Stay Hungry

by Sebastian Maniscalco

  It took me seventeen years of practice and peeling away the masks to be able to stand center stage and feel as comfortable and relaxed as if I were at the kitchen table with family and friends.

  I did not learn that in a classroom. So my answer would have to be no, good comedy can’t be taught. It takes experience, which can only be endured.

  3

  * * *

  TWO DRINK MINIMUM

  Ever since I was ten, as we sat down to dinner, my father’s first and second questions were “What did you do today? Nothing?”

  If I was off that day, I would immediately have to exaggerate mundane activities to make it sound like I’d done a lot.

  “Yeah, Dad, I brushed my teeth, top and bottom, put my shoes on the right feet, and had a lunch meeting.”

  He will never stop working. He’ll die standing behind the stylist’s chair in his salon, doing a dye job. He’ll be folding some woman’s hair into tinfoil and he’ll just collapse face-first into the bleach bowl.

  In our house, it wasn’t enough that he work like a man possessed. Everyone else had to, also. I started working young, going door to door in my neighborhood mowing lawns. I shared three lawns with my across-the-street neighbor John Papadia (The Bozo Show guy). He was older and would manipulate me into doing more of the work, but we split the money evenly. What I made hardly covered my bills for my medication, which I had to take because I was allergic to grass and ragweed. I was also using my father’s lawn mower, which wasn’t borrowed. I had to rent it, tune it, replace parts, and pay for gas. One year, I had to replace a blade after mowing a lawn that was so long that I ran over a hornet’s nest. There was nothing worse than running down Shag Bark Lane wearing a medical mask while being chased by killer insects.

  If my father caught me, say, sitting, he’d tell me to go stain the fence or re-shingle the roof. At age six.

  I don’t know any other way to live. His work ethic is so deeply ingrained, I feel empty on my rare days off. My wife says, “Relax,” but I have to at least skim the pool or change some lightbulbs. I can’t help myself.

  When I turned fourteen, I was old enough to get a permit to start working an hourly wage at a legit business. I’ve worked like a mule, one job or another—two or three at a time—ever since.

  • I was a busboy at Fuddruckers at fourteen. I was so conscientious, I was promoted to fry guy at fifteen. I took pride in making the perfect crispy golden fries. After that, I was promoted to cashier, the highest honor before becoming a manager.

  • For Olen Mills Portrait Studio, I cold-called people to sell them portrait packages, and somehow convinced perfect strangers to give me their credit card information. If they didn’t want to do that over the phone, I would send over our delivery guy “John” (me) to their house to pick up a check or cash.

  • During college summers, I temped at an insurance agency—filing, making copies. The only difference between this job and solitary confinement was the endless manila folders. I am still wondering if manila is the color or the type of folder!? You know your job is boring when you try to guess the time before looking at the clock, and it’s four hours earlier than you thought.

  • Holiday breaks, I worked at Honey Baked Ham, glazing hams and turkeys. I wore white coveralls, a hairnet, a hardhat over that, white industrial gloves up to my elbows, and goggles, like I was about to assemble some microchips. In case you don’t know (and I hope you don’t) how to glaze a ham, you baste it with honey, and then blast it with a blowtorch. The number one job requirement: Don’t set yourself on fire. Number two: Don’t burn down the building. I came home every day covered in sweat and smelling like a hog. I would take two showers, scrub myself with industrial soap, and I’d still stink. But I was proud, because the worse the smell, the better. It was proof to my father that I’d put in hard time.

  • On Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, any holiday that might inspire a party, my college roommates and I worked as banquet servers at the Hilton Hotel with a bunch of older ladies whose sole purpose was to secure for themselves the best coffeepots (the ones that actually worked, that kept the coffee hot and didn’t leak) before the rest of us arrived. To get a good pot, we had to grease the palm of my friend Steve’s mother, who worked the shift before us.

