This Might Get a Little Heavy

by Ralphie May

  “It’s the 9/11 of romantic comedies!”

  I hadn’t realized that all of these other comedians who were living in the building were silently watching out their windows, but I figured it out when, in unison, the entire side of the apartment building that faced the parking lot burst into peals of laughter.

  “Fuck you!” he shouted. “How many movies have you made?”

  “I made a porno with your mama!”

  The apartment building exploded with laughter, forcing McConaughey to get in his Porsche and drive away.

  I almost felt bad for McConaughey. He went with the “I know you are but what am I?” of heckling responses, and I came over the top on him with such a cheap, easy joke that, when it gets the laugh, is impossible to come back from. That’s what so great about comedy: for as much time as comedians spend crafting jokes and perfecting our timing and word choice, sometimes a well-placed “your mama” joke can tear the house down.

  As the sense of post-9/11 togetherness began to wear off in early 2002, so too did the camaraderie of the comedians at 1440 North Gardner. As nasty partisan divisions that had first boiled up in the wake of the 2000 presidential election returned to politics, so too did bullshit comedian drama. It was nothing near the scope of what Lahna and I faced back in Houston, but it was enough to give us that final push we needed to get out of our tiny shoebox of an apartment and find a bigger place together, somewhere not inside the trash compactor of Hollywood.

  We found a great place for $1,200 per month in a fourplex on Fifth Avenue just east of Crenshaw Boulevard in a neighborhood called Park Mesa Heights, which sounds way better than “da hood” when you’re telling your parents about it. We ended up staying there only for a year. I loved the people in the neighborhood, which was superdiverse, but our days there were numbered when, on our very first night sleeping in the apartment, Lahna and I were woken up by gunshots. A lot of gunshots. Like thirty. It was definitely scary, but I took some solace in that, unlike in other places, if I was gonna get shot, it probably wasn’t going to be in the back, and it definitely wasn’t going to be on purpose.

  14.

  BOB SUGAR CHANGED MY LIFE

  A lot of your success in a new city, whether it’s personal, professional, social, or economic, depends on who you fall in with during those early days. If you don’t find someone or some group, the biggest city can become the loneliest place.

  In Houston, I had my sister and her husband as a natural support system, I had the confidence of guys like Stevens and Pruett, and I had the guidance of my mentor Danny Martinez.

  In Los Angeles, Dougie Stanhope set me up and the Latin guys had my back, but it wasn’t until I met Jay Mohr in the summer of 1999 that things clicked for me. Jay wasn’t a comedic idol of mine, like Sam. And he wasn’t a mentor, like Danny. He was different from that. He was more than that, actually. He was a savior, a fucking saint.

  Jay and I met after a Friday show at the Laugh Factory, where we were both performing. Jay was a longtime regular, and I had picked up a spot as still a relatively new guy. Jay was up after me, and I was following this talented young guy Dane Cook, who had crushed it on Premium Blend the year before.1 It was almost exactly a week after John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, killing himself, his wife, and her sister, and they’d just discovered the fuselage on the ocean floor with all three of them still strapped in the day before. I watched every second of the search on TV riveted, because this was the same way my uncle Tommy died—being a fucking dumb-ass with a plane. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that overconfidence behind the stick of an airplane gets you and other people killed; my uncle and John John were not-living proof. So I wrote a whole bit about it and performed it that night.

  The entire premise of the bit was that Kennedy DNA was weak and produced the dumbest people in the history of America. I went through each and every famous Kennedy:

  JFK: “Fuck a hardtop, let’s take the convertible. It’s a sunny day!” Boom! Back and to the left.

  Robert Kennedy: “Come on, guys, I know a shortcut through the kitchen.” Pow pow pow!

  Teddy Kennedy: “It’s okay, baby, I’m a phenomenal drunk driver!” Blub, blub, blub, blub.

  Michael Kennedy: “It’s called ski football! No, it’s totally safe, throw me the ball!” Boom! Then I smacked my head with the microphone like I was skiing into a tree like a fucking idiot.

  JFK Jr.: “Eh, fuck the second day of flight school. I’m a Kennedy!” Then I’d making a whistling sound like an incoming missile that ended with a giant splash.

