I'll Be Here All Week

by Anderson Ward

  Walking into the studio, an obese man stuck behind a radio console reaches across the desk without standing up and extends his hand. “Hey, I’m Buzz,” he says. This would make him Buzz Barker of “The Buzz Barker in the Morning Show.” Buzz is wearing a baseball cap with the Van Halen logo on it, an enormous black T-shirt that stretches across his enormous belly, and jean shorts. He speaks with that DJ voice that they all seem to have and has a big smile on his face. This is comforting. It means that Buzz likes comedians.

  “Spence,” he says as he shakes Buzz’s hand and looks around the studio. They are always so much smaller than people think. He remembers that “The Bob and Tom Show” has an enormous studio. So does Howard Stern. Both are exceptions to the rule. Most radio studios look like the inside of a Toyota Yaris.

  “Nice to have you,” Buzz says and points to a skinny guy in the corner sitting next to a thirtysomething woman. “That’s Monkey-Boy. And that’s Sheila.”

  Spence waves to both of them. They both nod and go back to reading whatever papers are in front of them. Buzz relaxes back into his seat and offers him a pair of headphones to wear.

  “So where do ya live?” Buzz asks him.

  “The Toyota Camry outside,” he deadpans.

  Buzz laughs. “I’ll bet. That’s great.”

  I wasn’t joking, Spence thinks.

  “What’d you wanna talk about today?” Buzz asks.

  “Anything is fine with me,” he says. “I usually like to just wing it. I’ve been listening on the way here, so we can pick up where you guys left off.”

  “Cool,” Buzz says, “I like that. We’re in the middle of a block of songs. When we come back in four minutes, we’ll go right to you.”

  “Sounds good.” Spence holds up a thumb and puts the headphones over his head.

  “One other thing,” Buzz says.

  “Shoot.”

  “I know you’re supposed to be on the air for thirty minutes, but we’re going to have to cut that down to about four.”

  “Really?” Spence asks.

  “Yeah,” Buzz says, “sorry about that. We have to do some giveaways and won’t have time to keep you around.”

  Damn it, Spence thinks, I’m glad I got up at six a.m. to be on the air for four goddamned minutes. I’ll be forgotten before nine.

  “No problem,” he lies. He smiles, and Buzz, Monkey-Boy, and Sheila all smile back. They barely speak to each other, and Buzz is the only one who seems actually happy. Spence wonders how long the team has worked together and if they even like each other anymore. Spend several years in a room the size of a closet with your best friend and you might want to push him in front of a train.

  “Hey, where’s the promo sheet for the Laff Shack?” Buzz asks Sheila.

  “How the hell should I know?” Shelia responds, which answers any doubt about whether or not she and Buzz actually like each other.

  “You’ll have to excuse Sheila,” Buzz says to him. “She’s what we in the industry refer to as a ‘bitch.’ ” He makes finger quotes in the air as he insults his cohost.

  “Dick,” Sheila says and, for a second, almost seems to smile. Buzz comically grabs his crotch and tugs at it in her direction. The entire confrontation is confusing, and it’s hard to tell if the two of them are about to come to blows or start kissing.

  “I have all the info,” Spence tells Buzz, but both he and Sheila are too busy giving each other the finger to notice.

  Someone brings Spence a cup of coffee and the rest of the song block passes quickly. They all put on their headphones, put down whatever they were doing before, and switch into character when it’s time to go live. When the music was playing, the three hosts had almost nothing to do with each other besides a few random insults and obscene gestures. Once they go live on the air, they all seem like the best of friends. Spence follows their lead and goes from hungover to enthusiastic in a millisecond. Listeners must think he’s always up this early.

  “Today’s best music on 99.7, The Wave,” Buzz cheers into the microphone. “Just playing a little Green Day for you. Third Eye Blind before that. It’s Friday morning, and you know what that means!”

  The sounds of wacky music starts playing. Monkey-Boy laughs for no reason, and Sheila groans. The sound of Bugs Bunny saying something blares through Spence’s headphones. A recording of Homer Simpson goes, “D’oh!”

