Yeeaaaahhhhh Roooogeeeerrr!” some girl screams from the back of the crowded room, a cry of encouragement that sails over the whooping and applauding throng of people that cram into the shadowy venue. Whistles and applause dwindle into chuckles and murmurs as all eyes in the room turn toward the stage, eager to get a look at comedian number three.

Laid back, he low-fives the host as he strides confidently into the limelight, planting his sneakers for the first time in the center of that big Higher Ground Ballroom stage. Slipping the microphone from its stand, he picks up the slack cord, shifts a few steps to the left and casually runs his fingers through his long, dark-brown hair. He assesses the room quickly, flashes a comfortable smile and raises the microphone to his lips.

“Any drinkers out there?” he asks harmlessly, a mischievous glint in his eyes. A drunken lady in the front row manages a hoarsely slurred, “Hyeaah!” while others whoop and catcall affirmably.

He smiles.

“I like drinking,” he concedes. “Drinking’s fun. It’s kind of funny, you know, because as much as drinking can get you to those new highs, it can also get you to those new lows. Can’t it? You find yourself in a lot of, you know, ‘What the hell am I doing with my life?’ kind of moments because of alcohol, don’t you?” He stops briefly, as if engaging in a conversation, before continuing. “It’s never like those moments when you’re doing something you’ve never done before though,” he explains. “It’s like you’re doing something that you’ve done a lot before, but just never in that context that alcohol always puts it in…”
He pauses for dramatic effect before nailing the first punch line.

“Like you’re puking, but on the Jersey Turnpike.”

The audience snickers knowingly.

“Or you’re crying, but you’re taking a dump.”

A man in the second row laughs mid-sip and chokes on his drink.

“Or you’re petting the dog, but you’re masturbating.”

The room bursts into laughter. Bam. Just like that, they’re hooked.

Listening to Roger Miller perform standup comedy is like listening to a funny friend tell a 20-minute story in 40 seconds. The result is concise, lively, and tirelessly enjoyable. You’re digging every moment and before you know it, the story is over, the punch line delivered, and with an affable smile, he’s on to the next joke. It appears effortless.

But it isn’t. For Miller, a lot of it is about technique—even something as simple as the timing of a smile or the wave of a hand.

“Every time I write a joke, I write it on a little index card,” Miller says. “Then I go through and I decide the aspects of that joke. A lot of the jokes I write have physical motions that go along with them. Some of them don’t. Some of them have really long setups. Some of them have those quick punch lines. So I’ll say, ‘Refine the punch lines for this joke.’ ‘Refine the motions for this joke.’ I work on that. I try not to do it to the point where when I’m saying this word, I put my hand over here. Just the idea of, ‘What am I getting at? What do I want to be conveying with my body?’ I definitely work on that a lot.”

But making people laugh isn’t all about memorization. “When I’m rehearsing, I’ll say the joke, and every time I say it, it’s a little bit different,” Miller says. “Every time I say it, it comes out a little bit different. Sometimes I’ll find a whole new punch line to say to it and take it to a whole new place. That’s what I dig about it. It’s not improv, but it’s not rigid. It’s finding that medium, I think, that keeps it fresh.”

Miller, 20, a junior at Johnson State College, got his first big break in standup when he won first place in the JSC talent show during his sophomore year. Following that success, he performed his first solo comedy act in the JSC Base Lodge in October 2007. Weighed against that show, however, he found it relatively easy to perform eight collective minutes of punchy standup at the sold-out venue at Higher Ground for the Comedy Battle on Saturday, Jan. 26.

“My performance in October was like a 45 minute monologue!” Miller says emphatically. “I had never done it before and it was in front of a pretty big audience! Compared to my show in October, this [performance at Higher Ground] wasn’t that well-rehearsed of a show. But comparing it to my show in October, I’ll never work that hard for anything, I don’t think.”

He laughs. “Any free moment I had between August and October, I was running jokes through my head and if I was by myself, I was saying them out loud. That’s the way my life was for three solid months. It was just running these jokes through my head.”

