by Mamrie Hart
Grace had to be in New York the week before tour, so rather than just meet her in London, I headed out a day early to meet her in NYC. The plan was to put on our sweats, lock ourselves in our hotel room, and wake up that Sunday morning with a fully fleshed-out show before our flight to London. That way, we could relax when we got there for a few days and not have the monkey on our backs of planning a show. It was the perfect plan. We never did things that far in advance. Every single time we booked a tour, we said it was going to be different, that we’d prep ahead of time, and yet every single time, we ended up drinking till three in the morning thirty-six hours before our first set, creating lyrics to an opening number and Photoshopping ridiculous pictures, e.g., this Rest in Peace Dick Bicycle image that went up on the big screens during this very tour.
You know it’s a classy tour when this is projected on a movie-theater-size screen behind you.
While our plan to prep in NYC had great intentions behind it, we were now living in the era of single Grace and Mamrie. “We work better with a buzz,” we rationalized. “It’s like gasoline to start the engine of our brains. Let’s go out to a bar.” One drink turned into two, two turned into too many, and lo and behold both of us ended up getting white-girl wasted, high-fiving each other as we parted ways to reunite with boys we knew from our past.
“I’ll text you when I get up,” I said, slurring as I entered a cab headfirst. “What hotel are you in again?” Grace replied, and I nodded like I had heard anything over the subway rushing under the grates below her ankle boots. I got myself in and rolled down the window as the yellow cab drove off: “Mace is getting laid!!!”*
The next morning, I woke up freaking out. What time is it? Goddamnit! I fell asleep in my contacts again. I painfully squinted to see the time on the TV. It was ten fifty. My stomach dropped. I had missed my nine thirty flight. Who knew how many times Grace had called, wondering where I was, and not knowing the name of my hotel?! She must be livid, I thought. Livid, and an hour over the Atlantic en route to London without me.
Why hadn’t I woken up from the alarm on my phone? Had I even set an alarm? And most important, WHERE WAS MY PHONE?!
I destroyed my room looking for it. I straight-up picked the mattress off the bed like I was performing a drug raid. No luck. I got on my laptop to find the number for the bar we’d last been to, then went all nineties reenactor and used the landline to call them. I was hopeful, until an annoyed morning-shift bartender who probably takes five of these calls a day replied they didn’t have it.
I didn’t know Grace’s hotel, either, so the only thing left was e-mail. I typed in a panic. . . .
“GRACE! HOLY SHIT DUDE, I AM SO SORRY! I think my phone must’ve dropped in my cab last night but I was too drunk to notice. I just woke up! I am so sorrrrrrrry. I’ll find another flight ASAP!!!!!!”
I sat there anxiously hitting refresh until an e-mail from Grace popped into my in-box. I clicked it to be greeted by a very chill “All good dude, I’m just waking up, too.” We had both overslept. What a relief! Misery might love company, but fucking up welcomes a whole guest list.
Our hangover fever-dreamed us through an endless afternoon at an AT&T store, spending WAY too much on new flights going out that night, and trying to ward off our pulsing headaches. Come seven o’clock and we finally had our butts in coach, ready to turn off our new phones (Grace upgraded, too!) and pass the hell out.
We woke up in England ready to rock. And by that I mean we went to an awards show, got drunk with our SORTEDfood boys,* and once again creating our show in the twenty-four hours leading up to it. We might be procrastinators, but at least we have consistency going for us! Adopt Us! existed, and no one asked for a refund. So, with the London show under our belt, we headed to the land of Guinness.
“Welcome to Dublin!” our dapper Irish driver said as he took the carry-ons from our shaky, hungover hands. We got the rest of our luggage from the baggage carousel and trudged slowly behind him as he pushed the cart with all our suitcases full of dirty clothes and ridiculous props. Honestly, if you think airport security is a pain in the ass, try getting your carry-ons full of props through an X-ray machine. There’s nothing like holding up the line as an unamused TSA agent pulls a blow-up doll out of your bag. This is an actual thing that happened to me in Chicago after a show. No regrets.
