by Todd Glass
“You can’t do that, Todd.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re taking advantage of the audience.”
I didn’t like it, but knew he was right. We used the money to send flowers to a waitress who was in the hospital.
As the end of the year approached—despite having almost no money and no idea where I was going to live—I really felt like I was ready to go. But plans don’t always work out the way you want them to. One night a policeman knocked on the door to Harrison’s house. “Is Todd Glass here?” he asked.
“I’m Todd Glass.”
“We’ve been trying to call you, but there seems to be a problem with your phone.” There was a problem with our phone—it had been disconnected for lack of payment. The cop continued: “Your father is at Paoli Hospital.”
My dad had been driving on the highway when he began to feel ill. He pulled over to the side of the road and threw up. A passerby saw him lying by the side of the road, wisely recognized that my father was having a heart attack, and tried to give him CPR.
When I arrived at the hospital, the rest of my family greeted me with the news: my dad was dead. I let out something that sounded like a cross between a pained whimper and a primal scream. I turned and punched the wall.
But suddenly a peaceful calm settled over me. “We’re going to be okay,” I said to my family. “We’re all going to be okay. We’re going to have Christmas, and it’s going to be okay.”
A nurse asked us if we wanted to say good-bye to him. My younger brother, Corey, and I went in together. The room was cold and still. Dad’s body was on the table. A few moments passed in silence before I quietly said:
“Should we check his pockets for money?”
For a second, I wasn’t sure I’d said the right thing. But I got a great laugh out of Corey. It sounds so cliché, but you’ve got to have a sense of humor about this kind of stuff. If all you’re doing is making jokes, you’re probably not dealing with death very well. But if you’re just crying, that’s not the best thing either. Later, back at my parents’ house, my brothers and I mock-argued over my dad’s clothes, getting into a tugging match over a shirt that ended with the shirt being torn in half. We fell on the floor laughing. But later that night, I heard Michael throwing up in the bathroom, literally sick with grief.
Here’s another cliché that’s true: If you’ve got something nice to say about people, tell them while they’re still alive. My mind raced back to a conversation I’d had a month earlier with one of my dad’s employees. My father could be gruff on the outside: I remember once when my friend Doug Doyle insisted on addressing him in an overly deferential way—“Nice to meet you, Mr. Glass . . . Can I get something for you, Mr. Glass?”—finally leading my dad to say, “Hey, son, fucking relax . . . What are you looking for, a handout?” But my dad was also one of the most open-minded and nonjudgmental people I’ve ever met. I described him to the employee as a cross between Ed Asner and Phil Donahue.
When the employee told my dad what I’d said, I was upset. “Why did you tell him that?” I said to her. “I can’t believe you told him I said that!”
But now, seeing my dad on the table, I couldn’t have been gladder that she did. I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “You did a good job.”
About fifty people came to a service at our house, including a lot of my friends from Smokey Joe’s. We were used to hanging out and laughing and having fun. We’d never been around each other in a situation like this one. It was uncomfortable. No one knew what to say or how to act. But luckily we still had our twisted sense of humor. At one point during the service, my friend John slowly leaned in toward me, pointed to the yarmulke on my head, and whispered, “Jew!”
I thought that was about the funniest thing I’d ever heard.
The rabbi who married my parents and presided over my bar mitzvah gave a great speech. “We have a lot of different kinds of people in this room,” he began, “and I don’t know what everybody’s beliefs are. Some people think, we do this, we go there. Some people don’t know what to think. Some don’t think about it at all. But I can tell you something that’s a fact, something that we can all agree on no matter what our backgrounds are: He’s not in pain. And our memories are real. Now obviously, we miss his presence, and that can’t be replaced. But he’s not in pain and the memories are real. We can find comfort in that.”
I still find comfort in the memories. I have an old sweater of my dad’s. Even if it doesn’t smell like him anymore, I still have a good cry every time I pull it out. But I can’t help but wonder what our relationship could have been. I think he would have loved the comedy. Given how accepting he’d always been—toward his family, his friends, and his employees—I really think that he would have been okay with me being gay. Circle this cliché in red: Soak in the people you love while they’re still here.
