I looked at my dad with a See? He’s fine. My dad pulled me aside for just a second and whispered, “Leave your door open.”
Bob seemed older than both my parents, but since I was the teacher, I said in my most authoritative tone, “All right, Bob. Let’s get goin’.”
He followed me up the stairs. After months of living with his therapist, Howard had just moved back home, so I pretended not to notice the smoke seeping from beneath his door, forming a pot-scented cloud in the hallway. Once in my bedroom, I picked up three balls that sat on the Guatemalan-made ballerina quilt on my twin bed, and began the first lesson of our four-week class. Step by step, ball by ball, I showed Bob the basic juggling pattern, leading him in proper arcing, tossing, and catching. I was reassured when two hours later, at the end of our first class, Bob smiled and said, “That was great. See you next week.”
When he returned for the following lesson, Bob told me he was a television writer. Learning to juggle, he explained, was research for his work.
“Neat,” I said. “Have you written for any show I might have seen?” “Probably,” he answered casually. “I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy.”
My heart started beating so loudly, the sound drowned out Hendrix blasting from my brother’s room. Bob, this ordinary old man juggling in my bedroom, worked on a daily basis with my idol. I’d seen his credit roll into that I Love Lucy heart a thousand times.
“You’re Bob Carroll Jr.?”
“That would be me,” he said. “I’m learning to juggle so I can teach Lucy.”
No. Way.
“Lucy has to learn how to do something really well before she can make it look like she doesn’t know how to do it at all.”
“Like the time when she was trying to climb into the top bunk bed with the stilts?”
“Exactly.” He beamed, clearly impressed with my episodic knowledge.
“Well,” I sputtered, the wheels turning, “Lucy really could learn more effectively if I taught her directly. I could stop by the set or something.”
Bob smiled. “She’s just so busy, it’s hard to pin down a time with her. I’m going to show her whenever we can just grab a second.”
“I see.” Oh well, I tried.
Over the next two weeks Bob proved to be an excellent student. On the night of his final class he said, “Lucy’s going to be very excited. She really does want to learn how to juggle.”
A strange calm oozed through me like taking that first sip of hot chocolate on a chilly night and feeling it pulse through your veins. For so long I’d wanted to be like Lucy. Now Lucy wanted to be like me.
I saw Bob to the door, where he gave me a strong, fatherly hug. By then I felt so confident, I didn’t even care that in the foyer where we said good-bye, Monkey was humping the slipper.
1976
While attending college at the University of California at Santa Cruz, I write papers in longhand for classes such as Ritual Theater and Sexuality in the Cinema. Meanwhile, Apple releases its first computer, and a little-known company called Microsoft registers its trade name with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
I set off the fire alarm in my dorm by eating fire, and cause a full-scale evacuation.
George H.W. Bush begins his one-year stint as the director of the CIA as Charlie’s Angels begin their five-year stint as smart and sexy crime-fighters.
Patty “Tanya” Hearst is convicted of armed robbery and Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life for attempting to shoot President Ford. Though “Bad Girls” won’t be a hit for Donna Summer for a few years, her song “Love to Love You Baby” tops the charts.
My gloom over not being in a relationship is magnified when everyone else seems to be in one—Captain and Tennille, Bianca and Mick, and even Sonny and Cher, who, though divorced, reunite for the new Sonny and Cher Show.
Shortly after attending “Gay Day” at Ho Chi Minh Park in Berkeley, I meet my first real girlfriend. Finally, some “Afternoon Delight”!
O. J. Simpson gains 273 yards for Buffalo vs. Detroit while the Supreme Court lifts the 1972 ban on the death penalty for convicted murderers.
After having done the EST training I continue taking workshops, including a weekend seminar in L.A. called “Communication in Performing Arts” where, during an exercise, I am partnered with Valerie Harper, star of Rhoda.
I leave college and move to New York for six months to pursue my career as an entertainer. I perform at the Grove Street Playhouse—where I juggle and eat fire along with future MacArthur genius grant recipient Michael Moschen—as the Son of Sam terrorizes the city.
