His clothes look like hand me downs on his 10 body. He gazes us at the world from behind wire in glasses. Until he opens his mouth, Mark Miller projects a slightly out-of-style character. His voice, physique, humor and delivery are not unlike Woody Allen’s. Awkward, gangly but shifting his best foot forward, he steps up to the microphone. “I’ve been dieting for a few months,“ he tells the audience “, which explains his baggy polo shirt and khakis. “Fresh fruit and heroin… it’s expensive, but if you use Heroin Helper, that stretches it. “I recently signed a contract with Columbia records, yes. I get to choose any 12 albums now and six over the next year.

“Since this is the Summer of Love, I am suggesting, everyone turn to the person next to you and smile at them pick someone you do not know and give them a warm, friendly smile. 

“Then take your right hand and put it down the front of their pants and see what happens.“ 

Mark Miller admits that his moon is in Pluto, about to enter Goofy. 

Originally from New York, he moved to San Francisco to starve in a warmer climate. He’s performed at numerous comedy clubs, and will appear Friday at Eulipia, but early in his career, it was tough, and he learned the meaning of unemployment compensation. 

A semi-finalist in this year’s San Francisco Stand-up Comedy Competition, Miller became a funnyman to overcome his shyness, and it’s helped. Now he’s able to be shy in front of much larger groups of people.

His checkered career in comedy has been interspersed by a variety of jobs – as an orderly at St. John’s Hospital, where the women aren’t sick at all, teaching skydiving to scouts against their will, and as a stunt man at the Masters and Johnson sex clinic. 

Miller hopes, comedy fans will enjoy his routines because “once you lose the ability to laugh, you might as well start teaching driver education,“ Miller says.

Bill Farley, winner of the first stand-up comedy competition is the same year. Robin Williams came in second, will be on the same show.