by Ron White
Then we didn’t see each other for a while. Then we’re both traveling, we run into each other in Las Vegas, and we almost immediately start making out. We go to her room and we fuck like we both just got out of prison. I rip the fucking headboard off the wall, I’m throwing some dick.
She used to come to the lake house, when she was in Austin, so she knew Phyllis. I start making excuses to meet her different places. I’m lying to Phyllis about going to Austin or wherever for a tryout for the Montreal Comedy Festival or what have you.
Then I go to Denver to see this lady, and I don’t even give Phyllis a cover story. So Phyllis decides I’m fucking somebody. And my lady love is leery of everything, because she knows Phyllis is crazy.
One night Phyllis is drunk and she calls the lady I’m fucking to help her figure out what lady I’m fucking. At first, my friend thinks Phyllis knows the truth. Then she realizes Phyllis doesn’t know. And in the course of this, Phyllis tells her, “Sometimes when I watch Ron sleep, I just want to kill him.”
She decides right then and there, this shit is over, she won’t see me, she won’t return my calls. Finally she returns my call and she says, “Listen, Ron, I like you a lot. But I can’t do this, and here’s something you need to know. Phyllis told me that sometimes when you’re sleeping, she just wants to kill you.”
Foxworthy knows Phyllis is crazy. And he’s already told me, “If you move back north of the border and stop doing all the drugs and shit you’re doing in Mexico, I’ll put you up in any hotel in America for as long as you want to live there, and I’ll pay for it.”
Anyway, my friend who was once my lover and is now officially my ex-lover tells me what Phyllis told her, and she says, “But you gotta remember, Phyllis was really drunk when she said that about wanting to kill you.”
And I’m like, “That doesn’t help. The only time I tell the truth is when I’m drunk. I don’t feel any safer because she was drunk when she said it.”
So I decide to get out. But it’s hard to leave. We have two dogs. We have a nice house across the street from a church in a nice, quiet neighborhood in Reynoso. It’s not where the brick king lives, but it’s nice.
And I love it there. It’s the Wild West. I was born to live in the fucking Wild West.
One day the new police chief was quoted in the paper saying he was going to stop the drug traffic going through town. You’ve heard of a death wish. Apparently, the new police chief had a tragic accident wish.
My favorite restaurant in the city was La Mansión. It was a very cool-looking place with great big ceilings. A few days later the police chief’s having dinner at La Mansión with the district attorney and a third man. The third man stands up and unloads a pistol in the police chief’s chest. Another tragic Reynoso accident.
I wasn’t eating there at the time. But that became my favorite table.
And you gotta realize that even if my finances aren’t as healthy as the brick king’s, I’m still in the upper 1 percent income bracket in Reynoso. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived where I could make that claim.
So I could always eat at the best places when I wanted to, like La Mansión. But I ate off the taco stands too. My son used to come down a lot and he loved it. We ate off this great fucking taco stand right across the street from the church right by our house. The locals would congregate there.
It was a high-end taco stand. The proprietor made a better taco and he charged more. And if you bitched about the price, he would tell you where to go to get a cheaper one.
“Is that all you care about is cheap? Then you don’t eat at my taco stand.” He was the taco Nazi, like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld.
He had Cokes in the original bottle on ice. A few of Coca-Cola’s Mexican bottlers never abandoned the original bottle. And there’s just something about them. They’re as great as a Coke ever was.
There was a place in the neighborhood that made carnitas. Every day this man rendered a hog, and he used every part of the pig for something. Like the skin for crackling. Then he would make his deep-fried pork lard, and it was so fucking goddamn delicious. Some of it he sold to restaurants and the rest he sold to the public until it was gone. And there’d be people arguing over the heart and the liver and so on.
He would just put it on a scale and wrap it up in some foil and give that to you with some hard tortillas and this great salsa that his wife made. You didn’t know what part of the pig you got until you opened up the foil.
One day Marshall and I took some home. We opened it up, and there was a perfectly round thing with two holes in it—it was the fucking snout. And Marshall said, bless him, “At least it doesn’t have one hole.”