After the memorial service, my sister-in-law Meryl approached me with a look that managed to be both concerned and adorable. “Is it okay to say happy birthday?” she asked. Obviously my twenty-third birthday didn’t seem that important on this particular day. But I appreciated the gesture and gave her a big hug.
As I’m writing this book, it’s forced me to recognize some of the times that might otherwise have drifted past, times when people have acted kindly toward me in ways that were completely unexpected. A few days later, I got a phone call. “Todd, this is Randy Jones . . . Caroline’s dad?”
“Sure, I remember,” I said. “How are you?”
“Actually, I’m a little upset. I told you that you could come stay with us in L.A. What’s the matter, our house isn’t good enough for you?
I felt a sudden burst of excitement. If he’s calling me on the phone, he must really mean it! I still didn’t have any money, but now I knew I had a friendly place to stay. My fears about Los Angeles all but disappeared. I was finally ready to make my move.
CHAPTER 21
THE COMEDY STORE
Los Angeles!
For most twenty-three-year-olds with a car, a cross-country move means one thing: road trip!
Only I wasn’t most twenty-three-year-olds. Driving long distance would require reading road signs, following directions, and, most of all, using maps. As you can probably guess by now, I was incapable of doing any of that, especially the part with the maps.
I remember the first time a history teacher pulled down a map of the United States. Just looking at it made me dizzy—all those lines and names! How could anyone in their right mind ever learn all that? It’s still hard to admit some of this stuff sometimes, like when someone gives me directions: “Just get off the freeway and head south.”
“Is that a right or a left?”
“I’m not sure . . . It’s south.”
“I don’t carry a fucking compass with me! Right or left?”
It can get really bad at hotels, where desk clerks love to draw directions on their stupid little maps. I panic as soon as I see them reaching under the desk. No no no! Please don’t draw me a map! Just tell me the first two steps and, when I get there, I’ll ask someone else how to go the rest of the way.
So a road trip was out of the question. Fortunately, my brother Corey volunteered to drive my car across the country with all of my stuff in it. I went to the airport with Harrison, Mick, and Katy. It was bittersweet—for the last few years I’d spent a lot of days and nights with these people—but when I looked at Katy, I felt guilty. There was so much I wish I could have explained to her.
A few hours later I landed in Burbank, California. I felt like I was exiting the plane into a giant indoor swimming pool where the temperature was a perfectly maintained seventy-two degrees.
This is where I’m going to live.
I took a cab to Steve Young’s house, where I crashed for a couple of nights until Corey arrived with my Jeep. (God, do I miss the days when I could fit everything I owned into a Jeep.) Then it was off to the Joneses.
I was scared to drive in California
. I’d grown up watching CHiPs—the classic show about how L.A. needed its own special cops just to deal with the highways—and I felt like I was stepping into the insane world I’d seen on TV. The Joneses lived about forty-five minutes south of downtown in a place called Anaheim Hills, so I white-knuckled it until I was sure I’d found the exit.
None of the houses I’d seen in California up to that point were built on spacious lots—even in the expensive areas, it felt like there were fewer than ten feet between you and your neighbor. But the Joneses lived on a huge property that you had to enter through gates. I pressed the buzzer and the gates opened—pretty spectacular, even if it lacked the Nalibotsky touch.
The best thing about the Joneses’ house, however, was the Joneses. They couldn’t have been any kinder to me. Randy and his wife, Sue, had set up a bedroom for me downstairs, including a brand-new desk.
“I thought you’d need a desk to write your jokes and work on your act,” Randy said.
I don’t typically (and by “typically,” I mean “ever”) work on my act at a desk, but I was really moved by their generosity toward a kid who they barely knew.
Steve Young was also a huge help. Besides letting me crash at his place while I waited for my car, he forgave a couple of thousand dollars he’d earned as commission for shows he’d booked for me in Philadelphia. Steve also arranged for me to have an audition for Mitzi Shore, the owner of the legendary Comedy Store.