As we walked through the enclosed overpass to the parking garage, we came up behind a group of four dudes. I don’t mean to help strengthen the Irish stereotype but it was ten A.M., and these guys were WRECKED. They were wobbling harder than Tara Reid at the 1999 MTV Beach House.
We passed them with a good few feet of distance so as to not draw any attention to ourselves, heads down into our phones, soaking up the last little bit of airport Wi-Fi. We were almost past these ogres when one came straight toward Grace.
“I like your hat,” he said, referring to Grace’s classic knit cap with a pom-pom on top.
“Thank you,” she said nervously, and kept walking. And then, this Irish asshole reaches his baseball mitt of a hand and roughly pats Grace on the head five times. It was like he momentarily forgot what personal space meant and decided to play Whack-a-Mole with a human. Grace’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. I knew my Queen of Hating Confrontation didn’t want to yell at him like he deserved. I had an “if you touch her again, I will punch you in the penis” lined up in my throat, but I knew the best thing to do was to keep walking. These guys were wasted, and if they casually bonk a girl on the head as a means of morning “flirting,” I didn’t want to see what they would do when they were pissed off.
We picked up our speed and didn’t say anything till we were safely in the back of the car. We were flabbergasted. “I can’t believe that guy touched you!” I said, as our car looped around to the exit.
“I didn’t know what to do. How did he think that’s okay?” Our driver paid the parking attendant, and as we drove under the gate, the sound of tires screeching emerged from behind us.
“Those tinkers just got through on our parking pass and nearly rear-ended us,” the driver said, his brow furrowed. For those of you not familiar with the term “tinker,” allow me to explain. Knowing this Irish slang is one of the many things I learned from hanging out in that aforementioned Irish bar in Brooklyn. A tinker is a word to describe a traveler, also known as a Gypsy. You might have seen them on the TLC masterpiece My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding. It’s basically Jersey Shore meets Teen Mom, but with trashy youngsters spending too much on weddings that always end in fistfights. It’s essentially the equivalent of European white trash culture. And I’m allowed to say that because I’ve been arrested for being too drunk at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Alabama.
Anyway, back in the car, our driver was gripping the wheel for dear life. It was clear that these guys were drunk driving, swerving a few cars behind us. As a person with car anxiety, my whole body was clenched. They then straight-up Fast and Furious’ed around other cars to make their way right beside us. The head bopper rolled down the window, leaned his head back, and SPIT on our window.
You could’ve driven a train through our mouth with how wide our jaws dropped. And with one quick “Fucking Americans!” they sped off. We cracked up as soon as the shock passed. We hadn’t been in Ireland for more than fifteen minutes, and this is what we were greeted with.
“Welcome to Dublin!” our driver said again. “Welcome to Dublin!” we repeated, laughing hysterically. And off in the distance we watched karma do its job as their car slammed through the side railing of an overpass and crash-landed on the ground below.*
The rest of the day went smoothly. We got our naps in and then had an awesome show despite being a little nervous, since Dublin is the only town we’ve ever been heckled on a previous tour. I was feeling celebratory and ready to go at it.
“I think we should go out tonight,” I said, sipping on a perfectly poured Guinness that the stage mana
ger had left for me in our dressing room. Grace popped her head out of the bathroom, her face covered in neon paint.
We ended every show by breaking up with audience members onstage and then covering our faces with paint to Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Don’t make me explain our art.
“I don’t know. Hasn’t this day been, like, nine years long?” There she was. Old-school Grace. The Grace who would need to go back and check in with a boyfriend via WhatsApp before the time change got weird, the one who would rather stay in her hotel than go out. But there was no boyfriend this time, damnit! We needed to rally.
“Grace, the last time we were here, we were heckled and then got into that ridiculous fight.* Then ol’ Spit Take this morning? Come on. We have to have an Irish memory that’s good besides being onstage.”
I saw a little glimmer in her eyes. “Okay, we’ll go out for two drinks. That’s it. We don’t need to be losing phones or missing flights tomorrow.” I pumped my fist in the air. I got her! Single Grace was coming out!
