you knew: It’s on.

JH: It was my first time doing the Philly’s Phunniest contest in 2009, I got some serious belly laughs and I advanced to the semi-finals. I thought, “I could really do this.” There’s so much more to it than that, but I felt like I got legitimate belly-laughs in a real club, and that was sort of a turning point where I wanted to keep doing it. Now I’m deep enough in where I feel I’d be giving something up, or making a mistake not to stick with it and see how far it goes. Maybe this is as far as it goes, and I don’t get beyond this level. In a year or two I would know that, but as long as I keep progressing, I feel like I can’t quit. Also, there’s no rush like performing.

CP: How did your folks react to your comedy ambition?

JH: They were always very supportive. They started out very cautious — especially mom — with how far I should pursue it. I think at that Philly’s Phunniest show I mentioned, she saw that I wasn’t dicking around, and I was actually honing a craft. After that it was like “Okay, you’re definitely doing something here.” And I think she was able to understand it on a deeper level. And they’re very supportive. I cut back at work a little bit in order to focus more on standup, and they’re even supportive of that.

CP: What’s your favorite thing about the Philadelphia comedy scene?

JH: I really love the monthly shows we have here. Doogie [Horner] has the “Ministry [of Secret Jokes]”, and Chip had “Chip Chantry’s One Man Show [With Special Guests]” — which I was honored to have gotten from him and turned into “The Monthly Hour.” Aaron Hertzog does “Hey Everybody,” a straight standup show. Rookie Card used to have standups open for them and they would do improv based on their opener’s routine. There are all these cool monthly things where you’re getting everybody’s different angles on comedy.

CP: 2012 Mayan Calendar... Recession... Culture... Bath Salts... (go!)

JH: I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but in general as a species we get really skittish, kinda easily. Life is scary and it’s weird and it’s difficult and we don’t know exactly why we’re here — we’re just kinda here. And we make up rules just to get through the day. It’s like, “Well generally, a man loves a woman…” So we create this institution called marriage. Boom. And that’s something we have in our culture. And certain professions are only professions because we decided they are. It’s not like you’re just building infrastructure. You’re a psychologist or a teacher. You’re learning these things because society says you’re supposed to learn them. As soon as anything messes with the structure — and with the economy being shaky this time — we get really scared. We start looking for signs of it all coming down, because it feels like it can all come down any moment. It starts feeling real, we can see behind the curtain a little bit, and we just get scared. We say, “All this stuff that I’ve been doing… it’s not helpful! I shouldn’t be studying algebra, I should learn how to forage berries in case everything collapses!” And that’s a very important skill. But we decided it’s not as important, but people will start thinking we should be learning it because we’re kinda screwed. Eventually there will be an end, but is it coming right now? Probably not. But people like to pretend that this is the only time we’ve been this scared. What about the cold war? I wasn’t alive for most of it; it sounds horrifying. We made it through that, and now the terrorists can get the bombs. It’s a scary world, and sometimes it takes something like a recession to realize how fragile everything is.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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