Kind of Blue

He went to Senegal for an internship at the Dakar Zoo, but thoughts of comedy lingered. When he returned to school, he convinced an advisor to let him focus on standup comedy as part of his major. In addition to studying and writing about the great comedians, Josh performed on a consistent basis -- and so was born the "Josh Blue Comedy Hour," with Josh facing the hellacious task of coming up with a new hour of material every seven days. "I have no idea how I did it," he says. "I wouldn't want to see any videos of those sets."

In 2001, a job as an Easter Seals camp counselor brought him to Colorado, where a clueless-in-the-ways-of-local-comedy Josh wound up at the Mercury Cafe for more "poetry, love songs, then my 'What's-up-motherfuckers,'" as he puts it. Walking down the 16th Street Mall one night, Josh heard comedy being broadcast from the Supreme Court bar in the Adam's Mark Hotel. He listened for a few minutes, then walked in and demanded that the emcee put him on stage. The emcee refused, but took Josh to another club where he ran a contest that Josh won.

Josh soon started performing at the Tuesday New Talent Nights at the Comedy Works, but didn't get much stage time. "The head of new talent hated my guts," he says. "He didn't like me because I wouldn't kiss his ass. He didn't want to hear that."

"Our new-talent guy didn't like him," acknowledges club owner/operator Wende Curtis, who has since found a new new-talent guy. "But I heard the rumblings around him. I could tell this guy had some heat."

Josh won the 2002 Comedy Works New Talent Search and followed that up with several more high-profile victories, eventually earning a spot at the 2004 HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen. Last fall, Las Vegas's Royal Flush Professional Comedy Contest came scouting for talent, and though Josh lost to Steve "Mudflap" McGrew in the Denver showcase, organizers were so impressed that they invited him to Vegas. There he beat out sixty professional comedians, including McGrew, and took home the $10,000 prize.

When Mencia recently came to town, he caught Josh's set and immediately took him on the road to Improvs in California and Texas. He also offered him a spot on his new show -- a short-but-sweet few minutes in a sketch that aired August 24. Josh handled it with grace and humor.

"We've been telling guys about Josh for a year," says Curtis, whose Comedy Works Entertainment also represents him. "We'd make cold calls, saying, 'You've got to take a look at this kid; he's great.' They wouldn't take our calls, or they'd set us up with bogus sets. Now it's a different game: They're calling us. We have comment cards to see who people want to see at the club, and the intensity of requests for Josh has been out of control. They're mostly in his handwriting, but there's still a lot. Seriously, though, we're getting as many for him as for Chappelle."

"People ought to be ready to be amazed continually by this guy," says fellow comic and friend Chuck Roy, who co-produced the Comedy Works series "Bobo and Blue" with Josh and served as the warm-up act for The Craig Kilborn Show. "He's one of the funniest guys I've ever hung out with, and I've hung out with a lot of comics. But he also has this sincerity about him that's endearing. Any person who's not just dreaming but actively pursuing his dream, it makes people want to be around him. He's someone who just refuses to be put on that short bus. You know, he wants a tour bus."

Helping fuel that bus will be Josh's appearance at a National Association of Campus Activities showcase next month in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a sort of South by Southwest for comedians. NACA books the bulk of college shows across the country, and they've served as a launching pad for many top comics. "It's big," Josh explains. "I love doing comedy, and I'd love to ride this into television, movies. I'd love to see a sitcom about someone with cerebral palsy. No one's ever done that."

After a solid Pescatelli set highlighted by the comic pausing for a bathroom break -- food poisoning -- the audience shuffles up the stairs while the Comedy Works staff furiously cleans the room for the next show. The comics who've already performed hover by the exit, receiving props for their sets, scanning the hordes for groupies. Sitting on a bench, Josh accepts his praise politely, thanking people and shaking hands. A woman crouches down by him and starts speaking extremely slowly, apparently having forgotten that annoyance with such condescension was part of his set. He thanks her and extends his clenched right hand -- which she squeamishly accepts, clumsily trying to make an appropriate grip.

"Sometimes," Josh says with a grin, "it's fun to make them feel a little awkward."