We dropped our stuff off in our rooms, did a Superman-in-a-phone-booth speed change of clothes (not that our super flattering onesies wouldn’t have been a hit) and headed out. Luckily we didn’t have to go far because our hotel was just a couple of blocks off Temple Bar, the Irish equivalent of Bourbon Street. We walked our already-tipsy asses straight into the first place we saw and sidled up to the bar. There was a band playing, and the whole place was in full swing.
“What can I get you ladies?” asked the cute older bartender. “Do you have Fireball?” we asked in unison. They did not. In fact, in the land of Jameson, even asking for it was probably blasphemous. But they did have something exactly like it, so spicy cinnamon whiskey shots and Guinness it was! After about a half hour of chatting with the bartenders and listening to the band playing the traditional Irish tunes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Eagles, two dudes approached us.
“Mametown and Smellbig, is it?” the one who looked like a poor man’s Keanu Reeves asked. OH GOD, I thought. They’re fans. I was debating in my head just how inappropriate it would be to hook up with fans before I remembered we were wearing soccer jerseys with our names on the back that we’d been given by the sweetest girl at our preshow meet-and-greet. “Oh. Hi, I’m Mamrie, this is Grace.” We explained the shirts and that we had just done a comedy show and were in town for only one night.
“Us, too!” said his friend, who, considering his blond curls, could have been the Bill to Keanu’s Ted. “We’re here doing business for one night.”
“What do you do?” Grace asked, motioning the eavesdropping older bartender and the hot younger bartender for another round.
“We’re in finance. We work for ING out of Amsterdam. Just had to come in for a meeting today.” Grace and I shot each other looks. Bankers out of Amsterdam were not our style, and their boot-cut jeans were definitely not our (or anyone with taste after 2007) style, either. But then again, we were ready to make a memory, and this was presenting itself as an interesting possibility.
The younger bartender set down the shots. “Do y’all want one, too?” Grace asked. They agreed, and we took down some Flameballz (or whatever it was called) and chatted. We had to admit, they were kind of douchey. And the bartenders definitely thought we were lowering our standards by the way they were cutting eyes at us. Just then, a cute girl came over and handed the dudes a shot, winked, and walked off.
“Who was that?” Grace asked.
“Ohhh.” Keanu shook his head. “She’s one of our coworkers. She’s actually super annoying. I think she thinks we’re definitely going to hook up, but I am so not into that.”
Grace and I shot each other a suspicious look, as the coworker kept motioning the guys to come join their group.
“Ugh, we’ll be back in just a sec,” and with that the Dutch Bill and Ted went over to their coworkers to join them for a shot.
This is when Grace and I used our powers of being longtime friends and began communicating telepathically. Not an actual word was uttered between us, but this convo happened through our eyes. . . .
GRACE: Something is up with these dudes.
MAME: Yeah, that was totally not a coworker.
GRACE: Also, they haven’t offered to buy us a drink.
MAME: We bought them a drink. And that girl did, too.
GRACE: Something’s fishy, and it’s not just this Guinness.
MAME: What do you mean?
GRACE: Don’t they use some kind of fish guts in the beer-making process?
MAME: Fuck my life. I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.
GRACE: BTW, why are we speaking telepathically when those dudes left and we can just use real voices?
I cleared my throat, which was already a little scratchy from all the travel and shows and debauchery. It felt like losing my phone in New York had been eighty-four years earlier. “Maybe we should just pack it in for the evening,” I said, barely believing the words coming out of my own mouth. “I mean, I know we are in the country of luck, but it does not look like we are getting lucky tonight.”
“No, let’s wait. These dudes don’t deserve an Irish good-bye.” I was shocked. Grace, the QUEEN of Irish good-byes, was refusing to leave that old wooden bar, like a hippie chained to a tree. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I knew I could trust her.
Bill and Ted came back, and Grace popped into full girl-flirt mode. I followed her lead. I cannot deny or confirm if I twirled my hair with my finger. You could tell between their exchanged looks that they thought it was a done deal. A pair of shoo-ins, one might say; meanwhile, we were about to put a metaphorical shoe-in their ass.