Queen of the Oddballs
I sit anxiously in a waiting room, sandwiched between an enormously overweight woman dressed like a chicken and an old toothless fiddler. A wiry, bearded man standing in front of me deeply inhales a cigar, then blows smoke rings into different shapes—hearts, squares, crosses—while a young black woman in an ill-fitting, peach-colored suit bursts into riffs as if she’s testifying to Lord Jesus. I’m a nineteen-year-old chubby girl squeezed into a black sequined gown with a fur wrap draped over my shoulders and carrying three juggling balls in a gold lamé purse. So who am I to judge?
Although we are all chatty and sweet to one another, in truth we’re fierce competitors. After all, only one of us can win The Gong Show.
We’re moments away from taping in front of a live studio audience when in walks Chuck Barris, the lovable, bumbling host who years later, in his autobiographical tell-all book and subsequent movie, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, will reveal that he’s a CIA assassin.
“Hey everybody.” He claps his hands, shifting from one foot to the other. “We’ve got a lot of great stuff today. So just have fun.” His mischievous smile is endearing and his messy hair comforting, despite the fact that he may have just returned from offing someone.
The taping begins. Smoke-ring guy is the first one called to the stage. The rest of us watch the show on a monitor in the beige Green Room. This is the first time we’re seeing the acts we’re up against, and I am at once relieved and frightened to discover that most of the oddballs I’ve been hanging out with all day are not just talentless, they’re utterly delusional.
But wait. Do they think I’m like them? No way. I’m a professional. I’ve been reviewed—the Herald-Examiner said I deserved ten encores, the Los Angeles Times thought I was doing important work, and the Santa Cruz Sentinel called me extraordinary! Shit—maybe appearing on The Gong Show isn’t the career move I thought it would be. What if millions of people watching think I’m deluded, too? Worse—what if I get gonged? I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down without inhaling too much of old toothless fiddler’s B.O.
Smoke-ring guy receives a score of fourteen out of a possible thirty. Next up is big, fat, chicken lady whose act consists of telling bad “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes and after each one, belting out “SQUAWK.” She’s not gonged by just one of the judges, she’s gonged by all three. Dejected, she returns to the green room and exclaims, “I got gang-gonged.”
But the old fiddler, who is up next, takes me by surprise. Not only does he give a kick-ass performance, he’s so damn cute playing “Turkey in the Straw” and flashing his toothless smile that when the judges give him twenty-nine out of thirty points, I’m thrilled. That is until I realize he now has the score I have to beat. By the time the producer calls my name I am so nervous, sweat has gathered under my politically correct unshaven armpits.
A masculine woman wearing a headset leads me to the stage and instructs me to wait behind the curtain for my cue. I hear the stage manager’s countdown “five, four, three, two….” and Milton Delugg and the Gong Show band strike up the familiar Gong Show theme song. I’ve watched Chuck Barris doing his shticky intros countless times, but this one’s for me. I listen intently.
“This next act will have you holding your breath. She has a great act but a lousy perfume. Let’s hear it for Hillary Carlip!”
; Oh my God. That’s got to be a random intro. He can’t smell me from out there, can he? Just before the curtain rises I quickly wipe the sweat from my armpits with the end of my fake-fur wrap. I carry a chair onto the stage and set it down. I sing the intro to my song, which I originally wrote as an audition piece for a musical comedy workshop at my college, the University of California at Santa Cruz, led by the famed satirist Tom Lehrer. He didn’t accept me into the workshop, but Tom and I did form a friendship, and it was he who helped me rewrite the song to perfection—the song I’m performing and could get gonged for on national TV.
I set my purse down on the chair and peel off my jacket, revealing my sequined gown. The audience “oohs” and “aaahs.” They have no idea what’s coming as I open my gold lamé purse and pull out three bright orange juggling balls.
