Of course, this was a huge break for me, and I looked forward to the show’s airdate more than two months after the taping like it was Christmas morning, a trip to Disney World, and Black History Month all rolled into one. As I watched the roast on TV that night in December, I was thrilled to see that although I had performed second-to-last during the taping, I had done so well that I had been moved up to third in the broadcast.
Naturally, I assumed that because this TV broadcast was so groundbreaking for me, it was equally earth-shattering for the rest of the world. The second the program ended, I jumped up and headed out the door. I was living in New York City at the time and around that time every night, I sent my boyfriend Darryl out just before bed to pick me up a low-fat cookie or protein bar or some other treat that I deluded myself into thinking was good for my diet. But tonight would be different. I was a New Yorker, I was fabulous, and I was just this side of famous. Tonight was the night I was going to the Korean deli myself and I prepared to be well received by all.
I touched up my makeup and hair and headed down to the lobby. I beamed as I got off the elevator, and the doorman nodded hello. Hmmm…that was weird. He was treating me just like he had before the show aired. But, I quickly remembered, he had an excuse. Of course, he couldn’t say, “Great job on the roast.” He was on duty, working, without a TV in sight. And besides, there were other people in the lobby and he was much too professional to break my confidentiality. “Good work,” I thought to myself, and continued out the door.
It was brisk outside as I walked the half block to the Korean deli on Tudor City Place, and I spotted two people walking their dog near the area’s small park. As they approached me, I plastered on my best Miss America smile and prepared to be complimented. I had brought along a pen—in case an autograph hound accosted me (not a Sharpie; I wasn’t conceited!)—and I put my hand on it in my pocket so I’d be ready to sign. As the couple passed me, they looked up and nodded politely, just like it was any other night in the enclave east of Second Avenue. Polite? What was that all about? I was braced for some recognition! I had earned it! Hadn’t they heard? I was just on Comedy Central! I was the only woman comic to roast that washed-up Saturday Night Live alum douche. Goddamn it—didn’t they know? I’d been moved up to third in the order!!!!
Then I remembered where I was—New York City. New York friggin’ City, where there are tons of famous people and where even normal folks—civilians—had perfected the art of being too cool for school or giving them space. That was it, I thought. “These people know who I am—they’re just being respectful.” I was impressed. I did live in a classy part of town.
The next thing I knew, I heard a man calling after me. “Hey, how are you tonight?” “Here it comes,” I thought. “Thank God I did my hair and brought my pen.” I turned to face him with my cheesiest grin and a generous flip of my hair.
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling back at the man, who was dressed all in green. “And you?”
“Good,” he said back. “Hey, we were wondering”—he gestured back to where two other guys stood a few yards away—“is that your car? You gotta move it ’cause we can’t get to the Dumpster to empty the garbage.”
My smile faded and I shook my head. “No, no, it’s not my car,” I told the New York City sanitation worker. I turned back to my apartment, forgetting all about the cookie I had gone out to fetch.
As I entered the apartment, a little deflated, Darryl jumped up. “Hey, it’s the star.” That night, I realized that that was all the recognition I was gonna get and all the recognition I probably needed.
In the seven years since that first roast, I’ve been recognized on the street, in public bathrooms, at airports, and in foreign countries (although I don’t think it really counts if it’s in Amsterdam and they’re so baked they think I’m Bette Midler), and I can’t imagine ever getting sick of it. Every time someone asks me if I’m “that comedian” or “Lisa Campanelli” or “that chick who likes the brothas,” I get a total kick out of it, like it’s the first time. The night of the Chevy Chase roast, I was shocked that no one recognized me. Now, I’m shocked when anyone does.
People ask me if I dress incognito at the airport in order to avoid getting noticed. Yes, I do invariably show up for planes in sweats, a ball cap, and zero makeup; that much is true. But while I do dress down to travel, it’s not to avoid getting recognized. It’s sheer laziness.