  “Time for ‘Friday Funnies.’ ” Buzz laughs, and it sounds like he’s hosting a game show. The sound of a spring going “boing” is played and—again—Monkey-Boy laughs.

  Buzz introduces Spence while playing a recording of fake applause. Spence rolls with it and does what he’s always known to do: He takes over the show. Whether he has four minutes or forty-five, a comedian has to try and attract as many of the listeners as possible. He does this by taking over the microphone and putting out as much energy as he can. Instead of waiting for Buzz to set him up, he takes charge. He chooses the direction to go and doesn’t wait for a cue. It’s not what Buzz is used to, but it’s obvious that he likes it.

  “I’ll be honest,” Spence says as Buzz watches on eagerly. “I’m hungover and have barely slept.”

  “You seem okay to me,” Buzz says.

  “That’s because I’ve had six cups of coffee and half a bottle of aspirin.”

  “You should be good for at least a few hours then.”

  “A few hours or until my kidneys fail, either way,” Spence says. Buzz laughs. Monkey-Boy laughs. Sheila groans.

  “Nice road construction you’ve got going on here in town,” he says. When in doubt, he always takes a stab at the local road construction. It doesn’t matter which city he’s in, everyone hates it the same everywhere.

  “You like it?” Buzz asks.

  “What’s your local mascot?”

  “The Chiefs.”

  “Yeah?” he says. “ ’Cause it should be an orange construction cone.”

  Buzz laughs. Monkey-Boy agrees. Sheila groans.

  “I like that idea,” Monkey-Boy chimes in.

  “You could call him Coney,” Spence says. He imitates the voice of a sportscaster, “Here comes Coney, everybody! Oh, the kids sure do love Coney!”

  Buzz laughs and hits a button that makes a rim shot sound over the air waves. “So you’re in town all week?”

  “Until the warrants catch up with me, sure.” Another rim shot.

  “How do you like Peoria?” Sheila chimes in.

  “From what I’ve seen of it, I like it,” Spence says.

  “What have you seen so far?” she asks.

  “My hotel room,” he says, “and I like it.”

  Buzz laughs. Monkey-Boy laughs. Sheila—surprisingly—laughs.

  Just like when he’s onstage, all is right in the world. Right here, he’s not hungover. He’s not worried about getting more sleep or what it reads on his bank statement. Right here, he knows that, on the other end of the radio, people are having fun with him. Here he can be friends with strangers. When the DJs laugh, it’s real. That tells him that other people are laughing too, and that makes him smile. When he smiles, it’s genuine, too.

  “Are you married?” Buzz asks him.

  “Divorced. But we still see each other,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “Sort of,” he says. “She doesn’t see me. I hide outside and look at all the stuff I used to own.”

  “Work out well for you?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Why would I want to have financial security and a nice house with all kinds of great stuff when I can be in Peoria, Illinois, at seven a.m., talking to a guy named Monkey-Boy?”

  All three of the hosts laugh, and Spence realizes that four minutes is never as long as it seems. He recognizes the routine of “laughing into the commercial break” that all morning shows are excellent at doing. When the laugh carries over longer than even the best joke deserves, he knows what it means. His time is up, and he feels like he barely got started.

  “Buzz in the morning with
the Friday Funnies,” Buzz says into the microphone. He signals with his eyes to Monkey-Boy and Sheila, who seem to understand the look. “We’ll be right back after this.”

  With that, all three of them go back to how they were before the show went live. Monkey-Boy checks his phone for text messages, his bangs hanging in his face in a way that makes it hard to tell if he can actually be reading anything. Sheila begins looking at her computer screen, reading the news or checking the weather or whatever the hell she does when she isn’t groaning. Buzz pulls his headphones off his ears and leans in.

  “Great stuff,” Buzz says to him. “You’re really good at this.”

  “Thanks,” Spence says with a smile. People occasionally compliment him for what he does on the radio but, from Buzz, it sounds really sincere.

  “You ever thought about getting into radio?” Buzz asks.

  “Not once,” Spence says and means it.

  “You’d be good at it.”

  “That’s what they said about stand-up comedy.”

