As I continued to gawk around at the other nominees, I realized something that made my heart sink. I said to Lana, “Nobody is here from my category except Maria Bamford.”
As the dinner was served and the show got started, I checked the program to see how many nominees from other categories had shown up. “Nine people up for Best Concert Comic, and only Jim Gaffigan is here,” I said to Lana. I was making a study of this, hoping it didn’t mean what I feared it did.
As the awards were announced and people started going up to receive them, I got the feeling that their joyful surprise reactions were fake. Some of them went up to accept with props. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg won for Best Comedy Director in Film for This Is the End. Seth said, “We first learned about the ACAs four days ago, and we came to receive the award in person because it’s being televised and we were literally guaranteed to win.”
Rogen and Goldberg knew they were going to win. They all knew they were going to win. Maria Bamford, I noticed, looked very relaxed, not on the edge of her seat at all, about our upcoming category. So if someone told her who the winner was, and no one told me, that could only mean that she was going to take home that award.
How did she know? I had to assume the ACA told her manager to make sure she’d show up. If the winning managers knew, did the losers’ managers know, too? None of the other losing nominees were there. They had to know they hadn’t won. Why didn’t my managers tell me? As I was putting the puzzle pieces together, I felt like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. Everyone else knew what was going on. I was the only asshole who didn’t.
And I was hungry, too. I hadn’t eaten the food because I thought I might give a speech and I didn’t want roasted baby carrots stuck in my teeth. You know the self-control it takes for me to pass up dinner, even a gross piece of rubber chicken!? A fucking lot. What a putz I was, sitting there.
The joke was on me. I had written my speech. I’d practiced it. When my category was announced, the cameraman zoomed in on me, tight. That moment was funnier than anything else. I’d just figured out what was going on, and I had to pretend like I was still hoping. My “people to thank” card was poking out of my pocket. I had to wonder if the camera guy was in on it, too, and the producers in the truck outside. Were they saying into the cameraman’s earpiece, “Get in close on Sebastian. Holy shit! He wrote a speech! He doesn’t even know he’s going to lose! He actually thinks he’s got a shot! Zoom in on the index card!”
The presenter announced Maria Bamford’s win. I was thinking, Whatever happens, clap and smile and act like you’re happy for her. Even if I hadn’t figured out I’d already lost, I would have felt the sting of disappointment. It wasn’t a crushing blow. It would have been nice to win, but, as always, I was just glad to be there.
I applauded. I listened to her short speech thanking a list of people. My speech had an arc, a climax, a plot, main characters, and finished with a denouement. It was so good, they would have given me an award next year for Best Acceptance Speech.
Now that I knew for absolutely sure I would not have to do or say anything, I started to let loose and began drinking Bacardi and Diets. The Hammerstein Ballroom staff might have been in on the fix, because they kept bringing me more drinks. Sometime between numbers three and four, I got the hiccups.
When Bill Cosby got his lifetime achievement award, he gave the longest acceptance speech I have ever heard in my entire life. It was like your grandpa telling you old war stories. It was so quiet in the room, I was trying to hold back hiccups, but about every thirty-two seconds, one would come up and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My wife was looking at me in disbelief. She knew that when I get the hiccups, they last for hours. We were seated right in camera view, so we couldn’t get up and leave in the middle of Cosby’s endless talk. I was desperate to make the hiccups stop, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
Cosby finally stopped talking, and a lot of the comedians in the crowd went up on stage to join him in his celebration. Not me. I’m not good at the end of anything—dancing, clapping, waving to the crowd, hugging people, or searching for someone’s hand to shake. What were they talking about up there? I had no idea. Instead, Lana and I slipped out.
When the show was over, Lana said, “What now?”
Take a wild guess. I was starving. “Let’s go out to dinner.”
“Where?”
A week earlier, I’d tried to get us a reservation at Carbone on Thompson Street, the hardest restaurant to get into in NYC. The woman on the phone told me in what I call a “nice mean” voice that the place was completely booked for the next four calendar years.