I sing my song, “I Really Get a Kick When He’s Around,” accompanying each lyric with a coordinating juggling trick, a variation on my original bakery routine. When I sing “kick,” I kick the ball off my foot, without interrupting the pattern. The audience eagerly leans forward as I sing, “He does things behind my back” and send the balls there. By the time I reach “Our love is a bust” and roll the balls over my chest, the crowd is in hysterics, and I’m gaining confidence since the showstopper is yet to come.
I slow down the verse and launch into, “And then when I tell him to watch-it-he…tells me I’m just being crotchety…” and you can guess where the balls go on that line. The audience and judges howl, forcing the band to vamp until the laughter dies down.
I finish my routine and return the balls to my purse. I am so relieved to have made it through the whole song without dropping a ball—or getting gonged—that when Chuck Barris moves toward me, arms outstretched, I lean in to give him a great big hug.
I can’t stop smiling—not because I’m relieved, but because my extra-dry top lip is sticking to my gums. Chuck turns to the judges. “So, what do you all think of Hillary Carlip?”
Elke Sommer, the foxy Fraulein destined for Love Boat guest star status, shouts: “Fabulous! I give her a ten!”
Next, the sassy, saucy songstress Jaye P. Morgan says, “You’re sensational. You do everything right,” and I receive my second perfect ten.
I wait, my left leg shaking, as the last judge weighs in. Cocky critic Rex Reed, Gong Show regular, has never given anyone a ten, but that’s what I’ll need to beat ol’ kick-ass, toothless fiddler. Everything around me begins to move in slow motion.
“I thought you were terrific,” Rex says. “I love the way you sing. I have a reputation on this show for being the mean old man of the panel. This is the very first time I have ever given a ten.”
I hold in the screech that threatens to burst out of my fur-wrapped throat as the audience cheers. I return to the Green Room, where I expect to be greeted with cool, competitive snubs, but everyone showers me with warm congratulations.
“That was fantastic!” Chicken Lady squawks as she hugs me.
“Spectacular,” croaks an eighty-six-year-old woman wearing a silver sequined minidress and a huge pink bow on top of bleached blond hair.
Even old toothless fiddler, whom I now have officially beaten, pats me on the back and lisps, “Marvelouth!”
I can’t help but be moved by my fellow contestants, who rather than hide their oddness, celebrate it.
We sit together and watch the monitor, where we can see the next contestant perform. It’s the young black woman in the ill-fitting, peach-colored suit, and she’s singing the hell out of “You Are So Beautiful.” Shit. She’s good. Really good.
When the judges weigh in Elke and Jaye P. each give the woman a ten. And now that I’ve opened the dam on Rex Reed’s generosity, he gives her his second-ever ten.
We suddenly have…a tie.
I haven’t been this nervous since my last TV performance, two years ago, when I taught tennis sensation Jimmy Connors how to juggle on Dinah Shore’s TV show Dinah!
At the end of the taping, as all the contestants are ushered onto the stage, the huge woman dressed like a chicken takes me under her wing, figuratively and literally. The audience must break the tie by a show of applause.
My competition is first. Chuck Barris puts his hand over her head. “Let’s hear it for Cheryl Lynn!”
The audience applauds wildly. They love her. I’m sweating more than ever. Chuck places his hand over my head. “Now, Hillary Carlip!” The cheering swells. The “applause-o-meter” soars.
I’ve just won The Gong Show.
Milton Delugg and the band strike up the theme song, Chuck Barris kisses me on the lips, balloons tumble from the ceiling, and a midget scurries onstage and tosses confetti from a basket. Siv Aberg, the gorgeous, Swedish Gong Show hostess, presents me with the trophy and a Publisher’s Clearing House-like, jumbo-sized check for $712.05.
The judges walk onstage and give me congratulatory kisses. The sassy, saucy Jaye P. Morgan gives me an extra-long hug and a lingering, direct-eye-contact look. Is Jaye P. Morgan cruising me? Before I can explore this further, the confetti-tossing midget grabs me and leads me in a demented, high-speed waltz.