“So, tell us about your job,” Grace said, adding on a little LA vocal fry for effect. “It must be super stressful. Freddie Mac is a big company.”
Ted smiled. “It is. But we make time for fun,” he said, placing his arm around my shoulder.
“Oh really?” Grace said with a smile that then fell flatter than my sixth-grade chest. “You said you worked at ING. You guys are full of shit.”
Ted looked to Bill, his eyes wide. “Wait, what did we say?”
I picked up Ted’s hand from my shoulder with two fingers like it was a piece of litter and handed it back to him. “Oh my god! You two could’ve been plumbers and we wouldn’t have cared. You blew it.” We hopped off our barstools and breezed past them as they trailed behind.
“You two are obviously lying, too!” Keanu shouted. “You aren’t comedians! You haven’t made us laugh once.”
“Yeah, well, that’s our job and you’re not paying us. I’d say buy a ticket, but it sounds like you don’t have any money.” We kept walking toward the door, but right before we got there, Grace turned on a dime. She walked right up to their female “coworkers” and pulled the smiley one to the side. “Just so you know, these dudes aren’t bankers, and they said you all were annoying.” Girl comically GASPED. Bet Bill and Ted wished they had a time-traveling phone booth then!
The only people smiling harder than us were the two bartenders, who had been watching this spectacle the whole time. We changed directions and smiled right back.
Turns out, despite confronting these two jerks on their terrible game, there actually was an Irish good-bye that night. And by this I mean that those two bartenders hopped right out of the bar and left with Grace and me during the middle of their shift. Our luck had changed.
Frasierween
WHEN IT COMES to doing outrageous, fun shit, a lot of people talk the talk but never walk the walk. In fact, forget walking; some people simply crawl through life, staying low and close to the ground, careful not to get hurt or, worse, embarrass themselves. Not me! I don’t want to just walk the walk; I want to throw on moon shoes and bounce my way through life! When it comes to the type of dumb, outrageous ideas that become legend, New Year’s Eve 2016 takes the cake.
&nb
sp; Despite my general love of drinks and debauchery, I’ve never been a big New Year’s person. There’s always so much hype and expectation for things to be crazy, which to me feels like an awkward cloud of forced fun hanging above your head all night. I’ve had some fun ones—you might recall the mushrooms, catching myself on fire, shallow champagne tub story of New Year’s ’05. But nine times out of ten, it’s a whole lot of work with not that great of a payoff. Personally, I am a bigger fan of Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday. Besides the ability to make anything “slutty”—I have been a slutty Tetris piece before—I also love that it’s the one day out of the year that you can scare the shit out of kids and no one bats an eye. If you rolled up on a neighbor’s house any other day of the year, and the front yard was covered with fake dismembered hands and feet, and a man pretended to be a scarecrow only to terrify the living hell out of your kids and then try to make nice with them with a mini Snickers, that shit would not fly. But on Halloween? Sure, why not? Throw in a chain saw while you’re at it to really solidify some nightmares.
In September of 2016, I met up with my friends Scotty and Flula to get some drinks. Scotty is a friend I’ve known about eight years since back in the Brooklyn days. He is a hilarious comedy writer, an even better drinker, and is always down for a weird time. We share the same mentality when it comes to doing something for the sake of randomness. Flula is one of the funniest motherfuckers on the planet. He looks like he might’ve been an experiment by the German government because he is tall and perfectly built. With his thick accent and affinity for fanny packs and dancing, he’s basically a Bavarian Party Ken doll.
So, there we were, sitting in our swivel chairs at our go-to bar, Taix. Taix is one of those rare places that hasn’t changed at all since it opened in 1972, with its plaid carpeting and its menu full of things like coq au vin and escargot. Sure, there are your standard hipsters who filter through the bar on a nightly basis, but for the most part, you are delightfully surrounded by old people slurping on mussels and croque madams. My favorite sighting I’ve ever had there was Ron Jeremy, the godfather of porn actors, sitting by himself, eating a big bowl of soup, with a napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt, while watching the news on the bar’s TV. Just goes to show ya, you can have sex with more than two thousand people on camera and still end up eating your minestrone alone.