My favorite place to get recognized is Starbucks because they always give me free coffee. I had witnessed this firsthand when it happened to Dave Chappelle, and I couldn’t believe that a few short years later, it was happening to me. Here I was in Newtown, Connecticut, and some hip, young kid who looked like he attended art school and was in a band said he loved my work. What made it even better was that I was on a first date with a gorgeous black man who looked like the president from that show 24. Come to think of it, the black guy was probably the accessory the barista needed to place my face. We got free coffee that day, and I left a huge tip as a thank-you, ’cause you know if a black guy thinks you’re his ticket to free shit, you’re getting a second date.
A few weeks later, I was in another Starbucks, this time in LAX. I had two hours to kill so I wandered into the store for an iced venti skim latte. As I approached the counter, the barista did a double take and squinted at me.
“Hey, haven’t I seen you before?”
“Yes.” I feigned modesty. “I’m on TV all the time.”
He eyed me further and said, “No, that’s not it. Didn’t you get yelled at once for bringing a dog in here?”
As he turned away to make my drink, I scowled behind his back. He was so punished!
Fuck him! I’m glad I forgot my pen.
My First Time Being Heckled
“Bring back the fat chick!”
It was only five words, but it was five words that would change my career—and my life—forever.
The place was one of the thousands of mediocre crab-and-burger joints in any small town that hosts a stand-up comedy show once a week to pull in some extra dough. Since a microphone, a speaker, and a three-by-five-inch patch of floorboard are the only things these restaurants need to mount a show, these rooms were popping up all over in the early nineties, even as the comedy club boom was dying down. And this particular restaurant in Meriden, Connecticut, was no different. The crowd was full of food and half-full of liquor, and had no patience at all for bullshit.
Since I and most of my family are proud to call Connecticut home, I invited my brother and sister-in-law, whom I adore—and at times, idolize—to this, one of my first paid gigs in the area. They hadn’t seen me perform in a while and they were excited to have a rare night out, away from their growing family of six kids.
To be honest, my set wasn’t my best. Having just started in comedy a year before, I was still finding my legs and hadn’t nearly begun to have a cohesive style. Of course, my future as an insult comic and roaster wasn’t even a twinkle in my beginner’s mind, and I did about fifteen minutes of jokes about my weight (a constant point of controversy in my life), my Italian family, and my current relationship—a mediocre but passable job as the first comic up.
As I introduced the next comic, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had made it through the set without embarrassing myself and my family, and I could go home confident that my brother and his wife would give me a good—if not glowing—review of my set. As I got ready to sit down with them to watch the second comic, who was by that time struggling for laughs, I heard the fateful line that I will never forget: “Bring back the fat chick!”
I froze. That sentence was a double-edged sword. Sure, the drunken creep who yelled it was implying I was funnier than comic number two and that he’d like to see more. But he had called me “fat,” a word that every woman from Eve to Eva Braun to Eve Arden to Eve Ensler has feared. I felt my face turn red as the audience, including my family, shifted their gaze to where I stood on leaden feet. In that instant, I made a decision: I
was gonna get them before they got me. I was going to be armed and dangerous. I may be the only comedian who has been heckled when she was off stage, but in that moment, “Lisa Lampanelli, insult comic” was born.
The next day was a blur of notebook, pen, and pencil as I sat at my parents’ kitchen table gathering ammo. Never again would I be caught with my pants down. In fact, I would catch my audience with its pants down, and I’d pull ’em down even farther. I’d show them who was boss from the second I stepped onto that stage, and if anyone dared even think about heckling, it was on!
Now that I look back, most of the lines I scribbled frantically that day at my parents’ house ranged from the mediocre to the horrible. They were lines like “Sir, I don’t go to where you work and clean the monkey shit off the windows,” “Let me buy you a drink. Waitress, a vinegar-and-water for the douche up front,” and “Hey, sir, if your dick was as big as your mouth, you’d be in porno.”
