by Todd Glass
No, that’s not a typo. If Steve said there were ninety-nine seconds in a minute, you were inclined to believe him. I don’t know if the stories are true or not, but I’m inclined to believe them based on my own experiences with Steve. One night I was onstage and, no matter what I seemed to do, the audience just wasn’t laughing. I decided to do something I’d seen a few other comics do in the past—since the crowd wasn’t responding, I turned around to deliver the rest of my act to the brick wall behind me. Until out of nowhere, like the voice of God, Steve Schirripa boomed over the PA: “Todd . . . Turn around and do your fucking act.”
He wasn’t yelling. He didn’t have to. I turned around and did my fucking act. I might have felt a little put out in the moment, but in hindsight, I really respected Steve for that. I like things to be done the right way. And here was a guy in the back of the room who thought, even if this wasn’t the best crowd in the world, there was still a right way to do the show. Afterwards, I expected to get a lecture from him, but he never mentioned it again. There was no memo to Budd Friedman. All Steve wanted was for me to turn around and do my fucking act, and once I did, the problem was solved.
Another night—a busy Saturday—I asked Steve if I could get five of my friends in for free. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “On a Saturday? No way. Can’t do it.” So I was surprised when, after the show, one of my friends thanked me for hooking them up.
“Steve,” I said, “did you let my friends in for free?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“How did you even know who my friends were?”
“Todd, I saw five preppy people standing in line. Who the fuck else are they friends with?”
When Vegas came to a close, I moved on to the next Improv. Most of the time I was working as the middle, between the opening act and the headliner, making about $850 a week plus lodging. Once in a while, “lodging” meant a nice hotel nearby. More often than that it was a “comedy condo,” which was really another way of saying “shitty apartment.” Sometimes I’d get the shitty apartment all to myself. Sometimes I’d have to share it with the headliner. The worst was when they crammed all three acts into one place.
But even the worst was pretty good. I remember one Thanksgiving, I found myself sharing a condo in Dallas with then relatively unknown comedians Steve Harvey and John Henton. The two of them took over the shitty apartment’s shitty kitchen and cooked a feast, a combination of traditional Thanksgiving dishes and soul food. What impressed me most was the presentation: Here were a couple of guys who I didn’t think would care about it at all, but when dinner was served, Steve Harvey said, “Hold up, everybody, we’re going to set the table and eat like human beings.” We set the table with whatever mismatched utensils we could find and had an amazing dinner.
These days, comedians can’t wait to get off the road so they can get back home to focus on their careers. Back then, unless you landed a sitcom, there wasn’t anything else to do with your career. I was working—what more could I want? I’d go in on a Wednesday and do shows through Sunday. Sometimes, at the end of my last show, they’d tell me that the act they’d scheduled for the following week had fallen through. “I’ll stay!” I’d always yell. If I could have stayed a month at a club, I would have. It was fun.
• • •
In almost every city I’d hear about a gay bar or neighborhood. I never had the courage to check out either one, but I often wondered what it would be like to live a life where I didn’t have to hide, where I’d at least have the option to meet someone without worrying that the whole world was going to find out about me.
Sometimes I’d stay at a club because I had a crush on a guy. It was always a straight guy, because that’s all I ever found attractive. And nothing ever happened, because, well, that’s what tends to happen when you have crushes on straight guys.
Not that I was entirely celibate. While I would go through long stretches of not doing anything with anyone, once in a while I would meet someone and we’d get drunk enough to overcome our fears and hook up.
But I desperately wanted to meet someone who was more than just a hookup. Someone I could be with around my friends. Someone I really connected with. While I waited for that to happen, I’d take what I could get. And as soon as it was over, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and back to my “normal” life.
Sometimes I’d hook up without even trying.
One night after a show at the Tempe Improv, I returned to my condo. I was exhausted and more than a little bit drunk, so when I realized I’d lost my key, instead of panicking, I decided to have a cigarette by the pool and wait for the other comedians to get home. When I finished the cigarette, I lay down on a pool chair and closed my eyes. I was just nodding off when I heard a woman’s voice. From the few words we exchanged, I gathered that she had been at my show earlier that night and that she was also very drunk. I fell back on my old strategy to extract myself from the conversation: closing my eyes and pretending to pass out.
She sat down next to me and touched my leg. As drunk, tired, and not interested in a woman blowing me as I was, my dick had other ideas. Suddenly I had a boner and, without missing a beat, the woman unzipped my pants and, well, I couldn’t just “wake up” from my imaginary blackout and ask her to stop . . . Well, I probably could have, but I didn’t. When it was over she got up and left. I lifted my head off the pool chair to see if anyone saw us. Not that I was scared, just the opposite: I was hoping someone saw us, as that would cement my straight reputation forever. Or at least in Tempe, which probably wouldn’t have been the worst place in the world to move.
