Punched Up

"DEATH BY CHOCOLATE"   Our story starts like most great stories start, on a cold dark night. Chris Cope was working a “Comedy Zone” Club in Harrisburg, PA. That’s about an hour away from the big Hersey’s Chocolate Factory. Saturday night after his shows Chris started having the worst chest pains of his entire life. He called 911 and an ambulance came and took him to the ER. He was determined not to die in Harrisburg! Mainly because he was weighing over 400 pounds at the time and it would be embarrassing as a fat guy to die near the Hershey’s Chocolate plant. The CT scan showed a rip in his aorta. He had a heart aneurysm and was bleeding to death internally. A nurse took one look at his chart and asked him if he wanted to speak to a priest. Chris said he was hoping to start with a doctor first. They flew a surgeon in from Pittsburg who gave him a 20-25% chance of survival but after a six-hour surgery and a long recovery he made it (obviously). Chris was 27 years old and weighed over 400 lbs. He was constantly working the road, barely sleeping, and living off energy drinks and junk food. It was nothing for him to eat a 3,000 calorie meal at McDonalds. That lifestyle finally caught up with him. In the year following the surgery, Chris got a personal trainer, dropped some weight and today is doing a lot better. He has been on Comedy Central and Grey’s Anatomy and is doing standup comedy full time and living in Los Angeles. Find out when Chris is coming to your city visit http://www.iheartchriscope.com You can see on Comedy Central’s TOSH.O, FOX Television’s show Laughs and Grey’s Anatomy. Chris is doing standup comedy full time and living in Los Angeles. Find out when Chris is coming to your city visit www.iheartchriscope.com   More info and episodes available at www.PunchedUpPodcast.com  Find out more about Comedian Chris Cope : Twitter : @ChrisCopeComedy Facebook : Chris Cope  

"KISS OF DEATH"   Comedian Bill Blank’s first childhood kiss triggered a rush of anxiety attacks that still plague him as an adult. Bill talks about the peer pressure attached to hitting it off with girls, experiencing your first kiss and simply having a girlfriend even if the relationship is for a couple of days. Bill talks about the build up and the fascination associated with it all. He also opens up about his friends waiting for the ‘moment’ and when it finally happens, and how for Bill, it was the most disgusting thing he has ever experienced. Bill started battling severe anxiety attacks at the age of ten.  Once he was a teenager he started having irrational thoughts and a heavy fear of death. “I just thought, I’d rather commit suicide than live in fear of dying.” Bill slowly learns to accept and deal with his anxiety by treating it as a ‘person’ and talking himself out of fear every time it tries to overcome him. He makes the anxiety his strength. Then at the age twenty-one, Bill discovers standup comedy. This is a huge turning point in his life. That rush of the stage began to act as a vaccine for Bill’s anxiety. Bill isn’t 100% cured. But it does prove that laughter just might be the best medicine out there.   More info and episodes available at www.PunchedUpPodcast.com  Find out more about Comedian Bill Blank: Twitter : @BillBlank1 Facebook : Bill Blank  

"A STAB AT STAND UP COMEDY"       Ricarlo Flanagan hasn’t lived with his mother since he was 16 years old because Ricarlo and his Step Father’s relationship is complicated. Well actually, calling their relationship complicated would be a HUGE understatement. Ricarlo's  parents had him at a very young age. Ricarlo’s mother was only seventeen and his father was nineteen when they had him. Soon after he was born Ricarlo’s father joined the Military. His mother hated this decision and the young couple split up. Years later, Ricarlo’s mother found herself marrying an abusive alcoholic who did not get along with Ricarlo.  One day Ricarlo went to the hospital to support his friend whose father had recently had an aneurysm. When he got back home he found his stepfather really drunk and mad at his mother about some change she kept from the grocery store. His step father looked at it as stealing and wanted revenge. Things got heated and Ricardo and his step father started to fight. Thing escalated as they do and quickly took a turn for the worse. After the step dad scuffle, Ricarlo decided to move in with his father. During this period of his life, he made time think about his life. Where he was, and where he wanted to be. He rediscovered his motivation while living with his father in Michigan. It was a stress free lifestyle and he felt like his old self again. Ricarlo went back to school, lost weight, got a job and moved out. He ended up taking a comedy class because he didn’t know anybody in town and didn’t have anything to do on his days off work. That’s when he fell in love with comedy. Little did he know, Stand Up Comedy would turn his whole life around. Since then, Ricarlo has been featured on FUSE TV, Laughs on FOX and NBC’s Last Comic Standing.  Ricarlo’s debut comedy “Man Law” is also available on iTunes. Enjoy.   More info and episodes available at www.PunchedUpPodcast.com  Find out more about Comedian Matt Kirshen: Twitter : @FatherFlanagan Facebook : Ricarlo Flanagan

  MEETING EDDIE   Comedian Matt Kirshen tells us about meeting his personal idol and Stand Up Comedy legend Eddie Izzard. Eddie is one of the most prolific comedians of all time and resides in the UK. Matt was lucky enough to meet him on four occasions and every one of those times he made a complete dick of himself. The first time was pretty harmless but they escalated from there. One time Matt found himself backed into a corner with a decision to make. Apologize or keep a gag going... You won't believe what he decided to go with.  The last time and only semi decent time Matt saw Eddie was at The Comedy Store in London. Eddie was hanging out and watching a friend of his. Matt had just seen Eddie two weeks earlier in LA,  so he walked up to him to tell him how great he was, but Matt was  really drunk that time too.      You can keep up with Matt Kirshen on any of these wonderful outlets...   Twitter https://twitter.com/mattkirshen   Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MattKirshen Website www.MattKirshen.com 

 "FROM SPEECHLESS TO SHOWTIME"   Ben wanted to be an entertainer since he was five or six years old. The only problem was he had a stutter problem that began around the age of three. I think you already know how this story goes, Ben had a difficult time in school and was bullied. Sometimes he would just lock up and couldn’t even say hello to people in the hallway.   In 7th grade science class Ben was one of the most educated kids in class. Once he had to give another presentation he literally couldn’t speak. Ben was enlisted in speech theorpy classes throughout his childhood but would never commit to the exercises and practices they would send him home with. One afternoon his speech teacher had him reading a report out loud when she noticed something odd. She noticed that Ben seemed to be focusing on the presentation of his speech but not the content. Ben explained, “Yeah, I want it to sound perfect. It doesn’t matter what I’m saying.. I just want it to sound good.”   After Ben realized he was seeing things all wrong. Most people with a fear of public speaking see it wrong. They think that it’s so important and everyone is judging them and it has to be perfect or they will look like an idiot. In reality, the opposite is true. Most people are just glad they’re not the one speaking and have very low expectations. They aren’t expecting Winston Churchill; they are just expecting information from whoever was chosen by this company at this moment to speak.  “Take a step back and think about if your little speech or stand up act or presentation at work is really so important. Take another step back and realize there are millions of people starving to death. Take a further step back and realize we’re spinning out of control on a planet in a vast unknowable universe where we are the tiniest speak that truly couldn’t have any significance based on the size and grand scheme of things.Do you think on that planet, on that one spot in that one room you’re top with the way it comes off? Not even the words, but the style?!” Ben said his perspective started to shift.  “You’re not special because you’re speaking to people. Your job just happens to be speaking but you’re still just a cog in the machine.“ Once Ben started to see the bigger picture, he doesn’t get the least bit nervous.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The Bandit“ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Dreams Become Real by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)