“The contest was at a club before a panel of judges, and about fifteen other people competed, a lot of whom had never even been on stage before. I had a 102° fever—I was really, really sick. I almost went home, but I decided to stay. I was the last person onstage, and I won.
“They taped the show that night, and my tape was sent to the contest for the whole state of Louisiana. I won and became the Funniest Person in Louisiana. I don’t even think anyone else entered (maybe Al Hirt or Archie Manning). Then my tape was sent to New York—it was put up in a fine hotel and given one hundred dollars a day spending money, which is a lot for a tape—to compete against the tapes from the other forty-nine states. Well, to make a long story short …”
“It’s a little late for that,” one of the children murmured. I couldn’t tell who it was since all of them are trained ventriloquists. I decided to continue.
“So, my tape, representing Louisiana, made it to the top five from all the states. Then all five tapes went to Pee Wee Herman, Harvey Korman, and Soupy Sales—those were the judges—two of whom, if I’m not mistaken, are now on the Supreme Court. And they all picked me as the winner. So I won Funniest Person in America for Showtime based on that one 102° fever performance.
“After I won, I started traveling with that title. Showtime started taking me around to find the next year’s winner. I played parking lots, supermarkets, and other places looking for next year’s winner (most funny people will eventually wind up in parking lots or supermarkets). I traveled in a van with a big nose and funny glasses (on the van, not me). They wanted to make sure I didn’t have too much dignity. I was on the road all the time.
“Having that title and being on Showtime got me a lot of attention. And at that time there wasn’t comedy everywhere and there weren’t that many comedians, so to be on television was sort of a big thing. Club owners could say, ‘As seen on Showtime,’ ‘As seen on TV.’
“I moved to San Francisco, and suddenly I was getting jobs middling and headlining with the title ’The Funniest Person in America. Comedians who had been working a long time and had a lot more material and a lot more stage time and just education in general in how to handle themselves in front of an audience were a little bit peeved. And they were right to be: I was constantly blown away by the act who came before me.
“A title like that really sets you up. You know how people try to pick fights with The Heavyweight Champion of the World? People try to pick fights with The Funniest Person in America, too. And they’re usually a lot easier to beat up.
“My Uncle Punch would use the title sarcastically. ‘Well, if it isn’t The Funniest Person in America sitting with us for Thanksgiving.
“Or, ‘Well lookie here, it’s The Funniest Person in America visiting me in the hospital. I guess you wanna apologize for hitting me in the head with that turkey drumstick.’
“I don’t think they have the contest anymore. They stopped after a couple of years. Where are the other people who won? I don’t know. Maybe some of them are in Congress. Who knows?”
“Aunt Ellen,” Tony asked as he scratched the cobra tattoo I had gotten for him that day at a cute little parlor frequented by longshoremen, “was it like winning the Miss America contest?”
“It wasn’t like Miss America.” I laughed. “There were no tough questions like ‘How would you use your title as The Funniest Person in America to help world peace?’ And the talent portion of the show was … being funny. Clearly that was my talent as The Funniest Person in America. There was no bathing-suit portion, funny or otherwise, and I very rarely wore the crown, except when I was at home. Sometimes, I’d wear the banner and the crown, but not out. There was no song, ‘There she goes, the funniest person in America.’ Some people may have sung that song, but I didn’t hear it. The tape from Georgia did win Miss Congeniality, but I don’t think it did the comic from Georgia—a very nice man—any good.”
I realized then that I had gotten away from the scary part of my story. To quiet the children down, I spent about an hour teaching them to blow smoke rings from their cigarettes. Then I turned off all the lights in my house (it took just a second; all I had to do was clap loud twice), held a flashlight under my chin, and said, “Now that you have some background, here are some really scary stories of bad gigs.
“One bad place I played was a marine base in front of three hundred marines. It was all men. I walked onstage and they were all screaming. They wanted me to take my clothes off, basically. They were naming parts of my body they wanted to see (some parts I hadn’t even heard of). They would not shut up, and I was trying to talk to them. ‘Hey, how is everybody doing?’ I was trying to gain control. But these marines were just screaming at me. And I stayed up there for maybe three minutes. I realized that they were never going to shut up, and I walked offstage.