Meanwhile Phyllis is just a mess. She’s not taking care of herself. She hates everybody.
I want out, but I can’t just leave her in Mexico. Her family knows she can be impossible, and they’re surprised I’ve put up with her for so long. I call ’em— I still to this day talk to her family—and I tell ’em, “You gotta come and get her. ’Cause I can’t leave her here, but I’m not gonna stay with her either. We gotta have an intervention.”
It was a bad scene. Her parents drove down from Omaha pulling a big fucking trailer. And her brother-in-law and sister came down.
Most of the stuff we had in the house was hers. ’Cause just before our relationship began I had gotten divorced from Marshall’s mother, and I just walked out of that. I left the house, the furniture, the washer and dryer, I left it all, ’cause I didn’t need it, I was gonna be on the road.
I know Phyllis’s not gonna take kindly to the intervention. When her parents show up, she won’t even let ’em in the house. Finally we make this arrangement where I’m gonna put her on a plane first class, which was a big deal to us. That’s a bonus. And I’m gonna pack the stuff, all the household stuff and all the pottery, and get it to her—she’s gonna have it all.
The brick king has become an investor and he’s just gonna take it in the fucking ass. I’m just gonna give her the shit, and I’m gonna tell him I don’t know what. And I know he won’t care. Which he didn’t. He had written it all off before then. He knew we didn’t have a marketing plan and a distribution system and all. He just came over one day and said, “This is cool.” He fell in love with it, like I did.
Some of the bigger pieces had a hundred hours of labor in them. The stuff was beautiful, and when people saw it, they loved it.
I had created this whole Mexican craft-artist identity for Phyllis. It was all laid out in this beautiful brochure I had made, how her grandfather was a master mosaicist in Mazatlán who did the churches in Machu Picchu.
I called my buddies Steve Cook and Sam Bartholomew because I had to go on the road, and I said, “Steve, I need you to come down here and I need you to drive a truck out of Mexico.”
He said, “You got it. I’ll be there tomorrow and I’ll help you get packed up and get you out of there.”
Phyllis was already gone.
My initial plan had been to say, “I’m leaving, and I’m taking the dogs,” hoping it could now be about the two dogs we had.
I was hoping she’d say, “You’re not taking the dogs. Those are my dogs.”
Then I could say, “OK, you can have the dogs. Bye.”
I knew I was gonna do this two weeks before I did it. So I just felt guilty. ’Cause I loved these fucking dogs. They were two great Labs. I’d look at ’em and think, “Oh fuck, I’m sending you off. There’s nothing I can do. I’m using you as a fucking tool.”
It didn’t work worth a shit. She said, “I don’t give a fuck about the dogs. You’re not gonna leave me. Kill the fucking dogs.”
So I also had to find a good home for the dogs, which I fortunately did. And Steve came down from San Antonio to help me pack up and convoy everything to Dallas.
When I drove into Mexico, I had the biggest truck Ryder rents, with the biggest trailer Ryder rents behind it. Then I had my custom GMC van with the biggest trailer Ryder rents behind it. Convoyin
g south on Highway 287.
Four years later I have the exact same equipment heading north on Highway 287, and I went, “Well, that was a bad idea.”
Steve and I convoyed to Dallas. My stuff was in the trailer behind the van, and Phyllis’s stuff was in the Ryder truck and its trailer. Sammy, my dear friend, drove the Ryder truck and trailer to Omaha, unloaded it all.
Then I started living in Sammy’s attic. I thought it was great. I’d been living my life a long fucking time and that amounted to me being broke. I had a mattress on the floor, a crystal peanut bowl the Foxworthys gave me for Christmas, a pillow, and a blanket.
I’m like, “All right, whatever, we start again. We just fucking start again.”
I felt great. I still had a career. Foxworthy was making rumblings about this idea he had for a “blue-collar comedy tour.” I was hoping for good things.
Three years later, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour was going strong, and Warner Bros. was getting ready to release a concert film in theaters.
