Comedy: The Road Less Traveled

Product description This comedy tour is like no other comedy tour. It brings Michael Jr face to face and heart to heart with aching souls across America: the homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles, abused children in Colorado, imprisoned youth in California, and those suffering with HIV in Fort Worth, Texas. Overwhelmed by their stories, Michael Jr. offers his gift of comedy, hoping that he will deliver, and that they can receive. Comedy: The Road Less Traveled will motivate people to do something more, to step out of their comfort zone and make a difference in and out of the public by showing a way to give real love to the otherwise forgotten and exile. Review "Humor for the Hurting" Comedian Michael Jr. is taking his routine to those who most need to laugh the down and out, the lost and lonely. - Mark Moring - Christianity Today Comedian Michael Jr. has done a lot of gigs in a lot of places, everything from hole-in-the-wall comedy clubs to The Tonight Show, Comedy Central, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Oh, and lots of churches. As a Christian, he sums up his modus operandi like this: "If I'm in a club, my material has to be clean enough to work in a church. If I'm in a pulpit, it has to be funny enough to work in a club." Michael Jr. Like anybody in his line of work, Michael Jr. wants to make you laugh. For years, that was his main professional goal. But not long ago, one gig in an upscale California club changed his way of thinking. "I was praying before that show," he says, "and God sort of changed my mindset. I went from wanting to get laughter from people to wanting to give people the opportunity to laugh." After that same show, while hanging and laughing with some fans on the sidewalk out front, Michael Jr. saw a homeless man across the street his in a neighborhood where that's a rare sight. They made eye contact. Michael Jr. says he asked himself, "How could I take comedy to him? What would that look like?" What it looks like is what he did in the ensuing months, taking his routine to a youth prison in California, abused children in Colorado, a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, and those suffering with HIV/AIDS in Fort Worth, Texas. All of it was recorded for a new documentary, Comedy: The Road Less Traveled, which will screen in churches this fall before becoming available for general DVD sales after that. For Michael Jr., the experience so powerful that he has worked such events into his regular schedule; he seizes every opportunity to take his comedy to these groups, which usually include people who need to laugh more than anyone. Such gigs don't pay well, if at all; Michael Jr. sometimes even pays his own expenses to go to these places. --Christianity Today "Catch them with the comedy; keep them with the Truth. I thought that was a slogan, but I found out it was an assignment." - Comedian Michael Jr. Little did fourteen-year-old Michael Jr. know when he accepted a dare from a friend to provide the entertainment during a technical glitch at the cinema, that he would be where he is now, sharing the stage with the likes of the comic greats like Jerry Seinfield, George Wallace, Jay Leno and Chris Rock. As a young teen, and long before Michael Jr. became a Christian, he made a pact with a friend that the two of them should refuse to curse because it just wasn't an intelligent way to communicate. The threat of corporal punishment kept them accountable to the pact. "If I cursed, he would be able to hit me in the stomach really hard and vice-versa," Junior explains. On the day that the movie screen blanked, the dare to go up and tell a joke to the entire audience prompted the middle school student to move from his spectator's seat to center stage. However, in that moment the only joke Junior could think of was a dirty one. Since he couldn't pass up his friend's dare, but didn't want to get punched by his other friend for cursing, on the way down to the front he cleaned up the joke. There were like 400 disgruntled people in this theat