“I told the guy in charge, ‘I can’t do this.
“He said, ‘Whoever booked you was stupid because these men are animals, and we want them to be animals. We train them to kill. We don’t want them to like art. We don’t want them to appreciate art.’
“ ‘I just want my hundred dollars. I just want to go home. But, thank you for calling what I do art.’
“He kept telling me how stupid it was that I was there. Naive me, I thought these guys would be happy to see a woman, happy to hear comedy. They should have booked some stripper or something. They didn’t want to hear ‘The Phone Call from God,’ or ‘Aren’t People Stupid?’ or ‘Don’t You Hate It When You Taste Something That Tastes Bad … and People Want You to Taste It?’
“They’d yell, ‘I’d like to taste something.’ They were just horrible. No matter what I said, everything was a sexual connotation. They weren’t clever. There were no double entendres. They were barely able to master the single entendre.
“ ‘Who here is from out of town?’
“ ‘I’ve got your out of town.’
“ ‘What do you mean by that?’
“ ‘You want me to be mean?!’
“ ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?’
“ ‘No.’
“But you learn from these situations; you grow from them. You learn that no matter how good you are, there are certain places you walk into and there’s a certain energy in that room that you cannot change. It’s like having Guns ’N Roses open for Perry Como. There’s no way that the audience is going to say, ‘Well, this is sort of good.’
“Like in Vegas, I would open for the Pointer Sisters or Dolly Parton or Smokey Robinson. And the audience would just be waiting for them. So, while I was on, people would be eating or talking or turned around or just still being seated right in front of me. And I’d be onstage trying to do my act.
“The worst gig was the first time I played a casino. It was in Atlantic City. I opened for Lola Falana. Most of the people in the audience were between seventy and eighty. I walked out, and, needless to say, my stuff was not going over at all. I was supposed to do twenty minutes. There were no laughs and I was going faster and faster, trying to fill in the dead air. I did about ten minutes, then I walked offstage. The union guys were screaming at me, ‘We have this timed so that the curtain goes up when Lola comes out. You’ve got to go back out there.’
“ ‘I can’t get back out there. There’s nothing else for me to say. That was the safest stuff, the easiest stuff I have.’ It was a huge fight and I almost got fired. But the next day, over a pot of tea and some scones, the union guys convinced me to come back and find a way to do twenty minutes.
“So that night I had to talk slower and stall. I used this whole analogy of how, when you order the barbecued chicken entrée at a restaurant, you’re choosing it because you really want the barbecued chicken. But the waitress tells you, ‘Well, you know, cole slaw comes with that barbecued chicken.’ And you say, ‘Well, I’m not interested in the cole slaw. I just want the barbecued chicken.
“I told the second-night audience, ‘This is sort of what I am. I’m the cole slaw. M
aybe you didn’t really want the cole slaw, but I come with the barbecued chicken. Lola Falana is the barbecued chicken, I’m the cole slaw. If you taste the cole slaw, you may enjoy it. I know you don’t-really want it. And you can have your barbecue, it’s not like you’re not going to have your chicken. But just taste the cole slaw and see if you enjoy it. And even if you don’t enjoy it, its on the plate. It’s gotta be there.’
“And that would take up a little bit of time; nobody would laugh, but it would take up time. People would sometimes yell out, ‘Is it the type of cole slaw with mayonnaise or the vinegar kind? Because I’m allergic to mayonnaise.’
“ ‘Well then maybe you’re allergic to me, ma’am. Or, maybe I don’t have to be cole slaw. I could be baked beans. What wouldn’t you mind so much?’
“ ‘I don’t know. Hon,’ she says, turning to her husband, ‘when we’re at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, what do we usually get with the chicken?’
“ ‘Cole slaw.’
“ ‘No, I’m allergic to cole slaw!’
“ ‘Beans?’
“Everybody broke into conversations.
“ ‘I don’t like cole slaw.’