While not A-list material by any standard, these lines gave me confidence. See, there’s a certain self-assurance in being prepared—hey, did ya ever see an unconfident Boy Scout? No!—and in seventeen years in this business, I can count on two hands the times I’ve been heckled. Of course, when you’re as lovable as I am, this is easy to achieve. Also, I now make sure to make sexual advances on the biggest, hottest security guard before the show. That way, he will crack the skull of anyone who looks at me cross-eyed.
Hey, I may be the fat chick, but I’m the fat chick who puts out. And that’s a different story altogether.
My First Time on THE TONIGHT SHOW
The first time you do The Tonight Show is a huge deal. In the old days when Johnny Carson was there and everybody only had three channels, a good set on The Tonight Show would change your life. For me, it served an even more important purpose: It stopped my parents from asking me when I was going to get a real job and quit this monkey business.
Comedy is a strange profession. People who have been onstage two times in their lives have business cards that say “Comedian.” Therefore, a comic’s entire career is focused on separating himself from the delusional wackos. The difference between being a comic who has done The Tonight Show and one who hasn’t is the difference between playing basketball at the Y and playing ball in the NBA. You have undoubtedly staked out a career and you can afford to have several illegitimate children.
The best part of being booked on the show is that for a month before your appearance, while talking to other comedians, you can utter the phrase “Yeah, I have to get my jokes ready for The Tonight Show.” That’s the equivalent of saying, “I have to get my pussy waxed for Brad Pitt.” It inspires sheer jealousy from everyone who hasn’t been there. And, in the end, isn’t that what show business is all about?
When people ask if you’ve been on The Tonight Show, they’re basically asking you if you’re really a comic or just a bank teller who does comedy on the side. To a lot of people, you’re not a comic until you’ve been on The Tonight Show. In fact, when I did my first Tonight Show, it was one of my greatest honors—even though it wasn’t Johnny Carson anymore. Hey, at least it wasn’t Conan yet.
Nothing in seventeen years in the business shocked me more than finding out I was being considered as a Tonight Show guest. Comics like me—edgy, dirty, C-word-saying beeyotches—didn’t appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or any network late-night shows, for that matter. Instead, we did BET’s Comic View, the occasional Premium Blend, and Comedy Central after midnight. So, one day in 2006, when my manager called to say that The Tonight Show wanted me to appear as a guest on their fabled couch, I thought she had the wrong comic.
“Seriously, they love you, and they want you to come on with Simon Cowell and give him a hard time.” Simon Cowell! This was a score! Not only did I not have to perform stand-up on the show—a condition I wouldn’t bend on since my stand-up did not translate to four minutes of clean and clever material—I could panel with someone who could dish it out and take it. I set about writing Simon Cowell insults that were funny but not so insulting that he’d storm off the set with his knickers in a bunch.
I’ve always been one of those comics who makes it look easy—whether it’s a festival audition, a closing set on a roast, or an urban show with an all-black audience—so I knew I had to bring it for The Tonight Show. I arrived four hours early for hair and makeup—trust me, hair and makeup on someone over the age of forty takes at least three hours and your own stylist, not the show-provided makeup artist who is used to making models and actresses under thirty look fresh. As I sat in the chair in the number-two dressing room—the number-one dressing room was reserved for Simon—I looked over the notes I’d jotted down after talking to the segment producers a few days before.
First came the specific instructions on how to handle the crowd:
INVOLVE THE AUDIENCE!!! TEAM WITH THEM.
CONFRONT MOANS—JAY HATES MOANS. SAY “OH COME ON!!!”
DON’T MENTION KEVIN’S ERECTION—JAY MAY FEEL IT STEALS HIS THUNDER.
Then came my list of condescending names I’d call Simon in case he interrupted me:
“Lemme tell you somethin’, Mr. Bean.”
“Listen, you English fruit.”
Other British names: Elton, Mr. Belvedere, Niles from The Nanny, Mr. Sheffield, Henry Higgins, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Mr. French, Colonel Mustard, “You were great in My Fair Lady.”