  • I waited tables in high-end (and low-rent) places. Let me tell you a story about the Olive Garden. Yes, I worked there, and it’s a cardinal sin/deep embarrassment for an Italian. When I told my father I was working there, he didn’t get it—he was so proud as he told me that he’d also farmed olives as a little boy in Sicily. I had to break it to him that the Olive Garden was not farm-to-table. It was freezer-to-fork. The waiters were required to sing this special birthday song:

  From the pasta we make,

  To lasagna we bake,

  ????????? [mystery lyric that no one knows]

  We’re wishing you a happy birthday!

  We hope you will remember,

  This fond event forever,

  We’re wishing you a happy birthday!

  It’s like family and friends,

  At the Olive Garden,

  In the true Italiano way

  Hey! Hey!

  So if you’re looking for some fun,

  Try hospitaliano,

  Have a happy, happy day,

  Hey!

  There was nothing worse than trying to round up the fellow “Gardeners” to form the house band to sing this song. Problem was, everyone was too busy giving tables their fourth or fifth round of free salad and breadsticks. So I would have to go to the table alone. That’s right, I’d have to sing solo a cappella. Not only can I not carry a tune, I didn’t know all the words and would mumble and clap loudly over the parts I didn’t know. The saving grace was that most of the customers were trying to cover up the fact that it wasn’t really their birthday and just get to the part where they got the complimentary cake. I often thought the desserts at the restaurant were only for birthdays or apologies for order fuck-ups, as in “Sorry we burned your steak. Here’s a complimentary chocolate chip cookie for the inconvenience!”

  • And for God’s sake, I was Captain Morgan. Fully dressed with a parrot on my shoulder, I made appearances at all sorts of venues. At a biker bar, I’d have to take my regalia in and change in the bathroom. If those guys saw me come in through the front door in costume, my parrot and/or hook would be shoved up my ass in a matter of seconds. Another night, I got booked at the bar where all of my friends were going. I tried to disguise myself and drown out my real voice with my best pirate accent. My friends were relentless and by the end of the night, I had no parrot, no hook, and they had stolen all of my sample shots.

  I showed up at every job interview, even for the lowly banquet waiter gig, in a suit and tie. It often looked like I was the one conducting the interview and the guy doing the hiring was trying to get the job. For me, the work ethic extended to appearance. I had to look good as a matter of principle, to be taken seriously.

  Why was I so driven? I worked all of these jobs—the good, the bad, and the smelly—to keep my father off my back and to make money, of course. I had rent to pay, even at my father’s house. In high school and college, having my own money meant I didn’t have to ask my parents for cash to buy a nice bottle of Drakkar Noir cologne, a new pair of Cavaricci pants, or an Italian beef sandwich from my favorite place, Johnnie’s Beef on Arlington Heights Road. I may come from a middle-class family, but I’ve always had a taste for a good meal and a well-tailored jacket. I’d rather drive a 1999 Honda in a Hugo Boss suit than wear tattered jeans and a stained T-shirt in a Mercedes-Benz. Which was a good thing back then, since a Mercedes wasn’t about to magically appear in my driveway anytime soon.

  DURING COLLEGE AT Northern Illinois University, I won a standup contest, and the prize was opening for a headliner at a venue near campus. Apart from my parents, everyone else in the audience was black. I went up there, introduced myself, paced the stage, and said something that was
meant to be funny.

  Total silence. Deep space quiet.

  I kept going with my largely unformed act—this was pre-Sandbox, pre–Comedy Store—I didn’t even know what a set was. I got nothing, no laughter. Some people coughed, a few groaned audibly as if in pain. I was so grateful because coughs and groans were better than complete silence. I’m the type of sweater where it’s not a slight dew on my brow, it’s more like Niagara Falls. Once the sweat breaks, the floodgates are open. There is no hiding it. And I still had nine and a half minutes to go. By the end of the set, I looked like the coach of the winning team at the Super Bowl who is drenched in Gatorade.

  I was about two minutes in when someone shouted what sounded like the word “sandman.” Others in the crowd laughed at that, and then more of them started saying it, too. It evolved into a chant: “Sandman, sandman, sandman.”

  “Sandman” like I was putting them to sleep?

  In a moment of pure wild optimism, I thought they might be chanting “Sebastian.”

  Somehow, I got to the end of my time and was chased off the stage by a full audience chorus of shouted “Sandmans.”