“ ‘Well, she’s not saying she’s cole slaw, she’s saying she’s something else made out of cabbage. Like, for instance … cole slaw.’
“And I’m going, ‘Now wait a minute. Everybody listen to me. I’m just making an analogy. I’m not really cole slaw.’
“And the audience went, ‘Ohhhhh,’ then after a beat, ‘We want Lola! We want Lola!’
“It’s really scary when you have a whole room full of people seventy years old chanting, ‘We want Lola.’ Oh yes, I can’t think of anything scarier. So, my little friends,” I addressed the moon-eyed children looking up at me, “was that a scary story or what?”
The children looked at each other, then they started to chant, “We want Lola! We want Lola! We want Lola!”
And they wouldn’t be quiet until I called Lola Falana and had her come over and entertain us.
But that’s a story for another day.
the plane
truth
or
dem ain’t goobers, dem’s peanuts!
I know that experts say you’re more likely to get hurt crossing the street than you are flying (these, of course, would be the street-crossing experts), but that doesn’t make me feel any less frightened of flying. If anything, it makes me more afraid of crossing the street. As soon as the light turns green, I run across the street as fast as I can, screaming like a madwoman. I arrive on the other side out of breath, wheezing, and clutching my stomach (or if I’m in a whimsical mood, the stomach of the person standing next to me).
So, to conquer my fear of flying, I decided to write down my feelings on a recent trip. I kept an in-flight journal (which is like an in-flight movie—but without anyone standing up in front of you so you miss the good parts, and with better sound).
I felt edgy the moment I stepped into the aircraft. That could be why I snapped at the woman in front of me. In my defense, she did ask the flight attendant a pretty stupid question: “Excuse me, where is seat 27-B?” I mean, really. But I see now that I overreacted when I screamed at her, “Well, moron, you walk in the only direction you can, and it’s the 27th row, seat B—next to seat A. All righty?!” That sort of response is probably one of the many reasons why I’m not a flight attendant.
It was only when the woman (27-B) turned around to look at me that I saw she was a nun. I guess that sort of hatlike thing she wore on her head should have given me a clue, but sometimes I don’t have that good an eye for details.
I tried to apologize by smiling and giving her a playful punch on the arm to let her know I was joking. Well, either my playful punch carried more of a wallop than I intended (due to the tension I feel about flying), or her advanced years made her frailer than she appeared, or she was just a big old ham (which is my theory), but the nun shouted out, “Owww!” and rubbed her arm like she was in pain. She rolled up her sleeve and … You know, that bruise could easily have been there before I hit her.
My good friend Jasmine (at least I think that’s her name; I’m so scared that it’s affecting my already rattled memory; I know that it’s the name of a tea, so if it’s not Jasmine, it’s either Earl Grey or Hibiscus) told me that a good way to combat fear is to chant. So all the way to my seat I was chanting, “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, oh sweet Lord, I’m going to die.” It didn’t work. If anything, I was more petrified when I got to my seat (27-A). Even seeing the familiar face of the nun in 27-B (who seemed to flinch when she saw me) didn’t calm me down.
So here I am, sitting in my seat, working on my journal. Hey, there’s a fly on this plane. I am so scared of flying, I can’t imagine how flies do it all day, every day. But, then again, that’s what a fly does, fly. It’s his job. What’s going through that fly’s mind? He’s looking out the window and probably saying to himself, “Wow, look how high up I am. I’ve never gotten up this high, I am going very, very fast, and I’m not really working any harder than I usually do.”
This fly just happened to wander onto a plane in Los Angeles. Several hours later it is going to get off in New York City. I’m concerned it will be disoriented, and not just from jet lag and being improperly dressed for New York, but more in a Home Alone 2 kind of way.
A bunch of flies will probably be waiting as it gets off the plane. They’ll all be hugging, blocking the way. Nobody will get by. There will even be a chauffeur holding a tiny sign that says FLY. I’ll be relieved to see he has friends there. Well, I’m assuming it’s a he. It’s so hard to tell unless you hold them really still and look closely, and I don’t want to do that on the plane with people around. That’s something you should do at home—alone.
