Story originally printed in the Onalaska Life or online at www.onalaskalife.com
Published - Friday, May 16, 2008
No joke: OHS grad rising through ranks of standup comics
 Winning the best comic award at the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival helped launch Onalaska native Shane Mauss's comedy career to the next level, including two appearances on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," above Photo by Dana Edelson/NBC Photo |
Hometown fans of Shane Mauss, an Onalaska High School graduate making a name for himself as a standup comic, will get a chance to see him on cable TV in his June 20 debut on Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham.” Can’t wait until then? Well, then, catch him live on stage in La Crosse next week.
Mauss — it’s pronounced, he explained, like the last name of “the idiot football player” — is making a mini tour of the Midwest that will bring him to Loon’s in La Crosse on Wednesday, May 21. He’s done some surprise guest spots on local stages before during visits home, but this will be his first headline gig.
Headline gigs are something he’s getting used to after winning the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., a little over a year ago. Getting invited to the competition was an honor in itself — only 22 comics in the world were invited to the prestigious event.
Mauss overcame lost luggage, missed warmup shows and, perhaps worst of all, an opening round slot that had him performing first. His routine was so memorable, though, that at the end of the day the judges still remembered that tall, gangly Wisconsin guy who made them laugh so hard.
Perhaps most amazing of all, Mauss won the Aspen comedy festival only three years after making his stage debut as a comic after taking an adult education class on being a comic.
He has impressed comedy afficianados with a deadpan everyman persona spiced with a twist of hedonism. And unlike a lot of young comics, he has gained a reputation for well-crafted writing.
Since winning the Aspen competition, Mauss has appeared twice on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” and recorded several other TV appearances that should hit the tube this summer. In addition to the “Live at Gotham” show, he also will appear in a standup showcase show on Showtime called “Russell Peters Comedy Slam.”
In February, he traveled to London to tape two episodes of “The World Stands Up” for the BBC. “That was quite a treat,” Mauss said by phone from Boston, where the 1998 OHS graduate has lived since 2004. That show might end up airing here on Comedy Central or BBC America.
Although Comedy Central already has treated Mauss to a spot on “Live at Gotham” this year, he’s really hoping for a spot on “Comedy Central Presents,” which gives him a whole half hour. It would be unusual to give a comic both shows in one year, but Mauss thinks he earned a shot at “Presents” from his “Live at Gotham” performance.
“I definitely had one of the standout sets of the season, as far as I could tell,” Mauss said.
But then, doing TV shows isn’t necessarily the greatest gig in the world for Mauss. “For the most part, I prefer being live in clubs. That’s given it’s a good club and filled with people,” he said.
Mauss considers Loon’s on La Crosse “a good club,” the kind of venue he normally would perform in on the weekend rather than a midweek appearance. His show there will probably include some local references gleaned from growing up here, but he’s certainly not going to drag a lot of his history out for entertainment value.
“Most of my stuff just comes from my imagination,” he said. “I don’t write a lot of stuff about my past.”
He won’t have any CDs for sale as souvenirs after the show. He could certainly have produced one, but he wasn’t particularly enthralled by the idea of standing by the door after the show and watching people walk by him desperately trying not to make eye contact with him so they won’t have to buy anything.
“I feel kind of uncomfortable peddling stuff,” he said. “I’m much more concerned with trying to build up a fan base.”
After he lands a spot on “Comedy Central Presents,” though, he hopes to release a CD/DVD package through Comedy Central. For some, that might be dreaming a little big, but Mauss’s steady rise in the ranks of comedy makes it seem likely.
Mauss grew up in the 1980s, when standup comedy was enjoying a heyday. The bubble burst in the 1990s, but he thinks now is a pretty good time to be a comedian, despite the public’s occasional inability to recognize great talent.
“I could list some of the best comics in the country and no one would have heard of them. It’s always surprising that people have never heard of someone like Dave Attell,” Mauss said.
“Right now,” he added, “nobody knows my name. but I’ve been very happy with the level of success I’ve had and the way my career is going.”
Contact Randy Erickson at randy.erickson@lee.net or (608) 786-6812.
AT A GLANCE
All stories copyright 2006 Onalaska Life and other attributed sources.