hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make pittsburgh an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to our first gues comedian mike sasson later will bring on comedian terry jones and we'll bring them both out of the embassy who knows classic comedy the best  mom a sister and a grandfather i'm a bodybuilder i'm a research analyst small business owner teacher dance business instructor film and television actor i'm enough is clear i'm a copywriter i'm a veteran i have approached other gleg i have multiple sclerosis i have lupus cerebral palsy post traumatic stress disorder i'm blind and i'm working in a job i love i love because i was given a chance because i was given  chance to contribute my skills and talents to show my disability is only one part of who i am who i am who i am where it's what people can do that matters for more information visit what can you do campaign dot org and then went up to the university of connecticut where i played football and then i came back to pittsburgh corporate jobs for a little while and then just got the bug to start performing and everything like that so i actually started to work a little bit for e s p n here locally and then from there got an opportunity to do sports talk radio eventually got a part time gig at the fan on ninety three point seven here in pittsburgh but when that ended still had the performing bug always been a huge fan a stand up comedy and so just went to a local open mike and just fell in love with it i mean it really is a calling it's what i it's what i love to do absolutely and so that first one of the things is you have this idea in your mind of what exactly is going to happen you know and when you're watching stand up comedy for your for your entire life you're watching the greats you're watching carlin or richard pryor what robin williams and you don't realize that these guys were doing it for you know twenty thirty years and so you assume like in your head like on to go up there and i'm just going to absolutely destroy i mean absolutely everyone's going to love everything i do and then when you get up there and all the sudden you just look and see just a group of faces staring back at you you know you do find that you're like ok what now now really what i responded was just i got really really loud and really moved around a lot kind of what i'm doing right now and but it was a lot of fun and so it just got to a point to where one of the great things about pittsburgh now is it's a place to where you can get up on stage two or three times a night and go to an open mike and work on new material and it's a place where you can get good whereas maybe ten fifteen years ago you could maybe dabble in it but if you really want to get good you had to move to one of the coasts you had to move to a new york or l a whereas right now you can catch really good standup comedy here in pittsburgh and say you've done a lot here in pittsburgh have you got anywhere else yeah i mean i've done comedy in new york been out to cleveland been a you know all up down the east coast done you know in maryland done casinos done corporate gigs all that kind of thing there but generally my focus is right now you know in terms of western pennsylvania i would say that right now where i'm at as a comedian is i met the you know there's an old saying in terms of comedy is wherever you're from get good where you're from then go to new york and get great and then go to l a and get famous so if i'm at the stage right now i'm at the trying to get good in pittsburgh so yeah but i mean i have been up to new york and go out all the way up the hill while in chicago and you know and all that kind of stuff but the thing about it is what i've noticed of going anywhere i mean funny is funny so what works in pittsburgh works in brooklyn what works in philly what works in cleveland you might have to change a reference here you know a giant eagle might become an a and p or you know you know weatherman might be  know go from a channel eleven to a channel five you know whatever but you know just funny is funny and if you can learn to do it you can do pretty much anywhere and says what is your act based on the decisive life essentially yeah it's just my take on on everything i mean  it's really what i am and i'm a passionate guy i'm a passionate and so if i feel passionate about something that's what usually gets in my act and i'm passionate from politics to my family to you know just you know my experiences of being a human being on this planet i mean that's really what comedy is you know i mean they've described it as like somebody basically you know a normal person sees something and it just goes right past their face whereas a comedian kind of grabs it and shows it to the audience were you ever seen this and that's that's what you want to do you want to sit there and you have that aha moment to realize you're right i've never noticed that but you you know you kind of did that and that's what we are and that's where we can kind of at least in my mind and hopefully you know you affect people you can change their minds because you sit there and say haven't you noticed this little factor or haven't you noticed this little thing and when you have that moment and that's what laughter is laughter in my opinion is agreement laughter is somebody saying you're right i agree with you silence is no i don't agree with you it's no i don't understand what you're saying which is you know when you get the whole thing of all we ever went over their heads or they just don't get it but that's really where it comes from so what i try to do in my act is just what i truly find you know funny what i truly find