STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Mike Murphy still wants to be class clown.
That’s why, after 40 years of spinning jokes, he’s climbing aboard the stage at Whiskey Jacques tonight and Wednesday and letting loose with some one-line zingers.
What’s more, he’ll stage a weekly comedy show on Wednesdays beginning Jan. 10 and running through March. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. The show runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
“I’ve been here since 1978 so this is going into my 40th year,” said Sun Valley’s Funny Guy, as he’s been known for years. “I can’t help myself. It’s very hard to get off stage. I just love getting up there and being the class clown.”
Murphy, who hails from Southern California, honed his skills during a summer gig at Disneyland and since has told jokes around the globe in such far-flung venues as Hong Kong and the Bahamas.
He’s appeared with such comedians as Jerry Seinfeld and the Smothers Brothers and opened for such singers as Tanya Tucker, Charlie Daniels and Elvis Costello. And he’s played before corporate executives for Nike, Anheuser Busch, NASA, McDonald’s, Merrill Lynch, Nintendo, Ford Motor Company and, yes, even the Idaho Bean Commission.
Mike has accompanied his après ski routine in Sun Valley with songs like “When a Man Loves a Woman” remade into “When a Man Loves His TV” and his parody of “Stagecoach”—a rollicking 10-minute ride with such unimaginable stagecoach passengers as Microsoft businessmen drinking lattes.
“When I was doing five nights a week at Sun Valley, it was really easy. I could actually go to sleep before the show I would get so relaxed. Now, it’s been five months since I did my last show—a corporate show—back in August. So it may take a little warming up,” he said.
Murphy will work in some material he didn’t get to do last Christmas when he got sick just before his performances, plus a bunch of new jokes and songs.
He may fluster the crowd as he kicks off with, “Hi, my name is Mike. I am from the past. I’m here in the present to talk about the future, but that’s not now. When we get to that, then that will be the future…”
But then he will get to the stuff about parenting worthy of note taking, culled from his own experience as a child of parents, his gig as a parent and what is currently one of his major sources of entertainment: watching his daughters Taylor and Elizabeth raise his grandkids.
“When I was a boy, my parents smoked in the house, and they smoked in the car. They never put seatbelts on us. They left us in hot cars with the windows rolled up. They abused us by feeding us red meat and milk every day—I didn’t have a decent bowel movement until I was 30. And the only organic thing I ever ate was a worm on a dare,” he quipped.
In contrast, he pointed out, “Today’s parents never smoke in the house and they never smoke in the car. They seatbelt their kids to the point the kids have permanent strap marks across their necks. They never swear or yell at their kids and, if they do, they apologize to the little bas—ds: ‘You know, Daddy is so sorry for having yelled at you for not doing the thing he asked you do 17 times.’ ”
“I have vivid memories of being six years old and being examined for an hour by a pediatrician who smoked the entire time,” he added. “Doctors could smoke in front of you—that’s how old I am.”
Even though the nation’s Capitol is oozing with comedy material, Murphy won’t touch it.
“You can’t touch what’s happening in Washington because people are so divisive,” he said. “I know people here in town who were best friends and now they don’t talk to each other anymore.”
That doesn’t preclude a blast from the once-divisive past, though.
“I can tell people I just had a Vietnam flashback. I remember when two of my buddies saved my life after I plowed into a snow bank during the Vietnam War outside Montreal…”
IF YOU GO
Funny Guy Mike Murphy will perform a 90-minute set at 5:30 tonight and Wednesday, Dec. 27, at Whiskey Jacques in Ketchum. Doors open at 4:30 and the show starts at 5:30 p.m.
He will perform at 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays beginning Jan. 10 and continuing through the remainder of the ski season at Whiskey Jacques.
Tickets are $12 online at www.whiskeyjacques.com and $15 at the door if any are available.
JOE CANNON PLAYS THURSDAY
Music maker Joe Cannon will perform favorite rock and roll and country songs from years past, plus impersonations of favorite artists, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 28, at Whiskey Jacques. Tickets are first come, first serve at the door for $15. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.