“I always use this line,” comedian Mark Viera says when asked about how he came to be a stand-up comic: “Comedy chose me, I didn’t really pick comedy. It seems like I was born to this. I was the funny kid doing impressions of Eddie Murphy, Martin Short and Billy Crystal, when they were on Saturday Night Live.”
His first audience was his family, and now it’s folks in clubs across the country. The New York City native lives about 70 miles from the Big Apple in rural Upstate. On stage he muses about the differences between how he’s raising his kids and how he was raised. “I talk a lot about being married for 17 years and my relationship with my wife. All the things that no one warned me about.” The effect of technology on his family life probably couldn’t have been foreseen, though. “When I was growing up we talked to each other,” he says. “We didn’t have texts to be our spokesperson. I talk about being texted right inside my own house. I’m home and they’re still texting me!”
Mark Viera performs Thursday-Sunday. $10-$15. Funny Bone on the Levee, 1 Levee Way, Newport, 859-957-2000, funnyboneonthelevee.com.
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2013.