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Stand-up's stand down

His life on the road slows and comes with an address when a comedian settles down with a wife and twins.

By SEUNG MIN KIM
Published August 8, 2005

	[Times photo: Lance Aram Rothstein]
	Comedian Eric DeRise of Wesley Chapel helps his twin 3-year-old daughters, Jourdyn, left, and Madissen, get ready for school. He says one of last gigs on the road "made me realize I should be at home with my kids, not with this 12-pack of alcoholics who don't want to laugh." His wife says he doesn't try out his jokes on her.

Eric DeRise was dying. No one was laughing. He was getting death stares from the audience.

DeRise, by this time a pretty established comedian, had a two-week stint on a cruise ship traversing the Caribbean islands. But by his second show, he was running low on the jokes and decided to poke fun at inhabitants of retirement homes.

Problem was, his audience consisted of just those folks.

"I heard some groans, and they looked at me as if I were a little monster," said DeRise, now a Wesley Chapel resident. "I was actually pulled off the stage, and they canceled the rest of my shows."

But DeRise, now 41, knows that situations like that are just the blips on the road to being a successful comic. The Washington, D.C., native is no stranger to the struggles that aspiring comics face.

He spent two years living on the road with one to six gigs per week, which meant he had no mailing address, no familiarity, and called his 1989 Mazda 323 hatchback his bedroom.

From 1997 to 1999, he would weave through the biting cold in states like Montana and Idaho, frequenting a trail of comedy clubs from Alaska to Florida. He drove hundreds and hundreds of miles, sometimes in one night, to work the gigs no one wanted.

The usually tobacco-free man took up smoking, puffing on cigarettes to help keep his eyes wide open until he arrived at the next 24-hour truck stop and all-night diner, where he would take up slumber. Glasses of wine after a late-night gig helped him cope.

"I kept telling myself that I was living the dream, and that this was the only way to make the dream come true," he said. "Living on the road, you become universally aware of what makes people laugh."

But other moments, like when he opened for famed parody master Weird Al Yankovic in Pensacola, marking the first time he had opened for a big-timer, made the struggles worthwhile.

DeRise has now settled in central Pasco after two years in his 1989 Mazda 323 hatchback, which has 448,000 miles registered on the odometer. The weeks and miles away from the love of his life, Letitia, and now 3-year-old twin girls, Madissen and Jourdyn, weren't worth it anymore.

So DeRise relocated, focused his efforts on penetrating comedy clubs in Florida and surrounding states and prepped for his stab at fatherhood.

"People were sitting there with looks on their faces that said, "Go ahead, try to make me laugh,"' he said about one of his last comedy gigs on the road. "That made me realize I should be at home with my kids, not with this 12-pack of alcoholics who don't want to laugh."

Family members knew DeRise was destined for a career in the spotlight. As a 4-year-old, he appeared in every single photo taken at his father and stepmother's wedding, emulating different characters.

He still twists and tweaks his face into impressions of anyone from Austin Powers to Jack Nicholson, circa A Few Good Men , and they're what make DeRise such a crowd draw, his booking agents say.

"He's just got a very different act because of the impressions he does and how he works them into his show," said Jackie Manning, an office manager with Coconuts Comedy Clubs in St. Petersburg who has worked with DeRise for at least a decade.

But offstage, he's not the mix of irony, impressions, and self-deprecation that has become his trademark, his wife said.

"I don't know the person that's on stage," said Letitia. "The one I know is a devoted father and a caring husband who doesn't try his jokes on me at home."

DeRise said he has been booed before. He knows he has to be brutally honest about his performance, no matter how cringe-worthy. But he knows having only one person who enjoyed the show is worth it.

"You've got to look for the smiles," he said. "You find that one person who's paying attention and do the show for them. Everyone else then comes along."

--Seung Min Kim can be reached at 813 909-4612 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4612. Her e-mail address is sminkim@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 8, 2005, 02:45:22]