I looked at Lana in her gorgeous dress, I looked down at the buttons we put so much sweat into fastening on me. We had to salvage this night. I hiccupped again and said, “Fuck it, we’re going to Carbone.”
Lana said, “Even though we couldn’t get a—”
“I don’t care. Let’s go.”
GROWING UP, I went out to dinner with my parents and grandparents as often as the World Cup: once every four years. We would go to the same place every time, Gianotti’s. It was the only time I ever saw my grandmother out of her salmon-colored nightgown. You knew it was a special night whenever my father did his mother’s hair in the makeshift salon he had set up in the basement, followed by my mother and then my sister. My dad hated this. He had already worked sixty hours that week, and these three women were the most difficult clients he had. They didn’t pay and they tried to micromanage him. When they told him what to do, he would say, “Nobody told Michelangelo how to paint the Sistine Chapel. Now, ba fa goule.”
At Gianotti’s, we would start right in discussing what we were thinking of having. Then my dad would announce what he was going to order, which signified that we could get anything on the menu equal to or less than what he chose. If you wanted a steak and he was thinking pasta, too bad! There was always next time, in just four short years.
God forbid you left anything on your plate. You would get a lecture from my father about wasting food and (his) money, while he polished off one unfinished plate after the next. He ate like a Viking, littering bones and shells all around him. Watching him, you might cringe, but you couldn’t look away. The man could gnaw on a lamb chop while deboning a fish.
Toward the end of the meal, an uncomfortable anticipation always came over the table because the kids were going to want dessert—chocolate cake, key lime pie, cheesecake. However, my grandmother had invariably just made seventeen different types of cookies—giuggiulena, cucidati, biscotti—that all tasted the same: dry. We ordered dessert at Gianotti’s maybe once ever, and my grandmother was so insulted, she sulked for a week.
There was always a struggle between my grandfather and my father over the bill. My father would do everything he could to prevent my grandfather from seeing the total cost. If he did, he’d fly into a Sicilian rage cursing in rapid-fire Italian. I would ask my father, “What did he say?” The answer was always, “There are no words in English.” I knew it had something to do with how my grandmother could have made a better meal for a fraction of the price that would have fed the whole neighborhood for two weeks.
At Gianotti’s, I was introduced to the Salvatore Maniscalco banking system. He would pull out of his pocket a worn envelope. It was covered with water damage and coffee stains and had possibly been passed down from out of my great-grandfather’s pocket. I would ask, “Dad what is that!?” In a panel in the ceiling, he hid several envelopes that were stuffed with cash. One was for “going out.” Others were marked “landscapings,” “fix,” and “rainy days.” To pay the restaurant tab, he would take bills out of the envelope, line them up perfectly with all the presidents’ heads facing in the same direction. Until the waiter came to take the money, Dad would count and recount it, and tap the pile of bills like he was burping a baby. During this whole time, you could not talk to him. He was staring at the wall, thinking about how many perms and dye jobs he would have to do to replenish the envelop
e.
My father is a 20 percent tipper across the board when we go anywhere. As a hairstylist, he earns his living off tips, so he is very mindful of others in the service industry. When he goes out with people, he gets nervous that when the bill is split, they won’t tip as well as he does and that he’ll be guilty by association.
SALVO’S PRO TIPS ON TIPPING
1. Cash is king! Always have a knot of cash to cover the cost of the meal and tip in cash.
2. Carry several bills in each denomination. Be prepared to pay the bill in exact change so the waiter doesn’t have to bring anything back. Round up to the nearest dollar amount.
3. Always hand the waiter the tip. You want your face to be associated with the cash. Do not just leave the tip on the table. If you walk out that door, someone else may pocket it.
LANA AND I took a taxi to the West Village and walked into Carbone without a reservation. I might not have won the Lucy, but I was determined to redeem myself by getting a table. I know there are hundreds of excellent restaurants in New York City, but it was a point of pride for me to get into this one. I had supreme faith that we would. It was the power of the tux. If you’re dressed up, you have a little bit more confidence. If we had been in jeans and T-shirts, forget it. But we were in black tie. Good black tie.