In 1989, the Comedy Store was the place to be. It was an all-black building sitting on the most exciting part of the Sunset Strip. The outside walls were covered with the names of comedians who performed there, names like Robin Williams, David Letterman, Sam Kinison, and Richard Pryor. The list included Tom Wilson, who remembered me from Comedy Works and offered to put in a good word with Mitzi.
But my confidence started to slip as soon as I entered the building. Walking up and down the stairs connecting the three packed showrooms felt surreal. This was organized chaos that smelled of rock and roll and comedy history.
I was still struggling to take it all in when Steve nudged me: I was up next, part of a showcase of comedians eager to impress Mitzi. If you succeeded, you got “spots.” It might only be one spot a week, it might be six—obviously I was hoping for something like six. If you failed? Thanks for coming. Maybe you can try again in a year or so. All of the names I’d seen on the wall had, at one point or another, stood where I stood now, putting their hopes and dreams in Mitzi’s hands.
Mitzi sat in the back of the room . . . At least I think she did. I never saw her that night. Come to think of it, in my thirty-year comedy career I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mitzi Shore. Maybe she doesn’t exist. The next morning Steve called to tell me that Mitzi had passed on my act.
I was devastated. I thought of ways I could get on Mitzi’s good side. Maybe I could slash one of her tires and then “accidentally” walk by and help her fix it. “So what do you do?” I’d say, catching her in a moment of total appreciation for me. “You own a comedy club? No way! Guess what? I’m a comedian!”
Nowadays, there are all kinds of ways to become a comedian. You can shoot your own videos and put them on the web. Do your own podcast and promote it with social media. There are any number of niche networks of clubs and venues to help you get started.
But back then, if you didn’t succeed at the Comedy Store, well, fuck.
CHAPTER 22
THE IMPROV
Todd finds a new comedy home.
The original Improvisation started in New York in 1963. Budd Friedman, an aspiring Broadway producer looking for a way to make some part-time cash, opened a coffeehouse where performers could feel comfortable hanging out after their shows, eating, drinking, and singing with their friends. About a year in, he got a liquor license, a development that, according to Budd, encouraged the comedians to start dropping by. Before long the Improvisation was hosting live comedy on a nightly basis, putting on greats like George Burns, Milton Berle, and George Carlin alongside young comics looking to break in—Jerry Seinfeld, Lily Tomlin, Andy Kaufman, and Jay Leno, to name a few.
As stand-up comedy became more popular in the 1970s, Budd left a guy named Chris Albrecht to run the New York club and opened a second in Los Angeles.
Budd was (and is) a very creative person. He’s always impeccably groomed, wearing expensively tailored suits with tennis shoes and an honest-to-God monocle. He can also be brutally honest in the way that he talks, getting right to the point with the kinds of thoughts that most people would keep to themselves. One story had him standing in the hallway when a comedian wearing a wife-beater tank top walked by. “Hey, Budd! I’m on next,” he said. “You should watch my set!”
Budd took one look at the guy and his T-shirt, lowered his monocle, and snapped back: “Muscles aren’t funny.”
The L.A. Improv had always played second banana to the Comedy Store, but it was growing in popularity thanks to a cable TV show, An Evening at the Improv, where comics did their acts in front of the iconic brick wall. I recognized the building from TV as soon as we pulled up to the front. Steve sensed my excitement and reminded me not to get my hopes up. He knew I was still upset about the Comedy Store and didn’t want to set me up for another disappointment.
I also recognized Budd from the TV show, but that didn’t prepare me for meeting him in person. “Todd, how are you? It’s so good to meet you.” If you’re old enough to remember Gilligan’s Island, think Thurston Howell, and you’ll get a sense of Budd’s drawl.
I was even more nervous than I’d been for Mitzi—I felt like this was basically my last chance to make it in L.A. The set went well, but I thought the set at the Comedy Store had gone well and that didn’t work out. When I was done onstage I made a beeline for the door and slipped outside for a cigarette. Every couple of minutes I’d nervously poke my head back in. I saw Richard Belzer, Bill Maher, and Richard Lewis hanging out at the bar. These were some of my heroes. I wanted to be a part of their world.