  I immediately asked myself, Who or what the hell is Sandman and why were they screaming his name at me?

  The next day, I went to the library and did some research. I got an answer. As it turns out, a man named Howard “Sandman” Sims, a legendary tap dancer, used to pour sand on the stage at the iconic Apollo Theater in Harlem and tap dance on it, hence the nickname. But the Sandman was also known by another handle: the Executioner. For decades at the Apollo, when a performer bombed, the crowd would scream and boo and shout “Sandman.” That was Howard Sims’s cue to tap dance on stage, sometimes brandishing a toy pistol, and literally chase the performer into the wings.

  Shouting “Sandman” instead of, say, the traditional white redneck tradition “You suck! Get off the frickin’ stage!” became a thing for black audiences at the Apollo and elsewhere, including comedy clubs outside Chicago in the nineties.

  As I read more about him, I realized what an incredible, resilient performer Sims was (he died at eighty-six in 2003). His first time at the Apollo, he’d entered a dancing contest and was kicked off the stage. Same thing for his second and third times. For ten consecutive times, he was booted. But the eleventh time, he won the contest. And the twelfth. And the thirteenth. Sims won twenty-five times in a row. He won so many times, the Apollo declared him the official all-time champion, and established a four-win limit for all future competitors.

  This guy didn’t know how to quit.

  Once I’d read that incredible story, I felt proud of my Sandmanning. I started to chant “Sandman” in my head whenever I felt panicked on stage, to remind myself to keep on coming back. If I could be like Howard Sims, who never quit, who never gave up, maybe one day, people would chant “Sebastian” when I appeared on stage.

  Flash forward a bunch of years, and the Sebastian chant has been known to happen. I’ve been extremely fortunate to have fans that get my sense of humor and relate to it. These people get me. I can just give a look to get my people laughing.

  I also really get into doing comedy for people who don’t get me, and won’t necessarily relate to my stories about growing up Italian in Chicago. For a long time, every Tuesday night, I performed in black rooms in L.A. It’s not like I was trying to relive my college-era sweat-shower experience. I just appreciated the honesty of the audience. If you sucked, you got nothing. No sympathy laughs. But if they would come around and love you, it was gratifying as hell.

  My subject matter doesn’t change depending on venue or audience. I do the same set in front of a black crowd that I would do in Scottsdale, Arizona. When it comes down to it, wherever you’re from, whatever your background, you’ll find something familiar in a genuine act, something to sink your teeth into. I thrive on the challenge of taking a room of strangers who haven’t seen my specials, and have no idea what my comedy is about, and getting laughs. It’s an incredible high when I pull it off.

  Otherwise, it’s a sweat shower.

  I MET A good friend of mine, Brett Paul, on my first day of class at the Comedy Store. I was shocked to learn that he was an executive at Warner Bros. Television, very high up on the totem pole there. Why would a guy with showbiz clout be in the Sandbox with a know-nothing like me? For him, it was just a hobby, just something to do on a Sunday. He was very funny, though, with belly laugh moments on stage, the one guy I really enjoyed watching. We hit it off, and at the end of the course, I thought, Now we can go out and do standup together.

  I knew a place, Highland Grounds, a club on Highland Avenue in L.A., that had an open mic night that started at 10 p.m. I said to Brett, “Let’s do it.”

  He said, “Can’t.”

  “Come on, man, it’ll be fun.”

  “Sebastian, I got a job.”

  Oh, yeah. He was a hot shit lawyer at a major production company.

  “You have to do it at least once,” I said, and kept at him until he agreed to go with me. I didn’t want to do it by myself! I needed one person in the audience to laugh at my jokes.

  Highland Grounds was open mic for everything—musicians, comedians, singers, jugglers—not specifically for standup. Brett and I showed up at 10 p.m.—he was already yawning—and waited in the back for an hour and a half, watching a bunch of awful performances. Finally, it was our turn. He went up first and did his act. I looked around and realized I was the only one paying any attention. The other people were tuning guitars, practicing plate spinning, warming up harmonicas, waiting for their turn.