Below that was my list of surefire shutter-uppers that would cut Simon off at the pass if he interrupted my flow:
“Simon, don’t be mean to me. I’ll give you a lap dance, you’ll never walk again.”
“Hey, Simon, it’s my turn. Jeez, he keeps poppin’ up like a turd that won’t flush. Floater.”
“Hey, Simon, don’t talk to me that way. I’m a freakin’ lady. I’m a feminine flower.”
“Hey, Simon, I don’t need to listen to you. We won the war in 1776—we’re independent now.”
Last was one final note if all else failed:
Make fun of self.
I’ve always found that once you are truly prepared, you exude such confidence you don’t need your heckler put-downs, your flamethrower, or anything else that is now referred to in comedy as “pulling a Michael Richards.” And that night, I was right. From the second I stepped out on the stage and sat down next to Simon, it was flawless. The British guy didn’t utter a peep and laughed ’til he nearly fell off the couch, Jay laughed but acted respectively shocked and awed by the entire exchange, and Kevin seemed to love the attention from a white beeyotch with a big ass who was definitely into banging him.
The aftermath was even better than the appearance: a big steak at Morton’s, a glowing review from my manager and her boss, and a phone call from all four Blue Collar Comedy guys that can only be described as gushing. (Although I think I heard Ron White drunkenly muttering about a 900 number and saying the word “taint.”) The only thing better than the congratulatory phone calls—including a message on my voice mail from my father saying, “Lisa, pick up, pick up,” as if I still had an answering machine—was the e-mail the next day asking when I was coming back. Whenever you want, fuckers! I was a Tonight Show regular!
My First Time Being Protested
When you’re a struggling comic, you hustle so much that you will do almost anything to get to the next level. When you’re an open-miker, you want to be getting paid work. When you’re a working comic, you want to make enough money to quit your day job. And when you’re doing comedy for a living, you need to do something to get famous, noticed, so your tickets can start selling and maybe you can afford to fill up your gas tank and eat more than one meal a day.
Well, since I was always a comic who worked blue—the comedy word for “dirty”—I didn’t hold out much hope that I’d ever appear on television. So I always tried to devise ways to get mentioned in the media. First, I thought of doing a slave auction in Times Square during Black History Month, in which I would auction off white girls with big asses to buff black
guys as reparations. That would be sure to get me in the papers. However, in September 2002, I landed my first comedy television spot (The NY Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase on Comedy Central), and I was on my way up. The slave auction would have to be shelved.
As controversial as I was, I never got much shit for it. Other than the occasional disgruntled audience member—no more than about one per month (a pretty good rate considering the edgy, racial material I did)—no one sent any hate my way. Sure, there was that one black guy who called in to the radio station in Kansas City who said he was with the NAACP. (Of course, we knew he wasn’t when he thought NAACP stood for “Negroes and All Colored People.”) And there was that one gay guy in Albany who threatened to picket my show the next night. But he forgave me when I told him he had cute shoes.
Eventually, I started to notice something. Aside from the guys above, the ones who usually got angry at me for my race-based material weren’t minorities at all. More often than not, they were self-righteous, liberal white people. You know, the same fucks who turned on Hillary Clinton for having the audacity to campaign. That’s right—I noticed it wasn’t any of the races who were offended. It was these hypocrites! And the only reason they were angry was they didn’t know any minorities. Hey, Linda Liberal! Bang a black guy and then try not to laugh at an ashy-colored ball sack joke! Rent out a room to an Indian couple and then tell me they don’t use curry as deodorant. Humor works when it’s based in truth. You don’t think so? I will give you a hundred bucks for every Jew you can find with a big penis. And I’ll double that amount for an Asian.
Not surprisingly, there was one time that I pissed off enough people in one particular town to result in a mass uprising. It was in March 2007, and I was being protested for the very first time.
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