Then Fox got interested in Señor White and spent $2.2 million making the twenty-two-minute pilot, which was funny as shit. I’m prejudiced, of course, but everybody who saw it liked it.
Great people worked on it. Betty Thomas was the director. She had become a big-time movie director after being part of the cast of Hill Street Blues. We had a good cast, and most of the characters were just like the real people in Reynoso. Except that in the show Irma wasn’t a big old fat lady, she was a fox with these great fucking titties.
We had a seven-day shoot on the pilot, starting on a Thursday and Friday and continuing the next Monday to Friday. Nobody in Hollywood works on the weekend.
We did the first two days and I thought, “Fuck. I had no idea it was this hard to do a television show.”
We were there all fucking day. And I’m the point man on a single-camera shoot. I’m in every scene. And I don’t know what I’m doing.
So all these trained actors are going, “Jeesus Christ, has he ever had a fucking acting lesson?”
Betty would yell, “Cut! Ron, what are you doing?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Betty. Acting?”
“Well, whatever it is, stop it.”
She was such a commanding presence. She made it work. I loved her. There was no question who was in charge. There was one time the assistant director, a guy named Pat, said, “Next time you come around the corner, hug it a little tighter, ’cause I’m losing you in the shot.”
Betty goes, “Hey, Pat, how about I direct the fucking actors?” She was salty.
My wife, Barbara, and I were dating then, and she wanted to come out to see me for the weekend. Now, Barbara and I drink together. So I tell her, “You know what, you can come out, but I have all this work to do. I gotta take it easy. I’m exercising. My weight’s down. I look good. I don’t want to bloat up for the cameras.”
She says, “Fine. We’ll do what you gotta do.”
She arrives late Friday night, but I’m passed out from all day on the shoot. She gets in bed, I don’t even wake up. We spend Saturday together real quiet. Sunday morning we go to the beach for an exercise walk.
We didn’t drink anything Saturday. We didn’t feel bad about it either. We didn’t drink all fucking day, we’re not drunks. That was easy.
We go for a nice long walk on Manhattan Beach, get our exercise. There’s a restaurant there called the Rockfish. We go in there, and we think it really wouldn’t kill us if we shared a glass of wine. One small glass of wine with two straws. A little fragment of wine. What would that hurt? No one could be hurt by that. That ain’t even drinking, really, just a little sip of wine.
So the waitress comes over to take our order. Barbara says, “I’ll have a glass of white wine.” And I say, “I’ll have a double Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks with a splash of water.”
Manhattan Beach is where my buddy from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Bill Engvall, lives. So we call his wife, Gail, and she says, “I’m at the airport now, I’m picking Bill up. Where are you?”
“We’re at the Rockfish.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
So the waitress comes out and Barbara says, “I’ll have another glass of white wine. What about you, Ron?”
“Well, I’ll have another double Johnnie Walker Black with a splash of water. That’ll be fine.”
We’re not drinking seriously or anything. We’re just waiting for our friends. We’re grown-ups, we can have a couple of drinks if we want to.
Gail and Bill show up. Well, Bill makes a lot of money, and he orders a bottle of Opus. I don’t drink wine, so I order another double Johnnie Walker Black. They drink the bottle of Opus. We share a salad. Bill orders another bottle of Opus. We’re getting trashed, we’re getting shit-faced.
Bill and Gail say, “Why don’t you come over to our house and party?”
“OK.”
When we get there, I know where Bill’s liquor cabinet is. I go over there and pull out this twenty-five-year-old bottle of Macallan.
Bill says, “Ron, that’s kind of a sipping whisky.”
“Not tonight, it ain’t.” I pour this big old glass full of it, and then I knock it over with my elbow and spill about $80 worth of scotch. We go out to the back, Barbara cracks open a bottle of wine, we’re all fucked up.
At some point we forget that they’re raising children in this house. This isn’t just a fucking bar. This is their house. They told us, “If you want to get in the hot tub, we’re gonna put the kids to bed, then we’ll come back out and join you.”