While no one was around to witness the deed, I did learn something that night: I might be gay, but my dick is definitely bisexual.
CHAPTR 24
TODD GOES TO COLLEGE
Because children are the future.
By the time the ’80s came to an end, there was so much demand for stand-up that Budd Friedman opened a second Improv in L.A., or at least Santa Monica, which is where I met Dave Rath.
Dave was the manager at the new club. He and I hit it off right away. Not only was he nurturing toward comedians, but he was a regular guy who didn’t act like he was in the business—someone who reminded me of my friends back home.
I was still living with Mim in Fountain Valley, but the commute was getting to be a little much and I was finally ready to move to L.A. I mentioned my plan to Dave, who told me another comedian, Allan Murray, had a house in the Hollywood Hills and was looking for roommates. Dave and I moved in, along with another comedian, Brian Posehn. Brian, I think enough time has passed for me to finally be honest with you: Yes, I was the one who was eating all of your food.
Dave got a job at MTV. The network was just beginning to branch out from music videos into other forms of entertainment, including comedy. They were also notoriously cheap, so Dave volunteered our house as a rent-free option for some of their social events. It’s fun to look back at those parties now, where new friends like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, and Rob Schneider could drink and do bits. Sarah Silverman, who was maybe eighteen at the time, sometimes liked to crash on our couch.
My bedroom was in an unfinished part of the house between the garage and a staircase. When I was too lazy to climb two flights of stairs to the nearest bathroom, I stepped outside and peed into the woods. Which is how I met our next-door neighbor, Jay Mohr, who was too lazy to walk down two flights of steps to his bathroom and liked to pee off his deck.
Jay was one of the few people I’ve met who might love doing bits as much as I do, and we quickly became friends. One night, after a show, we were driving home together down Santa Monica Boulevard. The stretch that passes through West Hollywood is, far and away, L.A.’s most visible gay scene, lined with bars and clubs and happy people spilling out into the street.
“Let’s go into a gay bar,” Jay said. “It’ll be fun.”
I should point out here that Jay isn’t gay—he’s secure enough in his sexuality n
ot to give a shit. As for me, talk about acting: “I don’t know . . .” is what I said to Jay, when on the inside I couldn’t have been more curious. I’d never set foot in a gay bar before and really wanted to see what it was like.
“Let’s have a contest,” Jay said, popping a piece of gum into his mouth. “See who gets picked up first.”
Within twenty seconds, a guy walked up to Jay and asked, “Do you have any more gum?”
Jay grinned and whispered to me out of the side of his mouth: “I win.”
I turned my attention to the club. Everywhere I looked, guys were talking to guys, seemingly confident in who they were and what they wanted. It was all so overwhelming that I looked up at the TV instead. The bar had put together a weird collage of old comedy clips—stand-up routines from The Tonight Show; sketches from Carol Burnett.
“Todd, we’ve got to go,” Jay said.
“Hold on, hold on . . . Let me just see the end of this bit.”
“Todd, if we don’t leave right now, I’m going to tell everyone we know that I couldn’t get you out of a gay bar.”
• • •
Jay Mohr’s manager, Barry Katz, encouraged me to submit an audition tape to the National Association for Campus Activities. When they selected me, I got to perform at a couple of their showcases, where hundreds of representatives from colleges around the country looked for entertainment that they could bring back to campus. Thanks to Barry, I wound up booking hundreds of college shows.
I loved working colleges. You could feel the energy as you walked around the streets at night. I’d fly in, do shows at three or four schools in the area, then fly out again. Since I still couldn’t read a map, I usually looked for students to drive me from one campus to another.
Did I ever feel attracted toward any of them? Sometimes painfully so. But I was always so conscious of not making other people feel uncomfortable that I never pursued it. I kept all of my feelings bottled up. In fact, I did such a good job of hiding my feelings that it occasionally got me into trouble.
One weekend, I met three girls who were part of whatever committee had hired me to come to their school. Not only did they pick me up from the airport, but when I decided to hang around the campus for a couple of days before my next gig, they offered to let me stay at their house.
I told them I had a girlfriend. When I think back to this story now, I realize that those girls must have thought that I had the coolest, most trusting girlfriend on the planet: someone who let me stay in a house with three college girls and never called me once. And why wouldn’t she trust me? I was a saint! I was so incredibly faithful, there wasn’t even a hint of sexual tension. What a catch!
The National Association for Campus Activities was a little less impressed with my behavior. Word got back to them that one of their comedians had spent the weekend in a house with three college girls. They didn’t throw me out of the program, but they did give a stern reprimand.
Which was, in a word, awesome.
I didn’t do anything to stop word from spreading; in fact, I did everything in my power to help the story live on for as long as possible. “NACA is really mad at me for spending the weekend with those college girls,” I bragged to my friends at lunch a few days later. “But what are you gonna do?”