interesting because one thing that i always find at least interesting is you know audience members will come up to me after a show and they'll just be like well i like this aspect and i like that but i thought you were a little too far here i didn't think this that and the only answer you can really give them is ok there's no way i can get into your head there's no way i can figure out what you find funny i can only tell you what i found funny and hopefully we we find it together and i can see that i mean i think a lot of commies either shocking because it's something you thought the so personal to you or it's something that you didn't even notice that everybody else did never read is doing it so it's great to bring to light yeah absolutely and that's really what i mean if you think about it you know now some people might describe it as  more of a preacher in a sense of this is what i believe in this is this is my proof of it you know and i do have a sales background so you i do kind of have that you know value proposition in my head of like ok this is my this is my this is my product this is how i'm going to sell it to you and then you take the next two or three or five or ten minutes whatever of saying ok this is why you should believe what i believe and that's why there's different types of comics and different levels of which you can can go by all accounts stuff wonderful and so what's your favorite venue that you perform in pittsburgh i mean they're all unique and different i mean obviously arcade comedy downtown is a unique venue they're actually moving into a larger space i'll be on their first weekend shows so that'll be an exciting the improv is obviously a huge venue and it's you know it's where it's quote unquote the a club where you get national touring acts and you know i've performed at theaters you know and they're interesting enough performed you know little small little you know clubs everything like that so they are all unique and special so to sit there and say which one is your favorite i mean i think i'm a boisterous guy so i think sometimes the bigger the venue sometimes i it's better for me but you see bookers the bigger the venue the more money  it's better for me that's how it works because i assume all that i did was assume this is going to every booker in the country because they all live in peters township but you know i mean that's so i would say obviously the improv arcade comedy but if you want to if you want to see great local kind of like you know underground stuff ham bones and lawrenceville is a great place because that's a great performance venue to where you can kind of see you know more up and coming or maybe some you know quote unquote guys from around the country really going to test a little bit more material mean that's i personally like to test in every type of venue and and that's one thing that you can't do one thing i've learned about people is sometimes people come up to you and go what's your demographic what's the perfect person i don't believe i have a demographic i was psychographic i have what's your mindset if your mindset is you're open to new experiences you're open to understanding that you know you know that i don't think things too seriously then we're going to be fine i've met you know college kids that are a little tightly wound and they're tough and i've met older people that are tightly wound whereas you know i've done shows in libraries in front of people who are the average age would probably be seventy five years old and had a great time because they were there to have fun and same thing with you know this past weekend i did a show in which probably the average age of the people in the audience was twenty one twenty two years old they were open they were having a great time and i've had it flipped people that are you know older they're like no we don't want to go there and same thing with younger people we don't want to go there so again it's more of a psycho graphic than in my opinion than a demographic and so what do you have coming up what do i have coming up i'm performing all over the place my biggest thing that i'd like you know that i'd love everyone to see is my internet radio show the mike sasson show it's on the river's edge which is a great local venture where it's an hour and a half it's what we you know it's what we find funny and what we find interesting and then throughout the week we have clips you can find it on my sass and you know my sasin dot com or my facebook page everything just my sas and so you can find me there and then comedy wise small my all my shows throughout the area you can find there as well great well thanks so much for bringing back out in a little bit let's grab a quick clip of mike's latest shell on the biggest problem doing the pod cast when you record it when you put your hands because like right now if you're watching on facebook you see that like my hands are about top of the desk but then earlier there on my lap because that was a comfortable place but then i was figuring that everyone would sit there be like where mike's hands and then i'm like i sometimes it's hard to see where you're going but you have the power to change your problems all it takes is courage your life your  inspiration my comedic inspiration as far as a person or just in general i guess what gets you going what makes you do comedy i just love comedy man i just love making people laugh is the greatest thing in the world when people are smiling or laughing or having a just the art of stand up comedy and comedy in general because you know i like to do sketches and and different things like that video audio skits whether mike was py cass radio or u two