Soon the show was over and everyone piled outside. Budd strolled past me. “Good show tonight,” he said. “Call me Monday and I’ll give you spots.”
He said it in a way that was so quick and matter-of-fact that I wasn’t really sure if he’d meant it. The valet arrived with his car and Budd got in. Just before he pulled away, he rolled down his window and said, “Remember to tell me that you’re from Philadelphia. That will remind me who you are.”
Look, life is full of moments when things don’t turn out the way you want them to. But when they do . . .
I called Budd on Monday. “It’s Todd Glass,” I said, “from Philadelphia?” I got spots at the Improv that week. I got them again the next week, and the week after that.
CHAPTER 23
WORKING THE ROAD
Life in the middle.
A few months after I moved to L.A., Katy and my mom came to visit. My mom wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of Katy and me as a couple, which even now I totally understand. We looked like we should have been inseparable. What could possibly stand in the way of us being together?
Katy seemed inclined to believe it was, as my mom said, shyness, and took a more aggressive approach. I’m sorry, I was dying to tell her. I’m not shy, I’m gay! Instead, I lay through a lot of awkward back massages.
Shortly after they left, I had a new issue to contend with: The Joneses were moving to Connecticut and I had to find a new place to live.
The whole reason I knew Caroline Jones was through Martha Helfrich, who had been a waitress at Smokey Joe’s. Her parents lived in Fountain Valley, about a half hour southwest of Anaheim Hills. Lucky for me, they were getting divorced—ironically because her dad, who was in his midfifties and had fathered eight children, had decided to come out of the closet.
Which is how I wound up living with Mim, Martha’s mother, in Fountain Valley. I liked living with Mim—she didn’t mind when I had friends over to hang out by her pool, and since she spent a lot of time at another house they had in
Maine, I often had the place to myself.
Most of the time, however, I was traveling. Stand-up comedy was exploding all over the country, and if you were willing to put in the miles, there were more places to work than ever before. I still did dates at the L.A. Improv, but mostly I moved among the eleven “road” Improvs that had opened as part of a national expansion.
The club I was most excited about playing was the Las Vegas Improv, then located at the Riviera Hotel & Casino. As a twenty-four-year-old, the only things I knew about Vegas were that you got to see your name on a big sign and to make sure there was plenty of water in your car for the drive through the desert. I pictured a beaten path through the sand and cactuses. I was genuinely shocked when I discovered Vegas and L.A. were connected by a highway. And a little more so when I saw the sign at the Riviera—the free buffet took up a lot more real estate than my name.
But everything else about the club was amazing. I was doing twenty-one shows a week and couldn’t have been happier. The maître d’ was a guy named Steve Schirripa. Talk about larger than life—Steve personified Vegas to me: a New York guy with a huge personality and sharp suit who knew everyone in town and ran the room like a mafia don. (Years later, Steve got a small part in the Martin Scorsese movie Casino, which eventually led to a major role on The Sopranos as Tony’s brother-in-law Bobby Baccalieri.)
Steve has inspired a lot of legends that may or may not be true. Like the time an older couple from the Midwest gave him a hard time about their seats and he told them to go fuck themselves. Shocked, the husband threatened to file a complaint and demanded Steve’s name.
“Steve.”
“What’s your last name?”
“You tell my boss a guy named Steve told you to go fuck yourself. He’ll know who you’re talking about.”
Or the time a comedian went five minutes longer than he was supposed to. The most important thing to remember when you’re working Vegas is to never go over your allotted time—the casinos want their customers gambling as much as possible, and every minute those customers are watching your show is a minute away from the tables. Steve Schirripa sat the comedian down in the back office and pulled out a calculator. “Let’s see . . . ,” he said. “There were three hundred people at your show. Five minutes of gambling, the casino can expect to make about thirty-five thousand dollars. How much money did your act bring in tonight? I think you owe me about twenty-five thousand dollars. Tell you what . . . I’ll let you off the hook this time if you give me the shoes you’re wearing. But next time, I tell you to do fifteen minutes, you do fifteen minutes. That’s not fifteen minutes and one second, or fourteen minutes and ninety-nine seconds, you with me?”