Aghhhhhh! What was that? “Fuck, we’re going to crash!!!”
Oh, I wish I hadn’t shouted that out loud. It was just the beverage cart rumbling by. Being on a plane just freaks me out. Any little movement, and suddenly it’s like I have Tourette’s syndrome. Anything at all—“Fuck! Shit!” I don’t even curse. I never curse. It’s so embarrassing. “Pardon me, Sister, I am sorry, I … I was frightened. Pray for me.”
Now she’s going to turn on that little air thing above her. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think it takes power away from the plane somehow. I get mad if people next to me use theirs.
“Sister, don’t use that, that’s … Dang! Shut it off! I’ll hit ya! Shut it off!!”
The nun just left to find a different seat. Some people are so touchy. I’m sure she didn’t learn that little hand gesture in her convent, either.
As scary as this flight is, it’s nothing compared to those tiny Buddy Holly planes that I’ve had to fly in to get to different stand-up performances. Oh God, those little propeller planes, those little eight-seater tiny planes where you can actually see the pilots in the cockpit. They’re reading through some manuals like So You Want to Be a Pilot. They’re just flipping through the pamphlet trying to figure out which buttons to push to land the plane.
I’ve got to relax somehow. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I’ll recline my seat. Oh, that makes all the difference. That ¾ of an inch between upright and reclined is the difference between agony and ecstasy. I never thought ¾ of an inch could mean so much. Now I can sleep. When I get home, I’m going to put some gizmo in my chairs so that they go back ¾ of an inch, too. I wouldn’t overdo it like the guy sitting in front of me. His seat goes so far back that his head is practically in my lap. I can pretty much read his newspaper.
I’d better not get too comfortable in my ¾ of an inch recline because toward the end of the flight, the flight attendant is going to say, “You’re going to have to put your seat in the upright position for landing.” They’re so adamant about that every single time, like that’s gonna make a difference. Because if we crash, the investigators are going to say, “Oh, that’s a shame, her seat was reclined ¾ of an inch. When will they learn? What was that—thirt
y thousand feet? She could have made that. Sheesh. If only she’d been upright.”
Being reclined isn’t working. I’m still freaking out. I know what I need. “Oh, flight attendant. Oh, ma’am.” You have to talk nice to the flight attendants because they’re all arrogant little bitches. Unless, of course, you happen to be a flight attendant or are related to or are friends with one—then you are the absolutely lovely exceptions to this rule. But the rest of them, they have this attitude. And they can afford to have the attitude, because they have the power—they have the peanuts.
They have these six peanuts that we need. Six peanuts. Somebody could offer that to you on the street, and you’d say, “I don’t want that shit—get that away from me. Six peanuts? No-oh.” Somehow they’ve done research. They know that the higher we go, the more we need nuts. And we go crazy if we don’t get them.
“Miss, I didn’t get my, uh—my peanuts. And I’d really appreciate it if you gave me some. They’re good, aren’t they? I’ve never been able to get them on the ground either. At least not ones this good. Thank you. Oh, thank you.”
Fuck, what was that! “We’re going to crash!” Oops, false alarm. It’s just the food cart coming down the aisle.
I think they only give you six peanuts so that you don’t spoil your appetite for the disgusting meal that’s soon to follow. You never hear anybody say, “You know, I can’t finish that. Could you wrap that up for me please? That was delicious. It’s just too much. I’m stuffed! What was that, pigeon?”
But we do get excited about it, don’t we? “Oh, here comes the cart, put down the tray! La la la la. Put down your tray! They’re starting on the other side first. Hurry! Hurry! Those people over there—they’re eating. Those people are eating.”
This is the tiniest food I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I guess they figure everything’s relative. You get that high up, you look out the window, “Well, it’s as big as that house down there. I can’t eat all that. Look at the size of that. It’s as big as a house. Me thinking I could eat all that! Ha! Split that steak with me. Now that’s a steak.” Any kind of meat that you get—chicken, steak, anything—has grill marks on each side, like somehow we’ll actually believe there’s an open-flame grill in the front of the plane.
My Point... And I Do Have One Page 3