  The rant caught a lot of people in the crowd by surprise, but the whole show that night was seriously fucking hot, so it managed to land. By the time the show finished, all three of us on the bill had pulled standing ovations.

  Afterward we were hanging out upstairs, and Jay pulled me aside to tell me how impressed he was that I was able to turn him on the Kennedy bit. Turn him? I knew Jay as Bob Sugar from Jerry Maguire, but I didn’t know him personally yet, so I had no idea that he was a pro-Kennedy guy, or that he even cared about the Kennedys. He said he hated all that instant Kennedy-bashing and admitted that he hated me too at first, but I carried on with the bit for a good ten to twelve minutes, and by minute eight I had him laughing a little. I think what turned him was when I said that for a country full of fat people, I couldn’t understand why we didn’t have a holiday for JFK’s assassination. If there’s one way a fat man wants to honor a fallen president, it’s by grilling some baby back ribs on his day off.

  The next afternoon, I saw Jay again. I was walking up Sunset Boulevard from my place to the Laugh Factory, looking to pick up a couple spots that night and maybe sell a little weed to make ends meet. I know what you’re thinking: Walking in Los Angeles? In the middle of summer? Who hurt you? Believe me, normally I’d drive to the club and take my chances parking in the lot behind the building, where we weren’t supposed to park because it’s for customers of Greenblatt’s, the Jewish deli next door, but I’d gotten a bunch of tickets there that I had to pay off, and its being a few days from the end of the month with rent due, things were tight. I couldn’t afford to put gas in the car, and I definitely couldn’t afford the $20 for valet and tip I’d need if I wanted to drive my car and not get it towed.

  Technically, the walk from 1440 North Gardner to the Laugh Factory on Sunset and Laurel is a cinch. It’s a left turn onto Sunset and a straight shot west for just under three-quarters of a mile. What they don’t tell you when you move into the middle of the Death Star trash compactor is that this stretch of Sunset Boulevard, from about La Brea to the gateway of West Hollywood at Fairfax, has a noticeable uphill grade and is completely exposed to the sun at all times. No tall buildings cast a shadow, and the palm trees don’t do shit for shade. That means in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the afternoon, right where I was on Sunset, the temperature regularly fluctuates somewhere between hot as balls and hot as fuck.

  I made it to Coach & Horses, three blocks from my place, before I was sweating like a big dog.2 I was waiting for the light to change when an SUV pulled up to the curb next to me and the window rolled down. It was Jay Mohr.

  “Hey, Ralphie, right? What are you doing walking?” Jay did the whole New Jersey “get in the fucking car” gesture.

  I climbed in, sweet merciful Jesus, where the air-conditioning was cranked. “I can’t afford gas right now. I’m kind of broke.”

  “Why can’t you afford it? You’re hilarious! How are you broke? You spending all your money on food?!”

  “No, I don’t hardly have anything in my refrigerator. Bills are coming up and I have about nineteen dollars to play with for the next three days. I can’t afford it because I can’t get any work in this fucking town except for spots at the clubs, and you know how little they pay.”3

  “Why aren’t you working any of the other rooms that pay more?”

  “They tell me that none of the headliners want to work wi
th me because I get too many standing ovations, like the one last night. You saw it. So I can’t open or feature for anyone, but I also can’t headline myself because I don’t have the TV credits. These celebrity comics are all pussies, no offense.”

  “Fuck that. I’m not a pussy. You won’t blow me off the stage. I’m going to solve this problem right now.” Jay pulled out his cell phone and dialed his manager, Matt Frost. Jay had one of those little rectangular Nokia jobs that dominated the market when cell phones first became popular. It put my J&J beeper to shame. “Hey, Frosty, the opener that I’m going to take with me on the road is a kid named Ralphie May. Ralphie, how do you spell your last name? M-A-Y?… Frosty, M-A-Y. We’re getting his airfare, put him in my hotel, let’s make sure we take care of him [click]. All right, Ralphie, now you have work. If I ever see you walking on Sunset again, it better be because you’re drunk or you’re doing cardio or you’re turning tricks.”