Being the center of attention at a solo show was a nerve-racking experience, according to Miller. But it didn’t stop him, and since then he has come a long way in terms of self-possession.

“Even in October when I did my show—and it went so well—if there was a pause onstage, I was shaking,” Miller says, breaking into a smile. “But not Saturday. I was perfectly comfortable up there, even in front of all those people… more so! I was just pumped to be up there. I think a lot of it was the energy of the audience.”
That night, Miller was in his element and the audience knew it.

“I got a digital camera not too long ago,” he mentions casually into the microphone. “That was pretty fun. Those are always cool, but there are some things that just don’t need to be documented, you know?”

Smiling, he runs his fingers through his hair and glances humbly at the audience. “You always wake up the morning after a party and you’re flipping through the pictures like, ‘that was fun! Oh, ha ha, I forgot he was even there!’ And then you always get to that one point—”

He pauses, pretending to stare at the LCD screen of a digital camera as an expression of pure incredulity spreads quickly across his face.

“Those aren’t my genitals!” he cries out indignantly to the laughter of the audience. He cocks his head to the side.

“That is my face though,” he reasons, shrugging.

People are whistling and clapping their hands.

“Real mature, guys! Real mature!” he shouts.

In addition to his talent show victory and solo standup performance, Miller had also done some standup at an open mic night at the Comedy Strip Live in NYC and had performed a few quick sets between bands at a JSC music performance. However, the Comedy Battle at Higher ground, a legitimate annual comedian stand-off (and the largest comedic competition in Vermont), is a well-publicized and well-known event.

Selected from a large group of Open Mic participants to compete in the battle, Miller was the third youngest of 11 competitors, and one of only four who hadn’t competed in comedy battles past. In a state where it is difficult to get a solid foothold in comedy, this competition is a big opportunity for up-and-coming comedians—Miller included.

In preparation for the battle, he spent all of Saturday going over his material. However, preparing for standup isn’t like preparing for a spelling bee.

“Before I rehearse and before I go up, I tell myself to smile because all my jokes are said with a smile,” Miller says. “If I’m rehearsing it like this,”—he lets his face go slack—“it’s useless. I’m not going to be telling them like that onstage. I’m going to be pumped up. I’m going to be smiling. So I say, ‘Smile.’ And then I say, ‘This is my voice. This is my platform. This is internal. These are not lines on a page. This is me.’ That’s what I say to myself every time, and it centers me.”

The Comedy Battle this year was a sold-out show. Offering both seated and standing room, food service, and two bars, the Ballroom at Higher Ground was packed with well over 300 people, excluding the comedians, venue workers, and tech crew. The conversation in the room served as loud and constant background noise and the buzz of electricity in the air before the battle started was almost tangible.

Groups of people were crowded in the walkways between the rows of chairs, the spaces at the bars were mobbed, and the lines in thebathrooms were long. Some of the comedians were hanging out front, chatting with audience members, friends, and family before the show.

On his way to Higher Ground, reality started setting in for Miller, who was subsequently shown around and introduced to people in the hour before the show.

“When I got there, I was very nervous,” Miller says. “I met Nick [the show promoter] and I met a few of the other comedians. He brought us up to the green room and one by one, the comedians came in and once I met all the other comedians, all the nerves just kicked away.”

He pauses for a moment to consider why. “I don’t know if it was that I realized that they’re not as much better prepared as I thought they were going to be, or if it was just that I realized they were all in the same boat as me and all a little bit nervous. And then that competitive aspect of me just kind of died down, like, I don’t have to win, you know?” He smiles. “I was backstage! I got to go up on the balcony! I was happy as it was,” Miller says.

But he did win. After being selected as one of the five contestants to move on to round two, he used his allotted three minutes to wow the crowd with a different kind of comedy—the kind that makes us think.

Miller waits for the cheering to die down, furrows his eyebrows observantly and says, “So, you see a lot of commercials for pharmaceutical drugs out there. That kind of bothers me. Does it bother anybody else?”