We entered the dark restaurant with sexy, low lighting and walked right up to the hostess stand. Why do hostesses always have an attitude as if you’re interrupting them? They glare at you when you walk in, like, “Oh, you think I’m actually gonna take you to a table here? Who do you think you are?” Even when you say, “Yes I have a reservation,” they question it, or they seem to hope they won’t find your name on the list, or they act as if they’d get pleasure telling you to take off. If they make any negative grunts at all, I scan the list and find my own name upside down. You know how hard it is to read “Maniscalco” upside down? Most people can’t even read it right side up.
The Carbone hostess was a piece of work right off the bat, but I wasn’t going to let her get to me. Not in the tux. The tux doesn’t take bullshit. The tux won’t be denied. I said, “Good evening,” in my sweet, friendly, I-have-a-tear-soaked-acceptance-speech-in-my-pocket voice. It was the voice of a guy you would want to pull a few strings for. I spoke quickly, though, because I had to fit all this in between hiccups. I tried to throw in a quick comedy bit, but it bombed. When people ask me who the toughest audience is, I tell them, “Any girl in her early twenties working as a hostess at a hot restaurant in New York.”
She fake smiled and said, “How may I help you?”
“Do you happen to have anything for two?”
“For tonight?”
“For right now.”
She gave a little laugh that signified, “I’m in control, and you’re out of luck.” But before she shot me down, I reached into my pocket to take out a hundred-dollar bill. I said, “We don’t have a reservation but we’re starving. It’s our only night in the city and we heard we have to come here.”
“It’s impossible.”
Then I slipped the hundge into her hand and said, “Let me know if anything suddenly opens up.” The bill was snatched out of my hand the way a hungry alligator snaps up prey and then softly sinks into the water. It disappeared so fast into her pocket, I thought for a second that I hadn’t given it to her at all.
Fifteen seconds later, a guy in a black suit escorted us to a table. It was the best table in the house, hugging the window and giving us an unobstructed view of Thompson Street. It was like the Copa scene from Goodfellas. I don’t know if they brought a table up from the basement, but suddenly, we were seated.
I have been on the other side of the hundge slip, and it worked on me, too. At the Four Seasons, a guy gave me $100 to move somebody out of a specific table (secluded, outside) so he could sit there. He put the bill in my hand and said, “See what you can do.” I marched right over to the table and told the women there, “A large party is coming in and they had a reserve on this table. Would you mind moving? Next round is on me.” They moved and I spent $30 on their drinks, but I walked away with $70, and it made my night. I would have done a lot more for less. A hundred-dollar bill makes you move. There’s something about it. You don’t see it often, it’s like an eclipse. It’s the most you can give somebody in a single bill.
In NYC, they get it. A hundred has influence. It means something. You give one to the right person, boom, you’re set.
In L.A., with the exception of myself at the Windows Lounge, the servers are clueless. They don’t get it at all. My wife and I went to a restaurant called Felix, a hot spot in Venice. It’s practically impossible to get in, but I called my agent, who is tapped into the food world, and he got us a reservation for Lana’s birthday. We had wine, a variety of pastas, some dessert. No bill, because my managers picked it up for us as a gift. I still gave the waiter a tip, though. He was going to get 20 percent regardless, but I gave him a crisp hundge, and said, “Thanks for a great meal. Let me ask, who’s the guy we need to talk to next time we want to come back?” In other words, “This is not a tip. It’s a payoff for a connection.”
He said, “Oh, wow! Thank you. So next time you want to come in, you can call the reservation desk during the day, during business hours.”
I said, “No, who’s the guy? The guy I need to talk to in order to make sure we get in.”
“Well, what a lot of people do is come down here and wait to see if anyone canceled their reservation.” He was looking at me cross-eyed the whole time.
With patience, I said, “Who’s the guy!”
