STAND-UP
& WARM-UP

Live. Unscripted. No second take.

STAND UP

BEFORE HELMETS GOT INVOLVED, CHILDHOOD WAS A CONTACT SPORT.

Before helmets, seatbelts, warning labels, and common sense got involved, childhood was a full-contact sport.

In this stand-up special, Michael takes the stage in front of a 2,500-seat theater in Orange County and looks back at the toys, traditions, and questionable decisions that somehow passed for family fun.

  • Slip 'N Slides on concrete. Lawn darts with the aerodynamic integrity of military hardware. Slinkys, which were basically coiled wire we threw down the stairs and called entertainment. Cars with no seatbelts, rear-facing seats, and enough exhaust fumes to make childhood feel like a controlled substance.

    And because it's Christmas, Michael also covers New Year's resolutions, high-fiber diets, All-Bran cereal powerful enough to change your plans for the day, and Costco — the only place where you can buy anything, as long as you're willing to buy twelve of it.

    Smart, clean, sarcastic, and proudly ridiculous. This is Michael Burger doing what he does best: finding the funny in the stuff we all survived and probably shouldn't have.

TV WARM-UP

WHAT DOES A TV WARM-UP COMIC ACTUALLY DO?

A 22-minute sitcom can take five hours to shoot. During that time, a live studio audience of nearly 300 people has to stay entertained, energized, informed, and ready to laugh on cue — through lighting changes, camera moves, wardrobe fixes, script rewrites, missed lines, long delays, and all the glamorous waiting television never shows you.

That was my job.

  • For decades, I was one of Hollywood's go-to warm-up comics, working in front of live audiences on nearly 50 sitcoms and thousands of hours of television. The job was part host, part comedian, part traffic cop, part room reader — keeping the audience loose, protecting the actors, buying time for the crew, and making sure the room stayed alive until the cameras were ready again.

    This video shows what warm-up looks like in action: real people, real laughs, real pressure, and no second take.

    I'm Michael Burger — television host, comedian, and author of I'm Just Warming Up, about the job that taught me timing, listening, discipline, reinvention, and how to hold a room when everything around you is falling apart.