  I got up and went straight into my act. I stuck to the script, no improv, no catering to the crowd, which equaled no laughs. No one bothered to respond or seemed aware I’d spoken at all. Did anyone show up to just watch the show? As soon as I had the thought, I swear to God, I heard someone doing voice warm-ups in the back of the room, “La la la la la la lahhhhh.”

  To do comedy, you need an audience. Otherwise, you’re just making jokes in a dark room. Don’t get me wrong, I have been known to crack myself up on occasion. But there’s no way to know if what you think is funny is also funny to others unless you put it out there. At Highland Grounds, I was way out there, but as far as the audience was concerned, I was invisible.

  From his seat in the back, Brett smiled gamely at me. It felt like I was only performing for him.

  I thought, Okay, they’re not listening now. But as soon as that guy stops tuning his ukulele, they’re all going to pay attention.

  With grit and determination, I dug into my set, really getting into it, acing my premises and setups, nailing my punch lines. If Sandi Shore had been in the audience, she would have been kvelling.

  And wouldn’t you know it?

  Everyone in the place . . . continued to completely ignore me.

  Yeah, this is not one of those stories where people suddenly tune in and say, “Whoa! Who is this guy? He’s really great!”

  Nope, I don’t have any of those stories for you at Highland Grounds open mic. You could have been Chris Rock or Andrew Dice Clay, and no one would have looked twice.

  On the drive home, Brett said, “I’m never doing that again.”

  Can’t say I blamed him.

  Brett reached his limit after just one demoralizing night. I had to ask myself, How many am I up for? My father’s voice was always in the back of my head: “You don’t know what hard work is! Nothing ever comes easy to us Maniscalcos.”

  I told myself that my hard limit of demoralizing nights was infinity. I would keep on doing this, night after night, three times a night, forever, before I admitted defeat. It wasn’t even about winning. For me, the ultimate victory would be to earn a living doing the one thing I love most: standup comedy. I was never doing it for wealth or fame. I just loved comedy and had been raised to equate quitting with death. It wasn’t like an “I’ll show them!” thing, although I did want to make my parents proud. It was a feeling of never being a person who gave up too s
oon and let his dream slip away.

  Ironically named, Highland Grounds was a low point. But it was also symbolic. I was starting at the bottom and had nowhere to go but up. From that night on, if there was an open mic anywhere in L.A., I’d be in the back of the room, waiting for my turn to stand in front of it. While the other comedians were comparing notes and bragging about how their set killed at a comedy room at Miyagi’s (sushi) or Miceli’s (Italian) the night before, I would isolate myself from all of them. I’d study the crowd and go over my notes before it was my turn to go on.

  I did hundreds of bringer shows, where you had to bring in a certain number of people to get a spot on stage and do your set for free. The way it worked: I would give the promoter a list of six or seven names of people I had coming, and I’d make sure they all checked in at the front door. Even more awkward than being ignored on stage was the weekly task of asking friends, coworkers at the Four Seasons, anyone I met, to come see me perform.

  It was a big ask, and I hated doing it. Roping someone into seeing your comedy show isn’t like asking them to sign a petition or write a Yelp review. They had to give up a free night; drive across town; pay for gas, parking, a cover charge, and a two drink minimum; and sit through twelve other comedians until I did my act, which, at the time, was kind of painful to watch. My soft sell went something like this: “Hey, Katie. I’m doing standup at Lucky Strike Bowling Alley tonight. If you want to come, let me know.”

  Katie would say, “What? A bowling alley [boxing ring, veteran hall, strip club]? You can do comedy there?”

  “Ya, it’s really great,” I’d say. “You never know who is going to be there. It’s right in Hollywood so there might be someone in the industry there. It’s a little hard to hear over the crashing of the bowling pins, but I get a free round of bowling, so we can hit the lanes afterward.”

  I never pushed it. I never begged or even explained that if I didn’t get the requisite number of bodies (with a pulse and cash), I wouldn’t get to perform at all. I just told people about the show, and because they liked me or thought I was funny already, a lot of the times they would come. I would only ask the same person twice, though. After that, it gets awkward. Before long, you run out of people to ask.