  From the time Jay picked me up in his SUV in front of Coach & Horses to the time we got to the Laugh Factory—maybe twelve blocks—Jay had gotten me sixteen weeks of work at $1,000 per week plus travel expenses. He did it right there on the spot. It changed my fucking life.

  That night before our sets at the Laugh Factory, he started needling me about material. He’d gone out on a limb for me on a whim, and I think he was a little worried that I might not be able to deliver.

  “So, can you do anything besides shit all over American royalty? You got any other material?”

  That was a fastball right down the middle. Fuck yes! All I got is jokes. I did a completely different twenty minutes from the night before with equal success. After our sets we were talking in the lobby of the Laugh Factory about Scrabble.

  “You play?” he asked, all cocky.

  “Hell yes, I play Scrabble, Jay Mohr, I’ll whip your ass.”

  “What’s your average?”

  “’Bout 330.”

  “Fuck you, that’s bullshit.” Jay’s high score was only like 280. What he didn’t know about me yet was that I still had three-quarters of the Encyclopaedia Britannica shoved in my brain from childhood.

  “Come by anytime you want if you ever want to play on my dee-luxe board and have your ass handed to you, jack.”

  Jay showed up the next day at my place with a bag full of CDs from Tower Records. At least eighty different albums were in that big yellow bag. That was like $1,000 worth of music back then. I didn’t have a thousand dollars’ worth of anything. We started listening to these CDs full of great hip-hop and smoking my weed, talking about jokes and playing Scrabble. It was maybe the most fun nonsexual time I had in that apartment in all the years I lived there.

  Jay quickly became a great friend, but he was also my benefactor. Not so much financially, but more with respect to relationships, experience, and opportunities. He’d take me around, show me things, and introduce me to people. One time he brought Kevin Spacey to the Laugh Factory, and we were all just sitting around, hanging out, while Kevin and Jay went back and forth doing impressions. They are, to this day, two of the best impressionists I’ve ever seen. I mean, Jay’s Christopher Walken impression is so good that most people who try to do Walken just end up doing their impression of Jay’s impression. Both Jay and Kevin are true geniuses. I was just happy to be there and amazed to be around that much talent.

  Another time, Jay and Jeffrey Ross took me to meet Buddy Hackett at his house in Beverly Hills. Buddy Hackett? Are you serious right now? I don’t know what it is about these Jersey comics—Jay, Jeffrey, Joey Diaz, Jim Norton, Artie Lange—but they have the weirdest, most amazing relationships of anyone in entertainment. Every time you turned around and bumped into one of them, they were doing something that felt like it was out of a Scorsese film. Maybe that’s why I have gravitated to so many of them over the years: Who wouldn’t want to be around that kind of energy?

  When we got to Buddy’s house, he answered the door wearing a Father Time nightgown-robe thing, and instead of carrying a candle to light his way, he carried a pistol in case he needed to light you up. Next thing I knew we were all drinking straight tequila, and Buddy was telling stories about The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson and the Rat Pack. It was the most surreal shit I’d ever been a part of. I mean, Buddy was my granny’s age. They were peers. He was in The Music Man with Robert Preston! As a boy, I remember loving him in The Love Bug and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and, when Granny would allow it, on Johnny Carson. Now I was standing in his house drinking tequila with him, and he’s holding a pistol and not wearing any underwear!

  At one point he actually talked directly to me: “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Yep, her name’s Lahna Turner.”

  “Ain’t that something. I knew the real Lana Turner. Yeah, it was so crazy because you’d look up under her dress and her pussy would take a bow! She was a showwoman.”

  Buddy passed away a couple years later. I still have a couple ties that he gave me. I have one specifically he told me to wear when I did TV because he had worn it on The Tonight Show and killed with it, so it was good luck. If I ever have to do stand-up wearing a tie, which I haven’t to this point, I am going to wear Buddy Hackett’s green paisley tie.

  * * *

  Jay Mohr went from benefactor to partner in crime, or maybe a better phrase is protector of the realm. One night we were sitting at the tiny table in the lobby of the Laugh Factory with his beautiful rottweiler, Shirley, who was sitting on the floor under the table. Jay took that dog everywhere, and she was such a good girl that he never leashed her. I don’t think he owned a leash. People were starting to file in for the show as we were sitting there, and this big Mexican guy passed the table and kicked Shirley right in the face.

