My good friend (and friend of CB Radio) Caitlin Turner was nice enough to profile me for the University of Oklahoma's student newspaper The Oklahoma Daily.
Caitlin Turner/The Daily
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Cameron Buchholtz was never the class clown. He was the kid in the back of the classroom making fun of the class clown.
Not everyone has the opportunity to translate a childhood passion into an adult career. For Buchholtz, comedy was first a passion and later a profession.
“ I follow comedy like other people follow sports or music, which isn’t very common, even among comedians,” Buchholtz said.
In Norman, comedians are not common either. But every Tuesday at Othello’s, an Italian restaurant and bar on Campus Corner, the microphone is open for anyone looking to impart their comedic skill on an audience.
The humorists arrive around 9 p.m. to sign up for the show which starts at about 10 p.m. Buchholtz performs every week along with a few other regulars who range from graduate students to senior citizens.
On this particular Tuesday night, the place is full of people, but only about half of them are listening and laughing. It doesn’t bother Buchholtz, though — he sees Othello’s as a place to test new material and perfect the material he takes out on the road.
For about a year and a half he has been traveling to Austin, Little Rock and, occasionally, Atlanta to perform.
He’s Okie-bred though, and regularly gets up in front of crowds at the Loony Bin and the Speakeasy in Oklahoma City. He’s become somewhat of an Oklahoma comedy veteran, but it took him awhile to take a stab at something he has loved for awhile now.
The comedy bug bit him after he started watching Comedy Central Presents in middle school, around his sixth grade year.
“I watched it just because it was dirty, and in sixth grade that was cool,” Buchholtz said.
After years of following the Los Angeles comedy scene it was a podcast from one of his favorite comedians, Jimmy Pardo, that inspired him to start performing.
“In some form comedy will be my career, “Buchholtz said. “I might write or do radio, which is an option that is pretty common.”
Since then, Buchholtz has started CB Radio, a podcast of his own that is available on iTunes, and Feb. 11 he will be recording his first live show at the Speakeasy. It was through his podcast he got to meet his mentor-from-a-distance, Jimmy Pardo, as well as Web Soup writer, Jonah Ray. The podcasts have a simple format, essentially an hour of conversation between a few interesting people.
His comedy has taken on a particularly foul-mouthed tone as well. He rarely writes jokes about himself and focuses more on pop culture and somewhat observational humor. When something funny occurs to him he jots it down in his phone and fleshes it out later.
“My style is sort of an amalgamation of several different comics,” Buchholtz said. “Paul F. Tompkins is amazing and recently I have been into Moshe Kasher.”
Watching other comedians has helped him develop his own stand-up skills. One of his biggest and, consequently, least successful shows was last year at Norman Music Festival in front of an audience at The Red Room at maximum capacity.
Some of his jokes were, well, let’s just say a little off color and were not received too well. There comes a point in every live show in which a laugh doesn’t follow a joke, but what is the protocol for this situation?
“You can’t ignore the fact that people aren’t laughing,” Buchholtz said. You have to build off of the awkwardness.”
Comedy isn’t always about laughing. Buchholtz admitted to having an emotional reaction to one of his favorite comedians passing away when he was in high school.
“I remember I started crying in my computer class when I found out that Mitch Hedberg died,” Buchholtz said. “I cry easily, but I don’t cry about real things. I cry about T.V. shows, I had to stop watching reality shows because even their heartfelt montages make me cry.”
Hopefully, Buchholtz will be moving to Austin in August and continue on his quest for a career in comedy. Austin is just a “stepping stone” city from which he will launch himself into Los Angeles.
“I don’t want to be super famous. I would rather just be successful and make a living doing what I love,” Buchholtz said.
