Mitch Hedberg

Where: Funny Bone Comedy Club and Restaurant, 11800 W. Broad St. When: 8 p.m. tonight, 8 and 10:30 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday Cost: $18 tonight, $20 tomorrow, $22 Saturday Details: (804) 521-8900.

Comedian Mitch Hedberg has had a weird week.

Over the weekend, the band The Strokes came to his show at Caroline's in New York City. While he slept Sunday night, he bit his tongue and woke up with a sore on it. Because of the sore, he had to cancel an appearance on Carson Daly's television show Monday, and his efforts to alleviate the pain led him to postpone an interview with a reporter until after midnight Tuesday.

And now he's in Richmond performing at the Funny Bone maybe. Last night's show was canceled because he had not arrived in town on time.

A hit on "The Late Show With David Letterman," where he has appeared 10 times, and The Howard Stern Show, Hedberg is known for his tilted sense of humor. He works in quick jokes, one or two lines that he tells without connections or narrative.

"I got my hair highlighted, because I felt that some strands were more important than others."

Inevitably, he has been compared to Steven Wright, whose material is similarly disconnected and abstract. Though he admires Wright, he has never tried to copy him, he said. Although they both write short jokes and tell them without segues, he sees Wright's material as more surreal and his delivery as more mellow and deadpan.

"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

Still, the 37-year-old Hedberg's delivery is fairly mellow and deadpan, too. On stage, he looks down at the floor, never at the audience, and talks in his own awkward croak of a voice.

This style, he said on the phone from New York, developed out of his initial nervousness on stage. During his first few years, he began to exaggerate certain aspects of his normal way of speaking, until finally he hit on a delivery that clicked with audiences.

"When I talk on stage the way I do in real life, conversational, people laugh less. You have to amplify," he said.

"If you could understand Morse Code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy."

He always knew he was going to be a successful entertainer but for a while he was in the wrong field. After high school, he played first bass and then guitar in a band. But he did not have confidence in his ability as a musician, and he knew he was lost without that confidence.

"I was always pretty good at making people laugh, but I never thought it was a career. Once I found out people could do it as a career, I just started going on [stage]. I knew right away it was going to work out. I liked the whole thing about being able to be your own boss, creating your own destiny."

"A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer."

At that early point in his career, when he was in his late teens and early 20s, he devoted himself to having fun -- which meant smoking a lot of pot and dropping the occasional tab of acid.

"My mind was really surging, and I thought it was really fun to apply that to writing down jokes. . . . I remember, I once took acid after work, and when I was walking home, all the way home I was writing down jokes. I still have that sheet of jokes."

He was still learning the concept of comedy at the time, he said, and it is doubtful if any of those jokes made it into his routine.

"I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too."

Actually, he indulges in pot much less than he used to and said that it now makes him feel anxious. But people still assume he is high most of the time now, anyway, which has hurt his career. People in the business are looking for professionalism, and they presume -- mistakenly, he insists -- that he cannot provide it.

"I don't have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would be really mad if she heard me say that."

Hedberg enjoyed his single years on tour, when comedy groupies would pointedly make themselves available to him. But now he is married to comedian Lynn Shawcroft, who usually works with him and who is his opening act here. They met at a comedy club, he thought she was funny, and that cemented their relationship for him.

"To have someone who can go on the road with you, that helps a lot. If you have someone who stays at home, your relationship is going to fall by the wayside."

"The thing about tennis is, no matter how much you play, you'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall, once. They're [bleeping] relentless."

Hedberg always tries to work new material into his routine, writing perhaps five new jokes a week. He is popular enough now so that audiences get his jokes. When he was first starting out, his style was so unusual that it took audiences some time to reach a comfort zone where they found his material funny.

"When I was living at home and I was trying to be funny, it was different than I am now. Me and my sister used to laugh a lot. I don't think she thinks my stand-up is funny now. I think she likes the older version of me. More ridiculous.

"We did stupid stuff together. I used to make her laugh hard, but now she doesn't laugh at me anymore."