Lana said, “Don’t bother.”
So at Felix, I tried to pull a Dice-style Pro Deal move, to no avail.
Back in New York, at Carbone, I was in. When you tip a hundred, word travels faster than the speed of sound through the back of the restaurant, and we were inundated with service. The water guy showed off his pouring technique like a human Bellagio fountain. The bread guy was juggling loaves, carving our portraits into the cold butter. The sommelier was out within seven seconds from wherever he goes when he isn’t helping to pick out a bottle. Do they keep him in a closet where he can groom his nose with artisanal tweezers while wearing a tongue mask giving his taste buds a facial? Usually, it takes a sommelier a while to get to the table, like he’s tied up on an emergency phone call. That night, he was all over us.
Once you tip a hundred bucks at the door, you can’t just order one soup and split it. We had to live up to the tip, and that meant appetizers, entrées, desserts. Lana tells me that we had a fantastic, unforgettable meal, along with a fantastic bottle of wine. On top of the four cocktails I’d had, the wine put me way over the top, so I have no recollection up until the tiramisu, which jolted me awake like smelling salts.
Meanwhile, my hiccups never went away. If anything, they had only gotten worse. Back at the hotel room and blissfully out of my excruciatingly tight pants, we tried to cure me of them. Lana was Googling and reporting all these folk remedies—drinking water while pinching your nose, breathing into a white paper bag, holding your breath while doing neck rolls. I did everything I possibly could to get rid of them. Nothing worked. So I came up with my own solution of doing a headstand on the bed. I put my head on the mattress and kicked my feet in the air like a frog for thirty minutes. Apparently, when you go into shock and all of the blood in your body goes to your amygdala, the hiccups disappear.
PRO TIPS FOR TRAVEL TIPPING
These days, I travel twenty-eight weekends a year, and I’ve got my travel tipping routine down. As a general rule of thumb, you grease good people who can get you stuff. That’s how it works in hospitality. I take care of you, you take care of me. I give a lot of tips. You do what you want to do, but this is how I do it, as a guy who is constantly on the road and in the air.
• The driver. For the drivers to and from the airport, generally the tip is included in the fare that you pay ahead of time by card. You don’t have to tip on top of that. However, th
at gratuity might go in part to the company, so you might give them extra depending on the service. They’ve got to get out of the car to greet you. They put the bags in the back. It’s a nice touch if the guy has a couple of bottles of water and snacks in the car. I had a guy once with a Wet-Nap to wipe your hands and face. Maybe they provide mist, or a phone charger. If I can tell they’re going the extra mile, I give them an additional ten or twenty on top of the automatic tip.
• Airport bag guys. When I hand my bags to the guys outside the terminal, I give them $10. When I first started out, it was a buck a bag. But now, I just peel a ten off right from the get-go. Even if I have a heavy bag, if I give them ten, they don’t charge me the extra hundred because my suitcase is over the limit. The ten-dollar tip saves me ninety.
• Flight attendants. I’ve never tipped a flight attendant. That would be weird.
• Hotel front guy/valet. When you arrive at the hotel, you’re usually greeted by a doorman or a valet. What I do is give him a ten right out of the car, especially if I’m driving. For ten bucks, he’ll park it in the back of the lot. For twenty a day, he’ll keep it up top, ready right when you walk out.
• Bellhops. Meanwhile, when you pull up, someone is taking your bags out of the car, but he’s probably not the guy to bring them to the room. It’s confusing. If I don’t have a lot of heavy bags and it’s just me, I give him a ten. When the bags arrive, if it’s a different guy, I give him a ten, too.
• Housekeeping. I leave housekeeping $5 per day and $5 per night if they have turndown service. If I don’t use a day of service, I leave a $20 because they get paid per room, and if they miss a day because I had the do not disturb sign up, I want to make it up to them.
• Room service. An additional tip for room service is bullshit. I don’t even like it when they add the tip to the bill. It’s presumptuous. If the person is nice and engaged, I might leave a little, but it’s not required.
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