Comedian Josh Blue doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by cerebral palsy

Comedian Josh Blue rarely has an opportunity to slow down.

Before his interview with the Spokesman-Review, he helped his kids get off to school. After the interview, he had two videos to shoot and a memoir to work on.

But this pace is normal for the comedian, who has released four-and-a-half hours’ worth of material via specials, most recently “Delete,” in July, since he won the reality competition show “Last Comic Standing” in 2006.

Blue’s Friday performances at Spokane Comedy Club are, in a small way, like homecoming shows, as the Cameroon-born, Minnesota-raised, Denver-based comedian got his start in standup as a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia.

“Evergreen helped me form the idea that it’s OK to be different, and it’s OK to pursue things that are not in the box,” Blue said.

While hanging out with friends one day, Blue picked up a microphone, which wasn’t even turned on, and told a few jokes. From there, Blue doesn’t recall where he got the idea that he could pursue standup as a career, but he kept with it, eventually studying standup his senior year at Evergreen.

“I always brag that I’m the only person who’s working in the field that they studied,” he said. “Most people go to school to be a psychologist, and they’re a fireman.”

After one unsuccessful audition for “Last Comic Standing,” Blue booked a huge college showcase, performing at 35 schools across the country, an experience he said made him much stronger as a comedian. His manager then convinced him to give the show another chance, and Blue’s been performing steadily ever since.

Though his appearance on “Last Comic Standing” made him “the mouthpiece for disability,” Blue’s early material didn’t reference his cerebral palsy, simply because he didn’t realize it was something that made his material standout from the rest.

“If I didn’t have cerebral palsy, I’d just be a goofy white guy,” he said. “It gives me a bit of perspective that other people don’t have, a worldview that a lot of people maybe think about but could never comment on.”

Blue noted that though people with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the world, disability often goes undiscussed in today’s society.

The jokes he writes involving his cerebral palsy unintentionally counteract this, as Blue, who sometimes feels pigeonholed as “the palsy comic,” is simply writing what he knows.

Some of his jokes about disability are geared more toward his able-bodied audience, like a bit on “Delete” in which he tells the crowd that most disabled people don’t like to be called inspirational. Though, overtime, Blue has come to terms with how people react to seeing him onstage.

“I do that inspirational bit, and that’s real, but also I’m at a point of maturity in my life and career where I go ‘You know what? If you take inspiration from what I’m doing, awesome,’ ” he said. “That’s just the side bonus to what I’m doing.”

Ten years after his material on “Last Comic Standing” earned him overnight acclaim, Blue’s work ethic, which drives him to perform nearly 150 shows each year and release specials and projects like his memoir, is ensuring that that acclaim is still deserved.

“I’ve had lots of people say ‘When I’m flipping through the channels and you’re on there, I stop every time because I know it’s going to be good,’ ” he said. “To me, that’s the hard work coming through. That’s 10 years of grinding it and doing it every day.”