A professional comedian from Pennsylvania has an unusual approach to comedy: He incorporates a computer into his routine.
And not just any computer will do. For Scott Bruce, it has to be a Mac.
Bruce, a stand-up veteran who has performed at venues all over the country, is an unabashed Apple advocate who gently berates Mac-hostile audiences with his partisan brand of humor.
"I love to ad lib, and the subject of computers often comes up," he explained recently from his cell phone as he drove between gigs. "If someone says they don't use a Mac, I'll roast them. I give them a lot of crap. We have a lot of fun with it."
For Bruce, IBM means, "I'm glad I bought a Mac." DOS stands for "Do it Over Stupid," and he often paraphrases Henny Youngman, "Take my PC – please!"
If someone in the audience says they use a Windows PC, he says he's sorry they're stuck with such a primitive piece of equipment.
Bruce said more often than not, the entire audience is hostile to his point of view. "But I usually get away with it," he said. "Although they don't agree with me, they're laughing."
Eric Magnusson, owner of Rascals comedy club in Ocean Township, New Jersey, said the material goes over well.
"People love it," said Magnusson, who has booked Bruce many times. "He brings (the Mac) in wherever he can. He has a huge knowledge of the Mac and he uses a lot of jokes about it. People do respond to it�. He does it in a way that makes it funny. Scott's a great, great act. He's a solid headliner."
A few years ago, Bruce's entire act revolved around a Mac. He would perform a "bizarre ventriloquist act" with a laptop that he simply called, "Mac."
Before the evening's lineup of comedians went on, Bruce would sit the laptop onstage for everyone to see. Then he'd distribute "Ask the computer" questionnaires among the audience.
While another comedian was onstage, a waitress gathered up the questionnaires and delivered them to Bruce in his dressing room. Using another computer backstage, Bruce recorded wisecrack answers to the questions, tweaking his voice to make it sound electronic. Unseen by the audience, he sent the recordings by wire to the laptop onstage.
When Bruce took the stage later in the evening, he'd make a big deal of playing with "Mac," pretending to play Mozart on the keyboard and then unplugging all the wires.
Suddenly he'd remember the questionnaires, and start reading out the questions he'd selected earlier. He held the microphone in front of the computer's speaker, triggering Mac's "answers" with a remote control hidden in his pocket.
Unfortunately, the act was too clever for its own good, Bruce said.
"The answers were very funny, but the problem was everyone in the audience was wondering how I was doing it," he said. "It was a cute idea, but it wasn't funny. People were distracted from the humor by the technology. I'm first and foremost a comedian, so I need the laughs."
As well as stand-up, Bruce owns a chain of six comedy clubs in Pennsylvania called Wise Crackers and hosts a PBS trivia show, The Pennsylvania Game.
On the road for half the year, Bruce often acts as an informal computer consultant and troubleshooter at the clubs he plays. This weekend, for example, between sets he helped network the machines at a friend's club in Indianapolis.
"One of the reasons I'm so popular at comedy clubs is I work on their computers," he joked.
For many years, Bruce was president of the now-defunct Professional Comedians Association, a role that had a lot of comedians coming to him for computer advice.
Bruce said he'd often chew the fat with Jerry Seinfeld when the New York comedian was working the club circuit. Seinfeld is known for always having a Mac of one kind or another on his long-running television series.
"A couple of years ago, everyone was tired of Bill Gates and Microsoft, and so it was nice to have the Mac take on computers and all that," said club owner Magnusson. "Scott refused to give up on it. It was his whole life there for a while."
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