  “Yeah”—Buzz laughs—“that’s what they told me, too.”

  “Isn’t radio a dead-end job?” Spence asks.

  “Isn’t stand-up comedy?”

  “Ah, we’re kindred spirits.”

  “Indeed we are.” Buzz gives him a fist bump, and a huge smile spreads across his enormous face.

  “You ever do stand-up?” Spence asks.

  “A couple of times,” Buzz says, “but I’m no better at being up at midnight than you are at being up at six.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Listen”—Buzz looks at the clock on the wall—“screw the giveaways. We’ll let you do them with us. It’ll be funnier that way. Can you stick around for another hour?”

  9

  The Laff Shack is a beautiful comedy club. The room is exactly what comedians dream of performing in when they fantasize about all things stand-up comedy. The ceilings are low, which makes the laughter bounce all over the place. The room itself is tight, making that laughter enormous and powerful. The stage is spacious and well-lit, the seats are comfortable, and the owner obviously put serious money into the upkeep. Inside that club, it looks like 1987. That was the high point of The Boom. If a comedy club can be a time capsule, the Laff Shack is it.

  Despite this fact, Spence can’t help but be a little bit depressed. The room seats two hundred, but there’s maybe twenty people sitting in the audience. A club this beautiful with this much money behind it shouldn’t be this empty on a Friday night. The place should be jam-packed with people trying to get in. Something is wrong. There must be a championship basketball game in town or something. Leave it to a popular sporting event to crush the attendance at a comedy club every time.

  He looks around the room and notices posters everywhere advertising some old comedian who is going to be there in a couple of weeks. This guy was very popular in the ’70s and was on a hit TV show for years. He hasn’t done much of anything since then and is now back to doing stand-up comedy. The posters are even emblazoned with the catchphrase he used on that sitcom thirty years ago: “okie-dokie-pokey.” Every poster in the place practically screams it with a large, comical font.

  Spence grimaces. Every comedian hopes to get a big TV show one day. No one ever thinks of what it might be like when that fame peaks and you’re stuck right back doing small comedy clubs all over again. There are many comedians from twenty-five years ago, still working the same clubs they used to. Almost all of them milk a TV credit that’s older than most of the audience. Whenever he sees a comedian touting an appearance on An Evening at the Improv, it makes him a little queasy. That show went off the air fourteen years ago. He likes to think that, in another ten years or so, he will have something more to show for himself than his Kilborn appearance.

  “Gonna pack the place in,” a voice comes from over his shoulder, and Spence turns around. Frank owns the club. They are around the same age, but Frank looks older because of his hair transplant. The plugs show a little bit, which doesn’t help. Frank is short, probably about five foot five, and he dresses like a mobster. His suit is sharp and obviously expensive.

  “Tonight?” he asks Frank.

  “I wish,” Frank says and points to the poster of the has-been. “You wouldn’t believe the money I’ve dropped getting him here.”

  “Really?” Spence asks. He wonders how a guy who hasn’t done anything in thirty years can be that expensive.

  “Yup,” Frank says.

  “Who’s his agent?”

  “Rodney Carnes,” Frank says.

  Fuck you, Rodney, Spence thinks.

  “Small world,” he says.

  “Plus, we’ve gone all out on advertising,” Frank says. “Newspaper, radio, TV. You name it. Even doubled the ticket prices.”

  “All for him.”

  “Yup. Spent a shitload on the whole thing. That’s one reason we’re slow tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” Spence asks. It’s not lost on him that his own headshot wasn’t on display in the lobby. Three different posters of the has-been are there instead. In fact, if it weren’t for all of the posters and signs promoting the has-been, there’d be no proof that any other comics perform there at all.

  “Well, we normally do more PR and advertising,” Frank says. “But we cut back on it this week and next week so we can promote the special event.”

  “But you said you’re going to sell it out.”

  “We will,” Frank says.

  “Isn’t he famous enough that you could’ve packed it anyway?” Spence asks. He wonders why they would spend all that money on advertising a sure thing.

  Frank shrugs. “I’m not taking any chances. He cost us ten grand.”