A couple members of the audience yell back in agreement.

“You see a lot of these commercials and you realize that they’re selling us these drugs and they’re selling our doctors these drugs. It kind of bothers me because now, all of a sudden, we’re not so much their patients anymore. We’re like their customers. We’re not their patients. We’re their customers. That’s fucked up.” He laughs a little, as if the very notion is ridiculous. “That means they have an ideal demographic for us, you know? Could you imagine the ideal customer for a pharmaceutical company? Just a depressed, hyper-active, impotent insomniac with a weight problem and restless leg syndrome. You know?”

The audience laughs.

“‘How’d you spent your day today?’” Miller inquires mockingly before mockingly answering out loud. “‘Well, I woke up in the morning and I ate some Prozac so I wouldn’t off myself before I got out of bed.” Pause. “Then I had to go to class. I ate some Ritalin so I wouldn’t do something crazy like raise my hand and express myself.” Pause. “Then I came home. I was pretty hungry. I ate some diet pills. That took care of that.” Pause. “Then I ate some Oxycontin for this hangnail that’s been bothering me.” Pause. “Then my girlfriend came over. I ate some Viagra and had sex with her for four or five minutes. Then she took off.” Pause. “When my erection wouldn’t go down for four hours, I ate some Valium. That cooled me off.” Pause. “Then it was time to do my homework. I ate some Adderall and chased it with a Coke—Diet.” Pause. “And after that it was time to wind down and get ready for bed with a tall glass of warm milk and a double dose of Ambien.”

The effect of the joke on the audience was very much like the finale at a county fair fireworks display. There was one giant burst of laughter followed after another after another after another without any time to come down until the very last word of the joke filled the room and ceased.

Miller appeared radiantly happy as he left the stage. Perhaps the only moment he appeared happier was when the host announced him the winner of the Comedy Battle.

“It’s definitely an accomplishment in Vermont,” Miller says, smiling. “I’m pumped! I’m really pumped. I made some cool connections with people at Higher Ground and tons of audience members who I never met said how good I was and a couple people told me that they knew I was going to win even after my first set, which was cool.”

But for Miller, everything comes down to the pharmaceutical joke because it represents what he someday hopes to achieve: heightened awareness of societal and political issues through humor. In the long run, he aspires to contribute to change.

“I don’t deal with pharmaceuticals at all—recreationally or when they’re prescribed to me,” Miller says. “That’s what I like so much about that joke. One of the things I feel strongest about, politically, is the over prescription of drugs and our dependence on pharmaceuticals. It just really bothers me. So if I can bring up a joke like that and make people be like, ‘You know what? Yeah, we do take a lot of drugs in this society. What a funny way to bring it up,’ I like that.”
In the meanwhile, however, Miller pursues comedy for a simpler reason.

“In general, I just love making people laugh, which is something I do,” Miller says. “I don’t have to be onstage to make people laugh, but when it comes down to it, I love being on stage. It’s just so rewarding for me. Ever since I was a kid, I pictured myself being a performer and, you know, never really made the effort to do anything. I wasn’t in acting. I hardly acted. I hardly did anything, but I always imagined myself being this performer. Now it’s like I’m finally making that happen for myself. I think that’s the most rewarding part.”

Regardless of how much Miller loves being onstage, he feels that the brevity of performing standup comedy holds a bitter sweetness for him.

“All I think about when I get offstage is when I’m going to be up there again. It’s the curse of stage performing,” he says, laughing. “As much as you want to live in the moment and enjoy it, if you really love it, you’re thinking about doing it again. I was definitely pumped [after the show] but for the most part I was like, ‘Man, I want to get back up on that stage. I want another five minutes in front of that audience.’”

But then he shrugs and smiles.

“I enjoy it. It was a ton of fun. I can’t think of anything I enjoy doing more,” Miller says. “This is definitely what, at this point, I feel like I was meant to do.”