In all the hubbub, I notice a dejected Cheryl Lynn. I walk over, take her hand, and tell her how amazing she was. A few months later, I read in People magazine that the day after our show airs, Cheryl Lynn is contacted by the president of Columbia Records, who signs her to a major record deal. Not long after, she rises to the top of the charts with her hugely successful disco hit song, “Got to Be Real.”
But today I am the winner. And not just because I prevailed over future disco sensation Cheryl Lynn. I also won a high-speed waltz with a confetti-tossing midget, a kiss on the lips from a professed CIA assassin, a hug from a lady dressed like a chicken, and a pat on the back from an old toothless fiddler. I am surrounded by a posse of oddballs, and today I am the Queen.
Summer
1980
I am hired to teach Jimmie “J. J.” Walker—wisecracking, “DY-NO-MITE”-spouting star of the hit TV show Good Times—how to juggle.
While people use the first portable listening device recently introduced to the United States—the Sony Walkman—to listen to Captain and Tenille’s “Do That to Me One More Time” and Rupert Holmes’s “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” I’m listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Christine” and X’s “Los Angeles.”
President Carter leads a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Decades later, there are protests when President Bush invades Afghanistan.
I lose twenty pounds on the Scarsdale diet shortly after Dr. Herman Tarnower, the creator of the diet, loses his life when his jilted lover, Jean Harris, bumps him off.
The new toy Rubik’s Cube is in such high demand that it’s as difficult to buy as it is to solve.
I go several times to Chippendales, one of L.A.’s most popular nightclubs, to see their hot, all-male, dancing stripper revue.
The David Letterman Show, a morning talk show, runs for just three months on NBC before being cancelled. Guess Letterman’s not really talk show material.
I am obsessed with watching the Z Channel, one of the first cable TV movie channels devoted to screening rare classics, important foreign films, and American titles that have fallen through the cracks of commercial distribution.
I perform my Gong Show–winning comedy juggling song at clubs and theaters along with my piano accompanist—Michael Feinstein.
Dear Olivia Newton-John
8/8/80
Dear Olivia Newton-John:
Let me say what a pleasure it was working with you on Xanadu! Remember, I was the dancer wearing the twenties bathing suit in the “All Over the World” number (I know—what the hell was the costumer thinking?), and I was also in white face (again, not my idea!) when I juggled in the big Xanadu nightclub finale. After spending more than a month filming together every day, I think we know each other well enough for me to call you Livvy.
So Livvy
, I’m writing this now because I’ve just come from the premiere screening of our movie. It transported me back ten months to the shoot, and when I got home, I realized I owed you a long-overdue thank-you note.
That’s right, Livvy, THANK YOU! Because whether you know it or not, you gave me some valuable advice on the set of Xanadu, advice that has had an enormous impact on my love life. Oh, and not because you’re a lesbian! Despite the rampant rumors, I don’t believe you’re gay. Remember, I witnessed you and my fellow dancer, Matt Lattanzi, get together on the set! Damn, were we all shocked—I mean whoever thought some twenty-one-year-old boy, eleven years younger than you (don’t get me wrong—you look fabulous!) would score with you? You were just so totally out of his league.
But anyway, let me explain why a thank-you is in order. See, when I was cast in Xanadu, I had just moved to L.A. Before that I had been living in San Francisco for two years where, besides performing, I was busy marching in demonstrations and hanging out with women who didn’t shave, who believed fat was a feminist issue, and who thought makeup objectified women and kept them under the patriarchal rule. In fact, I was one of those women!
My girlfriend, Daisy, decided to move to L.A. with me. She was my first long-term relationship, despite the fact that she had had several affairs while we were together—including a tryst with a female friend of ours and a wild night with our male next-door neighbor. At first everything was fine in L.A. We moved into a cute little duplex in the Hollywood Hills. But then I started getting jobs, and she couldn’t find one. I had my own car and friends; she had my car and friends. She quickly became resentful and I was still distrustful. But Livvy, we did love each other and we tried to make our relationship work.
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