Deep thoughts from a dirty mouth

Comedian Lonnie Bruhn performs in Gresham

By Rob Cullivan

The Gresham Outlook, Oct 10, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

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Lonnie Bruhn, 36, has had cerebral palsy since birth, but he doesn’t want your pity.

He calls himself a cripple, his right leg is smaller than his left, and he lives in constant fear of falling. Yet he’d rather you kept your well-meaning comments to yourself.

Take the time he was in a shoe store and was having trouble finding a comfortable shoe.

“It’s not the fact that you have cerebral palsy that’s the problem,” the clerk told him. “It’s that you’re not wearing the right shoe.”

“I thought it was the fact that I had an umbilical cord wrapped around my neck for 10 minutes and (clinically) died, but if you got a shoe that can fix that, I’m all for it,” Bruhn recalls thinking.

Bruhn, who performs at the Cedarville Inn Oct. 19, is far gentler in person than he sounds in print. It’s clear his dark humor is his way of dealing with a lifelong struggle. He realizes most people without disabilities don’t always know how to talk to someone who has one. His solution — treat him like a man, not someone “special.”

“I don’t like ‘special’ — that’s the stupidest word. There’s nothing special about it. I don’t see any of us walking around with capes.

“All joking aside,” he adds. “I think what needs to happen is a better dialogue between people who are disabled and people who aren’t.”

However, if Bruhn was in charge, there’s a possibility several F-bombs would be dropped, at least if he was holding forth on stage. The Portland native, who’s been at this gig for 18 years, is the type of comedian you’ll never see on TV, because he simply refuses to censor his act.

At one time, he was described as the Northwest’s dirtiest comedian, and a cursory glance at the videos on his myspace page confirms he’s not afraid of talking blue and pushing buttons.

Hence it’s a surprise to meet him in person: Far from sophomoric, he talks almost philosophically about politics, sex, relationships, liberty and other topics consuming minds since time immemorial.

Here’s a sampling of Bruhn’s take on comedy and other subjects of the day.

On the dark side of life: “I’m not going to take something out of my act and not talk about it because it may or may not offend people. When you’re doing a show for 150 or 250 people, you can’t change your direction because it’s touchy.”

Why he hates what TV has done to comedy: “They want you to package yourself in five minutes or L.A. doesn’t want you.”

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