Good, Clean, Fun—Mike Strecker—G-rated Comic.
by Karen Gibbs
photography by Stephen Faure
Stand-up comic Mike Strecker’s got the gift. He’s a master of laughter, a guffaw waiting to happen. He views everyday happenings through big yellow happy-face lenses. And his audiences love him for it.
“Take Oil of Olay, for example,” he begins, his handsome face breaking into a grin. “That is a weird name for a product, right? So I keep thinking. Oil—dab it on and get rich. Then things start to happen in my head. Oil of Olay…old lady…rich lady. Suddenly, I’ve got a great story for my act.”
There was this little old lady who came to every one of my shows with a different man—all of them much younger than she. I asked her for her secret, and she said, “Oil of Olay.”
I said, “Oil of Olay makes you look that much younger?”
She says, “It does when you own 90 percent of its stock.”
As soon as he delivers the line, Mike breaks into a laugh so hearty that his audience can’t help but join in. Fed by their response, Mike throws out one-liners in rapid-fire succession, tickling his listeners’ funny bones until the whole room is rocking. Best of all, Mike Strecker delivers a G-rated performance—a rarity indeed in the field of comedy.
“It’s always been a goal of mine to have a family-friendly act. Going for cheap laughs using R-rated material is a slippery slope,” explains the 43-year-old Slidell native. “I never wanted to go that route, so I asked God to help me with good, clean humor. It can be done. Bob Hope, Bill Cosby, Red Skelton—they kept it clean and are among the greatest in the field.”
Born the youngest of seven boys, (“Yep. I’m the one they call the 7th son,” he quips.) Mike came from a family that loved to laugh. He looked up to his brothers and emulated their sense of humor. And while he wasn’t the class clown, Mike honed his sense of humor in response to the teasing of his classmates. “I’d say I was developmentally challenged,” he begins with a smile and a faraway look in his eyes. “I wore corrective shoes and my feet seemed too big for the rest of me. I used humor as a coping mechanism.
“I remember that as a child my greatest thrill was making an adult laugh with some clever remark. Now I’m glad when I can make an 8th grader laugh,” he says. “One night, I was performing at The Improv in Los Angeles. [Editor’s note: The Improv is arguably the most prestigious venue for a stand-up comic.] In the audience were 200 high school kids from a Jewish youth group. I was so glad I had a clean act. It went very well, and after the show, the chaperones came up and complimented me. That meant a lot.”
While audiences for stand-up comedy usually are small—between 50 and 80—Strecker is no stranger to crowds that number in the hundreds. “Performing for a big crowd is very thrilling,” the comic begins. “When you’re used to playing to 50 or so and only 20 percent of them laugh, that’s not too many. But with a crowd of 400, 20 percent is still a lot of laughs. And when they all laugh, you go ‘Whoa!’ That was a keeper.”
Strecker earned some of those big laughs at Slidell’s Cultural Arts Katrina evening last year. Poking fun at some of the local politicians, he zeroed in on Jack Strain and his “chee weez” hairstyle remark. “So I guess you’re saying people with chee weez hair are going to be stopped by police. What about Doritos hair? Is everything in the Frito Lay family off limits, too?” The crowd loved it.
Not all laughs, however, are guaranteed, and as a comic, Mike never takes them for granted. “Once I told a joke and there was nothing! I call that ‘spontaneous silence.’ Ooo! You have to work it the whole time.” Sometimes, however, the best material falls flat. Like the time Mike played a club in Houston after Katrina. “Hey everybody, I’m here from New Orleans…,” he began. The audience bristled. Neither the right time nor place to brag about being from the Big Easy.
While he never knows when such moments may come again, there is a predictable facet of stand-up comedy that Strecker once feared but now handles with grace—the dreaded heckler. “You have to take him on,” he explains. “You realize that no one likes a heckler. He’s aggravating not only to me but also to the people around him. When I come back with something, I’m saying what everyone else is thinking. There’s actually something really funny about that.”
But what do you do about other distractions over which you have no control? Slipping into his comic mode, Strecker sets the stage for what he calls his hardest audience ever. He was playing at a club in Hammond. On the back wall of the stage was a window looking out onto a bar in the adjoining room. Mid-performance, Mike noticed that the audience was looking more at the window and less at him. His funny remarks were drawing not even a smile. Turning to look out the window behind him, Mike saw a huge brawl taking place. Police lights were flashing; bodies were rolling on the ground. “Now how can I compete with the Friday night fights?” he laughs. “It’s like the people went to the fights and a comedy show broke out.”
As unnerving as that was, it pales when compared to the worst experience of Strecker’s 11-year career as a stand-up comic. He was to be the sole entertainment for a corporate Christmas party. The “stage” was in the center of the ballroom and tables were in a circle completely around it. The company president began the evening’s entertainment with a very long, dry talk. The pause between his concluding words and Mike’s introduction was long enough for guests to initiate conversations all around the room. By the time the president announced Mike’s act, the noise drowned out his words.
“I couldn’t walk off. I had to do my stuff, you know. But everyone just kept talking and no one listened. I felt like I was in high school at a homecoming dance and no one wanted to dance with me,” he says, as he breaks out laughing. “The embarrassing part was accepting my pay.” He mimics himself backing up to the president, his hand reaching out behind his back for his check. “I didn’t do a good job. I knew what the guy was thinking—‘Next year I’ll get the juggler.’”
Mike Strecker launched his comedy career with a six-week course in stand-up comedy at the University of New Orleans eleven years ago. While he hasn’t quit his “day job” as Tulane University’s PR director, one day he would love to do comedy full time.
Mike’s upcoming performances include Seasons Steak and Spirits in Slidell on March 2, 2007, Track Side Tavern in Pearl River on March 10, 2007, and Dawn’s Dance Studio in Bogalusa on March 17, 2007.
Go to www.openmikestrecker.com for details or e-mail mike@openmikestrecker.com.