Cut to the next day, when another comedian asked me if I was still working colleges: “Oh, so you heard about the three hot girls I stayed with at the University of Miami. I’m lucky NACA didn’t press charges.”
A month later, when my brother asked me how my career was going: “What, did Mom tell you about the three college girls I spent the weekend with? I thought I made her promise not to say anything!”
Three months later, when I got pulled over by a cop: “Pleeeeeease don’t tell me this has something to do with those girls I stayed with back in Miami . . .”
The most interesting thing that actually happened that weekend was an offhanded comment from one of the girls about a friend of hers who was gay—she spoke about him like it wasn’t in any way a big deal. I was only twenty-seven, not much older than these kids, but man, did they seem more progressive and open-minded than some of the people I grew up with.
The world was clearly evolving, a fact that was highlighted to me by a visit from my old high school friend Dave Olsen.
Dave was dating a girl and, like with any serious relationship, he inevitably had to introduce her to his friends. When he did, some of us were surprised to find out that Dave hadn’t mentioned the fact that she was black. I know 1991 doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was a time when interracial relationships still felt risqué.
Look, let me be perfectly clear here: None of us cared that she was black. That was never the issue. But while some people processed it quickly and quietly, others wondered if maybe a heads-up had been in order. These weren’t hateful people—they were evolved enough to know that love was hard enough to find without limiting it to people from any particular race or religion. But couldn’t Dave have warned them? “Hey guys, I’m bringing my girlfriend home. Not that it matters, and I know you don’t care, but I just wanted to let you know that she’s black.”
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Dave didn’t owe anyone a warning, or even an explanation. We have to get to a place as a society where we don’t have to mention these things. Dave wasn’t waiting for the rest of us to get there; he was out in front, paving the way. This was just one more example of how ahead of his time Dave has always been. He wasn’t trying to be a rebel—he just did what he thought was right. Society can’t grow and evolve without people like Dave taking the first leap, deciding that they don’t have to explain to their friends that their girlfriend is black, or isn’t Jewish, or is Jewish, or isn’t even a girl.
CHAPTER 25
TWO NOTEBOOKS
Comedy’s gay marriage (between stand-up and sketch).
I couldn’t believe what I was feeling, like it was somebody else who’d been doing stand-up for more than ten years. I’d been in front of audiences that were, in some cases, a hundred times as big as this one. But this wasn’t the kind of audience I was used to, and they weren’t expecting a traditional stand-up performance.
My stomach ached like it did the first time I stepped in front of an open mike. I wasn’t even supposed to be performing tonight at the UnCabaret, a club that was helping to push comedy into an interesting new direction—somebody got sick or fell out, and Dave Rath suggested they put me up instead.
“It’s good that you have a stomachache,” Dave said to me as I paced nervously offstage. “You’re stepping outside of your comfort zone.”
So I pushed down the butterflies and took the mike. “You know,” I began, “I know the point of this scene is to open up. To be real. To tell real stories. So I need to tell you something. I’m going to go deep. I’m going to go real deep. I need to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone before . . .”
I paused and took a deep breath. Then:
“Dave Rath is gay.”
All of which was true, except for the last part about Dave being gay.
It was 1994, and stand-up comedy was beginning to feel stale. Everyone had a theory about what was responsible for the decline, for the news that another club was closing, for the sinking feeling that comedy might be dying.
I knew that comedy wasn’t dying. Comedy will never be over. It’s like asking if music will be around in thirty years. But anything can get oversaturated. In the beginning, there weren’t comedy clubs in every city. Then, all of a sudden, there were. People went, and it was great.
Then there were two clubs in every city. Or three. Pretty soon, some cities had six or seven. The audiences were great, loaded with people who loved stand-up for the same reasons I did. The best comedy movie you’ll ever see might deliver twenty or twenty-five big laughs. A great comedian, on the other hand, might make you laugh a hundred times or more during a single forty-five-minute set.
But by 1994, the au
diences weren’t coming out the way that they used to. Maybe they were getting older or having kids. Maybe they were just noticing what I was noticing: Stand-up comedy was becoming formulaic.
Seinfeld was the number one television show in America; Home Improvement, starring stand-up comedian Tim Allen, was number two. Paul Reiser’s Mad About You was also near the top of the ratings. This was the kind of success that every comedian dreamed about. And as far as most comedians were concerned, what worked for Seinfeld would work for them.
The first step was to get on The Tonight Show. You needed a “clean seven,” seven minutes of great material that could get past the censors on network television. Seinfeld’s style of humor quickly became the blueprint that everyone followed.
But Jerry was Jerry—he could dissect everyday things in a way that nobody else could, making observations that would twist back around on themselves at the end. The imitators tended to do a watered-down version of what he did, minus the twists and turns: “Have you ever noticed . . .” was the setup to a Jerry Seinfeld bit, a chance to swerve left and right into places that were completely unexpected; for the imitators, the initial observation was the entire joke.