Portland's Auggie Smith Jokes His Way to Victory

The world of stand-up comedy is usually an unrewarding one, where performers are tortured by the realization that their jokes will not yield grocery money, but Portland comedian Auggie Smith is proving to be a major comedy contender. He just won the two most renowned comedy competitions in the nation.

He took first place in the 31st annual Seattle Comedy Competition this past Sunday night, less than 30 days after winning the San Francisco Comedy Competition. Smith is the only person in history to have won both contests in the same year. The two back-to-back victories have garnered him a total of $12,000 and a comedy recording contract with Uproar Records.

Having won in San Francisco, Smith can now brag about his privilege to sit at the big kids' table with Robin Williams, Ellen DeGeneres, Dana Carvey, and Sinbad, as winning the same contest in the past helped blast the now-veteran comics into the stratosphere. What exactly makes him so funny? Well, Smith's bits have been known to include jokes on topics such as smoking in hospital rooms, why drunk people really have no excuse for being assholes, and the accidental ridicule of a U.S. soldier paralyzed in Iraq. Read a short Q&A WW did with the comic back in 2008 for more punchlines.