Mycal Dédé Makes His Case

We’re deep in the 2024 Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin sea­son (check out our track­er), and this week’s guest will no doubt be famil­iar to any­one fol­low­ing the com­pe­ti­tion (or Austin com­e­dy at large).

Mycal Dédé climbed to third-run­ner-up in 2023’s FPIA, but oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence his comedic obser­va­tions on life have been any­thing but spare. Open­ing for Nate Bar­gatze; the Come and Take It show (dur­ing South by South­west); Skank Fest, along­side favorites like Kan­dace Med­i­na, Dylan Car­li­no, and oth­ers; maybe you’ve heard rum­blings of his new com­e­dy com­pe­ti­tion show, Mys­tery Vor­tex, debut­ing August 3^rd at Fall­out The­ater.

Per­haps maybe you’re one of those dyed-in-the-wool reg­u­la­to­ry lit­i­ga­tion wonks, watch­ing some­one take up a case against your least-favorite admin­is­tra­tive agency. If so, you may have seen him in the court­room, where Dédé has been pulling for you as well.

The day­time job as an attor­ney may seem like ​“very boring…in the weeds kind of stuff”, but regard­less of the room, Dédé is out to ensure he gets the last laugh. The Hous­ton-native had grad­u­at­ed in 2013 and moved on to — let us call it his ​“open­ing argu­ment” — teach­ing. He’d had a his­to­ry of express­ing com­e­dy through blog­ging dur­ing col­lege, even tak­ing the win in a com­e­dy com­pe­ti­tion that also fea­tured one (Com­e­dy Wham beloved) Mar­tin Urbano.

Dédé found that his day job offered an unex­pect­ed wealth of new mate­r­i­al to draw on. ​“Kids are very fun­ny,” he remem­bers think­ing of his first-grade class, but (as we so often hear) good humor doesn’t always pay the bills.

By 2019, Dédé decid­ed he was done with teach­ing, and — in a turn he calls ​“arro­gant” — up and decid­ed he’d switch paths to become an attor­ney. Despite the old say­ing about proc­tol­o­gists have the best jokes, he quick­ly grew to appre­ci­ate the cre­ative side of law.

​“I don’t think a lot of peo­ple kind of real­ize that you do have to kind of take peo­ple’s problems,[and] cre­ate a way to solve them,” Dédé observes. Indeed, not entire­ly unlike com­e­dy, and both a sol­id obser­va­tion­al joke, and win­ning a par­tic­u­lar­ly gru­el­ing case, offer a wel­come relief at their con­clu­sions. ​“Every­one is doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. There’s always some­thing new you could learn,” he adds of the trade, and, in a tes­ta­ment to the dual-roles of his day and night jobs, that com­ment could just have eas­i­ly been about the stand-up stage.

So does the ris­ing star of the com­e­dy career mean Dédé is ready to snap shut his metaphor­i­cal brief­case and leave the court­room behind? Isn’t that the nat­ur­al con­clu­sion in (ahem) cas­es like this?

​“I don’t feel like I can focus on writ­ing jokes if I’m wor­ried about mak­ing rent,” Dédé says. While the full-time attor­ney role paired with the increas­ing open-mics and shows does make it a bit more of a jug­gling act, he insists it’s for the best, even hon­ing his ambi­tion. ​“You know, who wants it more? The per­son who woke up at like eleven and just kind of rolled out of bed,” he posits, ​“or some­one who’s…been up since six work­ing and I still found a way to make it to a mic.”

Do those day­light hours pro­vide the fuel Dédé needs for the night-time shows? 

Obvi­ous­ly you can’t take con­fi­den­tial legal infor­ma­tion from the court­room to the stage, but his expe­ri­ence has shown the pow­er of the act of obser­va­tion, if not the sub­jects. ​“I can’t talk about most of the things that I think are fun­ny because it would vio­late [con­fi­den­tial­i­ty],” Dédé con­firms, but the absurd ris­es above any one case, if you’re ready to look for it: ​“That hap­pens quite a bit at work where I’m like…we’re los­ing mil­lions of dollars…that’s kind of fun­ny, though, right?”

I felt my wal­let purse up a bit at that, but Dédé sug­gests quite the oppo­site: ​“Just laugh about it, right? What are you gonna do? Stress about it?” (As Valerie notes, if you do, ​“You’re just gonna end up mad”, prov­ing once again she knows me far too well.)

Dédé’s 2023 FPIA show­ing had its own hint of mad­ness to it, but one that fur­ther serves to show his ded­i­ca­tion. Hav­ing thrown up, loaded him­self with Sudafed, and sup­port­ed by his girl­friend, Dede made it to the stage, and the rest is his­to­ry. Thank­ful­ly it’s record­ed his­to­ry, as he doesn’t ​“remem­ber much of it. It all just felt like a blur.”

With Mycal Dédé’s pre­lim round com­ing up July 30^th, we can only wish him bet­ter health, and, if things must once again blur by, per­haps this time he’ll have a smooth awak­en­ing to find him­self wear­ing that first place crown. 

Fol­low Mycal

• Insta­gram — @mycaldede
  
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​m​i​c​h​a​e​ldede

Mycal can be seen and heard:

• Mys­tery Vor­tex — 1^st Sat­ur­days, 7pm at Fall­out The­ater. Check Mycal’s insta­gram for more infor­ma­tion! Debut show is August 3^rd!
• Cap City Com­e­dy Club Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin con­test — Pre­lim Round is July 30^th, 8pm, Cap City Com­e­dy Club