Jimmy Wiggins
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"The Last Hippie In America"
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Jimmy Wiggins:
The name has a Jiminy Cricket bounce, and it suits the comedian perfectly.
He's diminutive, elfin, cheerful and wise. The big surprise when he opens
his mouth is his rumbling gravel truck of a voice - and his sly,
subversive take on life.
Wiggins
sometimes bills himself as "The Last Hippie in America," and his
performance is as easy-going and amiable as that role suggests. He
saunters onto the stage In tinted shades, a biker's bandana across his
forehead and an avalanche of snow-white hair cascading below his
shoulders. Visually, he's somewhere on the continuum between George Carlin
and Tommy Chong.
His
perspective on life fits some where between Chong's and Carlin's, too. If
most other comics would make a noisy party, he'd be the quiet guy in the
comer, drawing a crowd with his charm and slightly stoned wit.
Wiggins is at
an age where things have started to go wrong. Friends have died,
relationships ended. Decisions made decades earlier have come back to
rattle their chains. Health looks like a gift, rather than a right.
Wiggins comments on these and all the other things that scare us about the
early-elderly years, with the offhand manner of a guy who's met those
troubles and stared them down. He's decided that while you have to get
old, they can't make you act that way.
"I'm
52," he says. "That sounds like a speed limit. 'How old are
you?' 'I'm 52.' 'Well, slow down.' "
He's made few
concessions to the advancing years. He smokes and drinks onstage because
he enjoys It. Sure, his doctor told him to quit. "I'm no
quitter," he announced with a sandpaper chuckle. "When I start
something 1 damn well finish it."
He's also
discovered some compensations for aging. When his doctor prescribed muscle
relaxants for his bad back, Wiggins discovered a whole new unexpected
world of chemical bliss: "As someone who never bought legal drugs, I
had no idea. The quality!"
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