If This Guy Gets a Laugh, It’s All Over

Comedy, as Steve Martin once remarked, is not pretty. In the case of Neil Hamburger, a thirtysomething comedian from Culver City, it isn’t even funny. Though he spends 360 nights a year doing stand-up, the hapless comic hasn’t been able to master--or even vaguely come to grips with--the art of getting laughs from a live audience.

And yet “America’s Funnyman,” as he calls himself, may well be the hottest underground comic in the country. Hamburger’s act has received rave reviews from Spin and Entertainment Weekly, and his CDs and singles have found favor with an ever-expanding legion of followers, all of whom derive great pleasure from the aural spectacle of Hamburger shifting uncomfortably before indifferent--even hostile--throngs.

“Left for Dead in Malaysia,” his newest CD, delivers more of the same, with Hamburger offering up stale observations on dentists, dating and fast food to a plainly uncomprehending Kuala Lumpur audience. Though you can even hear someone activating the club’s jukebox halfway through Hamburger’s act, the comic swears it’s far from the toughest crowd he’s faced.

“They were talking all the way through my set,” he says. “But because I couldn’t understand what they were talking about, I didn’t hear any of the negative comments about my act that I hear in other cities--and which can really throw off your timing if you let them get to you.”

Though he claims to be constantly on the road, his propensity for last-minute cancellations--and his longtime association with Chicago’s hipster record label Drag City--has led some to suggest that Neil Hamburger is merely an elaborate hoax. But Hamburger himself is too busy with upcoming projects to respond to such spurious rumors.

“One record that I would like to make is an album of religious humor,” he reveals. “I even have a title in mind: ‘Laugh Out Lord.’ I have a lot of religious beliefs, and it would be nice to do something with them.”

Originally getting into stand-upcomedy at the urging of his psychiatrist--”He suggested I try it as a form of therapy”--Hamburger has since forsaken his Culver City home for an endless string of roadside motels. Still, his heart and his personal belongings remain in Southern California. “I’m proud to say that my storage locker, with all my possessions in it, is right there in the Los Angeles area,” he says. “So I keep my finger on the pulsebeat, so to speak.”

As he admits in one of his routines on “Left For Dead in Malaysia,” Hamburger’s frequent absences contributed greatly to the recent breakup of his marriage. And yet, however grueling the life of a stand-up comic may be, Hamburger has no intention of giving up his newfound fame.

“It’s too late to change now,” he says. “This is what I do. I have no choice.”