Comedian Matt Baker standing up for himself

Matt Baker is a busy guy. In the days leading up to his two Spokane shows this weekend, he has a gig in Portland. Then he’s hopping on a plane to Alaska, where he’ll get on a Disney cruise ship to perform. Then he heads back to Seattle, then here.

“I’ve done shows in New York on a Saturday, then Florida on Sunday,” Baker said as he made the drive from Seattle to Portland. “Then I’ll be in L.A. on Monday or Tuesday. It’s not uncommon for my week to consist of multiple cities. I work on cruise ships a lot, which is nice, because you can leave your stuff in one place. I can actually unpack my luggage and hang stuff up. Like, I have clothes that have never been hung up in their entire existence.”

Baker’s act, which lands at the Bing today and Saturday, is sort of a one-man circus combined with a stand-up show. He plays paddle balls with his mouth. He launches bowling balls off his foot and catches them on his head. He juggles weird objects. Right now, he’s envisioning a stunt in which he puts a match in someone’s mouth and then lights it by flinging a yo-yo at it.

“They’re things I came up with that people aren’t stupid enough to try,” he said.

Baker is based out of Seattle – “I own a home there, but I wouldn’t say I live in it,” he explained – but he was born and raised in Eugene. As a teenager, he became a professional hacky sack player – yes, that was a thing in the ’90s – which led him on an unusual journey as a 17-year-old.

“I was sponsored by Snickers candy bars, and I toured around Europe for a year, doing demos at shopping malls and schools,” Baker said. “I thought, what else can I do that’s entertaining? It’s not like hacky sack is a feasible job long-term. I’m 33 now, and I’m like a grandpa in the sport.”

He started performing his bizarre stunts on the street in Oregon and later moved to Seattle, where he began developing his show. He didn’t add the comedy element until later – he considered himself a stuntman first and a comedian second – although he claims he frequently used humor as a defense mechanism when he was a kid.

“I’m the youngest kid of four, so I used sarcasm and comedy to get attention,” Baker said. “That’s how I would get back at my brothers. They were way bigger than me, but I could make fun of them. … I started implanting more comedy, and I could connect with the audience a lot more through the comedy. So I started writing and doing open mics.”

He’s now an in-demand touring performer, and he appeared on “America’s Got Talent” with his comedy partner Alex Zerbe in 2009. He also holds several world records, which Baker describes as “most leap frogs in a minute while juggling three objects” and “fastest time juggling three objects while taking my clothes off.”

“Things kind of fell in my lap, but at the same time, I never consciously made the decision to do it,” Baker said of his success. “It’s like, all right, they want to put me on cruise ships. OK, they want to put me on TV It’s just luck and bad decisions.”

As for the show itself, it’s designed to appeal to all ages and demeanors – the comedy is clean and the stunts are absurd.

“It’s silly stunts, it’s stupid human tricks, it’s stand-up comedy,” Baker said. “It really has something for everybody.”