  The Laugh Factory is an oddly shaped place. As a customer, when you come in, you pass the doorman, who checks your ticket, and you enter this small, narrow lobby that probably fits fifteen people at one time and barely has room for the table Jay and I were sitting at. The space is about twenty feet long and twelve feet across with a ticket booth in the corner. At the other end of it you’re greeted by a hostess, who takes you through the doors into the room and seats you by party at a table. Effectively the lobby isn’t a gathering place; it’s a narrow choke point between the street and the main room that restricts and funnels access to the club off the street. If the doorman blocked the exit and the hostesses closed off the entrance, you could easily get fucked-up far disproportionate to your size and numerical advantage.

  It was basically the gates of Thermopylae, and Jay was about to go full Sparta on this Mexican dude and his friends. Jay was probably 175 pounds soaking wet back then, and this Mexican fella was yolked, but size doesn’t matter when someone kicks your dog in the face. Jay went crazy. He got right up in the guy’s face. It could have gotten bad right there, but the guy’s friends got in between and profusely apologized, trying to defuse the situation and get their whole group to leave.

  They’re nearly all the way onto the sidewalk right out on Sunset when Jay sees a gang tattoo on the neck of one of the guys and goes in on him.

  “Fuck you, and fuck your set!”

  They did not like that one bit. You do not talk about a man’s set like that. These dudes spun on their heels and bowed up. It was the Harbor Heights Mexican Mafia (as we found out later) versus Jay, me, and poor little Jamie Masada. Now we’re fully out on the street, and the bangers are talking all sorts of threatening shit while at the same time still trying to apologize for their vato loco, but then he just starts straight swinging. So we start swinging. Even Jamie was throwing bombs, until he connected with his wrist bent and broke it. The Harbor Heights guys finally restrain their friend and push him back to the front door of Greenblatt’s Deli fifty feet away.

  I don’t know what set him off exactly, but Lee, the Laugh Factory doorman, had finally seen enough. Lee is a mountainous black man. He looks like Michael Clarke Duncan’s stand-in from The Green Mile, except he dresses like a black dandy on his way to c
hurch. His suits were razor sharp. He steps out into the middle of the sidewalk and says, “Let that motherfucker go.”

  And they do. He comes at Lee in a dead sprint, screaming, “You fucking nigger!,” over and over, and, as Jay likes to say when he tells this story, Lee hit him cartoonishly hard; so hard that the Mexican should have broken into a million pieces. Instead, it was like the scene in the hallway behind the arcade in Terminator 2 when the original Terminator first clips the liquid Terminator with a twelve-gauge shotgun blast and he barely flinches as the hole in his chest quickly reforms. The Mexican guy took the hit, dropped down to one knee, got back up, and said, “You fucking nigger!,” almost like he didn’t even feel it.

  That’s when we realized that he was on PCP, and our little scuffle turned from “Hey, It’s Like I’m Sixteen and Tough Again!” to “Holy Shit, I’m Gonna Be Six Feet Under Unless We Kill This Guy!” His buddies had enough at that point and bolted. They were, like, Hey, it’s been a good run. That should have been our sign that this wasn’t going to be simple, but Jay and I chose to ignore that and start beating the shit out of this guy. Whenever he hit the deck, I kicked him in the head so hard that my foot hurt for days afterward. It was like kicking a soccer ball filled with cement. Jay and Lee especially hit this asshole in the face for what was likely a minute but felt like thirty and didn’t miss. Our hands and feet were all covered in his face blood, and still he kept coming.

  We started to wonder where the hell the cops were at this point, but when we finally looked up and scanned the area, we realized that Sunset had turned into a parking lot. The Laugh Factory is right at the start of the stretch of Sunset Boulevard that most people think of when they think of Hollywood—the Chateau Marmont, Carney’s hot dogs, the House of Blues, the Standard hotel, Sunset Tower, the Comedy Store, then Sunset Plaza and all the music clubs—so at night, the street is typically jammed with cars. Now on top of it, they had an awesome fight to watch. People were rolling down their windows and egging it on. When the Mexican guy heard something come from the street, he’d walk over and punch in their back window with his bare fists before turning back on us.