  Spence almost swallows his own tongue. He’s making eight hundred dollars for the week. He doesn’t even have ten grand in savings. In fact, he doesn’t even have a savings account.

  “Couldn’t you sell out every week if you spent half that on advertising and PR?” he asks.

  “I dunno,” Frank says. “We often do sell out.”

  “No matter who is onstage?”

  “Yep.”

  Then why bring in the celebrity act at all? Spence thinks. Don’t you wind up making the same money after expenses?

  He can’t say this because it will only get him in trouble. He knows that he can never tell a club owner that the guy has made a bad decision. It will just get him banned from the club for being a jerk. He has to let Frank believe that overspending is a good idea.

  “I like bringing in the big names,” Frank says with a big smile. “Hell, we’re thinking about bringing in Gallagher.”

  Spence smiles and pretends to be impressed. He’s not sure why club owners always expect him to be excited when they brag about other acts. Why would he want to hear about people getting paid a hundred times what he makes to work in the exact same place? He wonders what kind of career he needs in order to have his pay shoot up to ten grand a week. He suddenly finds himself a bit depressed that he didn’t get the body spray commercial. The guy who got it looked exactly like him.

  “C’mere”—Frank motions for him to follow—“I wanna show you something.”

  He follows Frank outside into the parking lot and turns to look at the club. He can’t help but notice his name isn’t on the marquee. Instead it promotes the has-been’s show that isn’t for another two weeks.

  “Check it out,” Frank says and extends his right hand. At the end of where his hand is pointing is a very new, very shiny, very expensive Corvette. It is red and gorgeous and easily cost more than most comedians will make in two years.

  “Whad’ya think?” Frank stands in front of the car as if it’s a child who just won the spelling bee.

  “Nice!” Spence says, acting like he gives a damn. He should win an Oscar for being able to grin and bear it.

  “Just a little toy I decided to get myself,” Frank says.

  “It’s hot.” Spence wonders again why he’s only getting paid eight h
undred dollars for the week. Frank can apparently afford ten grand for a comedian and five times that for a sports car.

  “Yeah, I love it,” Frank says, “Life is too short, my man. Sometimes you’ve gotta treat yourself. Know what I mean?”

  “Hell, yes,” Spence lies. The last thing he treated himself to was an extra night in a Days Inn instead of sleeping on what used to be his sofa at Beth’s house. He looks at the car and the has-been’s name on the marquee and wants to drag his car key across the Corvette’s hood. “You deserve it.”

  He doesn’t hear Frank yammering on about the car because he is still wondering what it must be like to make ten grand in a week. The best month he ever had in stand-up comedy, he made a little over five. That kind of ride dried up pretty quickly. But the shelf life on a ’70s sitcom is apparently endless.

  Inside the club, the twenty people in the audience are giving a very mild reception to the opening act. The kid is very white and yet seems to think he’s black. He was probably raised in the suburbs but tries to play it as if he’s from the streets. Every sentence ends with “knowwhatI’msaying” and begins with “fuck.”

  “All I’m saying is you girls gotta wash that shit every day,” the kid says and points to his crotch. “That shit is nasty if you don’t wash the shit outta it. KnowwhatI’msaying?”

  The audience does know what he’s saying. The problem is that what he’s saying isn’t funny. New comics often mistake profanity for real material. Just saying “fuck” doesn’t necessarily make the joke funny. The kid onstage hasn’t learned that yet.

  “Fuck,” the kid says, “all I’m saying is that if the bitch don’t wash that shit, I ain’t going anywhere near it. If I wanna eat tuna, I’ll go get myself a foot-long at Subway.”

  Sitting down in a booth in the back of the club, Spence watches the new kid slowly dying onstage. He feels a headache coming on, knowing that he has to follow this train wreck. The audience isn’t offended as much as insulted. Their response is tepid at best. The kid has two minutes left to bring them over to his side and close big. After that, it’s all over. Going onstage after another comedian has bombed is like going up first; the show essentially has to start all over again cold. Going on after this kid is worse. It’s like being in the band playing on the deck of the Titanic.