By Peter Lindblad
Strange things started happening to comedian Chris Porter after he was a finalist on season 4 of “Last Comic Standing.”
There was the night Porter was hanging out with Major League Baseball star pitcher Justin Verlander, and a drunken dispute over beer pong between members of the Detroit Tigers and Mumford & Sons spilled over from a bar to Porter’s parents’ house in the wee hours of the morning.
Porter, who will perform at the Skyline Comedy Club in Appleton Nov. 30-Dec. 2, recounts the tale in hilarious fashion on Comedy Central’s “Uncensored.” Another involved a famous rocker.
“You start hanging out with Kid Rock all of a sudden and then …,” said Porter, with that almost Southern drawl of his. “I just remember one time I was at his place taking a nap and I woke up, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to make a phone call.’ And he said, ‘Oh, the Presleys are out there.’ And I was like, ‘Okay. I don’t know what that means.’”
Porter found out exactly what Kid Rock meant.
“But I walked outside and there’s Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley and all of their family, and I was like, ‘Oh, the Presleys,’” said Porter. “That was definitely a weird situation that you just walk into and have to shake the hands that last touched Elvis … pretty cool, but yeah, just weird, weird areas you just happen to walk into, but it’s a fun life sometimes. But also … three weeks ago, I performed for two people, so there are definitely ups and downs.”
Left with no choice, Porter made the best of the situation.
“First off, you have to take it with a grain of salt, have a sense of humor about it,” said Porter. “You don’t try to put on a show. You’re just having a conversation with two people. You just happen to have a microphone for some reason. But yeah, I can’t remember their names now, but I remember I got their names at the time, and we would just talk, and I would kind of work in bits as we talked, which was funny because … they couldn’t tell when I was doing a bit and when I wasn’t, so they would try to like add bad jokes to an already funny joke.”
An even more surreal moment took place during COVID-19.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, we were doing – especially here in California – a lot of shows outside, anything you could get,” said Porter. “So, I had to do a weekend of shows in San Diego where I was on a street that was active. They didn’t try to shut it down. It wasn’t in a parking lot. It was on a sidewalk that people could walk by, and I got heckled by an ambulance and a helicopter and a rickshaw … it was literally just like pick the most awful scenarios all at once, and I just remember being so thankful that it was even happening at that time. I mean, that’s another thing that puts it into some perspective, I guess.”
Like everyone else, Porter is looking forward to a return to normalcy, although he’s been able to find steady work during the pandemic.
“The first five months was a little scary,” said Porter. “I’ve been pretty fortunate since October. I’ve been going pretty nonstop. It trickled in at the end of the summer, and then at the end of the summer, everything dried up again, because the numbers spiked again, and then slowly but surely September, October, it came back. Knock on wood, it’s going pretty good.”
Known for working himself into a lather over the absurdity – or, maybe stupidity is more accurate – of modern living, Porter’s jokes tend to snowball until his audiences are laughing until it hurts. It is no wonder then he called his 2014 comedy special “Ugly and Angry.” Off stage, he’s a different person.
“You get a little more frustrated with the world I guess as you get older,” said Porter. “Yeah, I’m angry onstage, but that allows me to much healthier offstage. It’s almost like a therapy session.”
If he stayed mad all the time, Porter said, “I’d be dead of old age at 42.”
Originally from Shawnee, Kansas, Porter now lives in Los Angeles. When he was young, Porter was inspired by many comics, including one who was the head of his household.
“My dad – he wasn’t a comedian – but he was probably the funniest dude I knew for a long time,” said Porter. “He still is, but also, growing up, it was all about Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy … you know, dad and I watched a lot of ‘Evening at the Improv’ and those shows in the ‘80s, so it was all of them … Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Foxworthy … all those cats were on there before they were anything, and you just remember them. When I started doing comedy, it was more like Lewis Black, Mitch Hedberg [and] just a lot of guys that never got their big break.”
George Carlin was another influence. Others have noticed it.
“I listened to AM & FM as a kid … we kind of have a similar thing about taking the labels off things,” said Porter. “He kind of did that one thing and I tried to take it a little further, but yeah, I definitely see it, and I definitely have the utmost respect for him. I got to open for him before he died.”
That was an experience he will never forget.
“The hair was at its worst, depending on how you see it,” joked Porter. “I just showed up looking like the bass player from Manassas. And I just came over and watched him in the green room, and he kind of shook his head and chuckled and nodded, and we had a little bit of a conversation. We took a photo and then he sat and listened to my set, and said it was great, and then the best part for me was I got to watch him do his new special in front of 200 people. He was doing like two weeks’ worth of shows leading up to and shooting what would become his last HBO special. So, I got to see it all live, and you know, especially in the late ‘90s, I always thought Carlin was really trying to more make a point, and in that last special, he brought it back, and it was just devastatingly funny. It was classic Carlin, that perfect balance of point and joke. So great. I really feel privileged that I got to see him.”
Still, Porter’s biggest break came when he finished third on “Last Comic Standing.” It was a heady experience for Porter, although that was odd as well.
“I mean, it was 14 years ago, so the memories have definitely faded with time,” said Porter. “I remember it being the weirdest thing because comedy is not a competitive sport. That being said, I remember it being an amazing experience … especially when you start with the first 40 … in that top 40, whatever, you’re all staying in a hotel and it’s like one giant party. All of a sudden, it got weird because … I got picked but my roommate didn’t, and he was back in our room, so I went down to the hotel bar to hang out, and no one was really talking to me, and I found a buddy of mine. We were good friends, and he said, ‘I don’t mean to be that guy, but this is kind of a loser party.’”
Porter had to leave.
“So, in that one evening, I just kind of felt like, ‘Well, this sucks. I got nowhere to go, and it’s supposed to be the best night of my life,’” said Porter.
Nevertheless, it was a life-changing moment, as Porter went from an unknown comic to being highly sought after in the business for bigger and better shows.
“Once we got into the top five, it became a dream, because you’re doing these giant live theater shows in front of 3,000 people,” said Porter. “Several months before that, you were literally in front of seven people.”
His newfound fame lasted more than 15 minutes, but it did die out somewhat by the next season of the show.
“People tend to forget pretty quickly, which is a hard lesson to learn, but definitely one that I’m glad that I did in retrospect,” said Porter.
Good career advice was hard to come by, and Porter soon figured out that in the long run, he needed to keep at it, that nothing was going to be handed to him anymore.
“Everybody just said have a good time making money, and I did, and then the money stopped, and I had to just figure it out,” said Porter. “It took me a while to realize there is definitely a business aspect to this whole thing, but that’s for a different article. It was just a matter of … you just have to keep producing and making albums … it took me a while to do ‘Ugly and Angry,’ and I put another album out called Screaming from the Cosmos before that, and you know, you just [have to] keep putting out stuff and putting out stuff, hoping it sticks. Four albums later, I’ve had a good career. But if ‘Last Comic Standing’ was the only thing I ever did, I’d be working at Buffalo Wild Wings.”
Chances are, Porter won’t be applying for a job there anytime soon.