So I’m in the hot tub, rolling a joint. Barbara says, “Do you think I should leave on my panties?” Barbara will get naked on you, if you let her.
“Well, I don’t think so. They’re see-through anyway. I’m naked.” We start making out.
Bill and Gail come out. Bill’s got a bathing suit on up to his armpits. And Gail’s got on a turtleneck bathing suit. I swear, I never even heard of a turtleneck bathing suit, but it couldn’t have covered her up any better. Barbara’s titties are floating on the water, I have a hard-on.
So they sit there for about three minutes and then they say, “We’re gonna go to bed. You know where your room is, Ron, you guys can spend the night here.”
So Barbara and I, whatever happens happens. We go upstairs and crash. And I start thinking, “Fuck, I gotta be on the set. My call’s at six fifteen.”
It was fairly early when we went to bed, only about 10:30 or so, ’cause we’d been going at it all fucking day long. But I woke up at 4:30 in the morning, and I’m going, “Fuck. We gotta get outta here.”
I look at the bed, and it’s got blood all over it. And I look at my jeans, and there’s blood all over my fucking jeans. I’m like, “What the fuck happened? Oh, fuck, let’s go.”
Barbara says, “We can’t leave the bloodied sheets at the Engvalls’ house.”
I’m like, “We got no choice. I gotta be on the set at six fifteen. We’ll just sneak out.”
We open the door and the alarm goes off: “Ding, ding, ding.” We shut the fucking door, jump in the car, and drive. Barbara says, “Wait a minute. I’m missing my earrings and my watch.”
It turns out I had fallen on a glass and cut my leg pretty bad. But I didn’t realize I was cut, that’s how fucked up I was. I just bled all over their house.
I put Barbara on a plane and went back to work. The Engvalls FedExed Barbara her earrings and watch.
And I’ve never been invited to their house again. Bill would never tell you that he holds that night against me: the bloodstained sheets, the spilled expensive whisky, saying “cocksucker” in front of his eight-year-old, and Barbara and me getting frisky in the hot tub. Not one little bit: “Ron, your behavior was stellar, thank you for coming over. Visit us again soon.”
I felt bad about it. I still feel bad about it. But at the time I was also feeling good about my career. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour is going great. The concert film is in the can at W
arner Bros., and they’re saying they’re gonna spend $12 million to promote its release in the theaters. ’Cause it’s testing through the roof. It’s getting great fucking numbers. People love it.
So I think, “Fuck, I got it made. Warner Bros. loves me. And Fox loves me.”
Fox is putting me up in this great hotel. And they’ve rented this BMW for me to drive. I had never driven one before, and I kinda liked it. Now, I know Fox has other shows in development, but I think, “They can’t be treating everybody this great. They must love me in particular.”
In fact, Fox had done fourteen pilots and they had spent a pile of money on all of them. But mine was a single-camera shoot. And they had to rent lots from Universal, where we could shoot Mexican street scenes. So it was extra-expensive to produce.
They were gonna pick four shows. They had also bought a pilot from NBC called The Ortegas that starred Cheech Marin. So it got down to five shows including The Ortegas and Señor White.
In the meantime Warner Bros. releases Blue Collar Comedy in movie theaters. But instead of spending $12 million on promotion, they spend $600,000, which is less. And they put it in cities where we’d toured a lot and people had seen us live recently, and they needed to be patient, and they weren’t.
Warner Bros. pulled the movie out of release and said they were going to put it straight to DVD. At that time Hollywood only brought a DVD out quick when they thought the movie was a dud.
I still thought Señor White was gonna make the cut. I went out and bought a $2,000 suit to wear to the party. I thought there’s no way they’re gonna pick The Ortegas, ’cause it sucked. I got a copy and it was terrible. It was really stereotypical.
My show, I never talked down to the Mexicans. I was the fish out of water, they were the geniuses.
My manager saw the pilot for The Ortegas and he told this guy at Fox, “This Ortegas thing sucks.” And the guy said, ‘That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said about it yet.’”