so just in general was just so much fun and how  you working on your comedy so i've been doing comedy since i was eighteen and i'm thirty now so like eleven twelve years it's been it's been a while it's been a long but you're getting well yeah i'm just glad i started early because i was able to learn a lot of things  are early age so now even though like a lot of people are starting comedy in their twenty's and they're probably like three five years and at my age it's funny because i'm just i've become the bitter old man and i'm only thirty life i want to touch on things that a lot of people can relate to i'm dealing with because there's a lot of times where you think you're the only person dealing with something and then you talk to someone you can lead to actually you know so i do that trump things that he's been saying i just started writing instantly i was just i do so much material here and i was just connecting the pieces and then there was just a you couldn't i mean the whole thing with the steelers and all that you can get away from the lower third they were on everything it was on everything and i was just like you know i have to write routines about all of this stuff just so i can have it because you know i want to work on another album so it's like i have to just get these chunks now but i would say those are the takeaways because it's just been a circus on social media watching people like burn terrible towels and seeing grown men burn jerseys of another take it seemed to have met more and it has a last name it's not even there's almost a bird there's jersey because i'm so upset right now because brown hurt my feelings and it's like you don't even know what i was when i was home with the sick baby says yeah it really pay attention right know it it's been doing well and so on spotify title i tunes apple music it's pretty much anywhere pandora music it's been doing really good on there so even if you get like richard you because you've ever next to me so yeah yeah exactly that's funny so where what's your favorite show that you've ever done standup or like in general like anything do anything that you've done yeah that's a tough one i think i was on national t v for jennifer lopez had a channel was called nouveau t v and it was mainly like on the west coast and i was on this t v show called stand up and deliver and that was like one of the greatest experiences for me because i always wanted to be on one of those t v shows and i was a teenager and i remember being sixteen like you know i want to be on one of these type of you know comedy shows so i get there so nervous because it was the first time like this is it if you mess up on this t v show it's everywhere like anyone can tune in that dude is horrible so the whole time i just kept saying do not fall down the steps do not fall down the steps because it was like your next ok and i'm like yeah and it was a long way down like these wore it just like two three steps it was like thirty so i don't want to like end up like beyonce did when she was in miami dancing she just like the i can't be that guy so yeah the experience was just great to be able to make that many people laugh and then to have like friends and family you know take pictures of like my name whenever you pull up there's so many different shows coming up i was just in vegas performing at the world series a comedy which was a great experience just trying to gather as much as i can i ask shows but the comedy album is the main thing that i want teenager so if anybody here or any teen or anyone just feels like i want to do stand up when i want to do something in comedy just do it literally that's the best to practice a because you  just learn on the way like you know the production here is awesome seeing like all the students put together everything that are put together that was me i was in a video production don't like funny skits for high school when they would put it on before the so much terry for coming on the spotlight to follow terry on facebook look for him under the handle comedian terry jones when we come back we'll have both terry and mike on to see who's top comedian and our knock knock talent right obviously terry and i obviously we did a huge part cast together and did morning radio and you really learn a lot about a human being when they're physically exhausted at five thirty in the morning trying to trying to drink coffee enough to stay awake yeah i understand when you listen to morning radio those people are exhausted so it's not there and you go why would they say that there's they don't even know what they said they don't know what day it is it will not even go through the motions it's just every single day because you have to be an adult you have to like you can't just go to sleep at like seven thirty at night to get eight hours sleep to wake up at four in the morning so you're getting like five six hours today i mean i don't know if we can concentrate at this point all we can you can work your dream and i could be cool like themselves right to sell so we'll try to continue this is best possible so what i want you to do these are some classic classic jokes or not on knock knock jokes but we need to you know we need a name so either you can answer this as seriously as you want to get the right answer or if you don't know it then whatever pops into your to your mind that's p g ok this is seven seconds because life is ultimately meaning spot on pittsburgh i will share some links thank you all for watching spotlight on pittsburgh to watch past episodes go to spotlight on pittsburgh dot com and don't forget to follow us on facebook and instagram so you next time when we shine the light on