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Main This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
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This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"Doug Stanhope
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[image: image] Even Bingo has fans with bad tattoos of her. [image: img] THE SECRET TO HIS SUCCESS The year after my failed self-fellatio and Mitch Hedberg's half-million-dollar deal in Montreal, we found ourselves together again at the Chicago comedy festival. This time we had swagger. Hedberg was now rich and I'd tried to blow myself onstage. I don't know if we felt that we had nothing more to gain but we carried ourselves that way. We'd done bigger festivals and knew how they worked. Industry gets trucked in, let their guard down and get sloppy drunk with their peers and the comedians pretending to like them. Most industry have no sense of what is funny, much less important or translatable. They just listen to other people talk about which comics are hot properties, what comics are the "buzz." Every comedy festival had a comedian who was the buzz, one that everyone was talking about. Hedberg and I came up with the idea to try to create a fake buzz about a comic randomly. We poked through the "New Faces" section of the festival program and deliberated. Out of a dozen or so comedians and based on nothing concrete, we chose D. T. Tosh. For the whole long weekend, anytime we found ourselves at a bar, in the hotel elevator or anywhere in earshot of any kind of a network suit or an agent, we'd complain loudly that this D. T. Tosh was blowing up the whole festival, how we deserved it more and how the whole festival is bullshit. Nothing spells "rising star" to industry more than bitter rival comedians grousing. By the end of the festival, sure enough D. T. Tosh—or Daniel Tosh as you now know him—was the Queen of the Ball. I have no idea how much our shenanigans played a part but I knew we were secretly high-fiving and taking a lot of credit at the time. On the last night—the wrap party essentially—while Tosh was walking on the sunshine of all the greasy attention, we told him how we'd orchestrated this whole ploy, putting more effort into getting him recognized than any work we'd even put into our own shows. Daniel was pissed off initially, as though we'd stolen something from him, but eventually he came around to see the funny. DT and I would go on to share that hooker story in Florida. Hedberg would go on to be dead. DT would go on to change his name back to Daniel, the way his adoptive parents wanted him. Renamed. And look at DT now. He's a brilliant gay millionaire and I'm a drunk loser. He sometimes brings me back on his show the same way Steve Martin put his derelict father in small roles in a couple of his later movies, hoping still to somehow gain his love. I always loved D. T. Tosh. I just never knew how to show him. But I would still bust his balls that he wouldn't have been where he is now without me and Hedberg. We made you and we can break you. [image: img] HOOKERS As I've said onstage, I think a lot of women look at hookers like scabs crossing a picket line. "You can't just go out and sell it! We're holding out for so much more!" I still believe that. I see nothing wrong whatsoever in a woman's choice to take that career path. The moral conundrum lies in why she chose that road. When I used to get a lot of escorts, I wasn't fully aware of how many were doing it through coercion or to feed addictions—how many had to do it. I imagined them all to be savvy self-made businesspeople who had figured an easy way out of the daily grind of the nine to five, sleeping on barrels of cash in the mattress, saving up for that trip to Tahiti and that degree in mechanical engineering. I even had the hubris to think they'd be really happy to fuck me. I imagined that most of their calls were hairy, corpulent men who sweat a lot and treated them like litter. Won't she be thrilled when I open my hotel room door to find this pleasant, young, long-haired kid offering her a seat and a cocktail! I had one escort in Seattle who I was so sure had fully enjoyed our time together that I sent her off with an autographed copy of my first CD, Sicko, which had just come out. Like a parting gift, so she knew she had fucked someone famous. I told her excitedly that there was a good hooker story on it she'd really like. I imagined her and all of her hooker friends at the hooker dispatch station sitting around listening to it and laughing and coming to my show the next night. Hookers are never happy to fuck you. You just have to hope they can act like they are. [image: ] The only exception to this rule that ever happened to me was when I was in my early twenties living in North Vegas in an extraordinarily skeezy trailer park. It was the only time in my life that I'd occasionally play around with meth, which back then was called crystal and you only snorted it. Or that's all I knew to do with it. My neighbors were a couple and were hardcore tweekers, staying awake for five and six days in a row on that poison and telling me about their shared hallucinations. They would see the same elves on fence posts. They were also where I scored meth. Right next door. On an afternoon after work—I was still a telemarketer back then—I had plans to drive to Pahrump, Nevada, to visit my first-ever legal brothel. I was very excited and told my neighbors about it over some bumps of crystal. You'd think I was talking about going to see my favorite band, I was so anxious. They asked what it was gonna cost and I told them I figured I could get outta there for under a hundred and fifty bucks. He looked at her for a beat or two and said, "Well, shit. You don't have to drive all the way to Pahrump. She'll do it for fifty bucks." The fact that I'd already been drinking and doing meth made this sound like a grand idea. Plus I could continue drinking and doing meth without having to worry about driving. Win-win. I took her back to my trailer and pooned her in short order. It didn't feel wrong until after I came. You know the feeling. I didn't want to go back and have to look at her husband after that. So I stayed alone in my trailer doing meth and drinking beer. Later that night there was a timid knock on my door. It was the neighbor lady coming back for seconds. This one would be on the house, she told me. I banged her again but somehow felt a little ripped off. If she had done it for free to begin with, I kinda wanted my fifty bucks back. [image: ] Some prostitutes were kind. My second-ever escort offered a "twenty-minute quickie" deal for sixty bucks, which was most of what I had to my name. I was twenty-two or so and not very astute in the ways of the call girl. She came in, peppy, friendly and talkative, wanting to know all about me. She took a beer, used the bathroom for a bit and then came out and slowly got undressed—real slowly—making a show of it. By the time she got down to her crotchless fishnet onesie as I was literally inches away from plundering her, she pipes up with: "Oh I'm sorry, baby, your twenty minutes are up." Bu-bu-bu whaaaaa??? What a scam! After I begged and pleaded and told her that was all my money, she took pity on me and allowed me the seven to eight seconds I needed to finish and be simply ashamed instead of both ashamed and bamboozled. [image: ] Another lady of the night years later in Florida who only did in-call at her house cost me nearly a seventy-five-dollar cab ride to get to in the wee hours. I hadn't known quite where I was at the time in comparison to her town. She was sweet and let me stay the night. Unheard of. I walked the beach for a long while in the morning before getting a cab back to the condo. I almost wrote "back home" there. I've found myself saying that about random hotels or comedy condos over the million years on the road. Back home. [image: image] Sometimes we'd call escorts just for fun with no intention of having sex with them. Not long ago, my podcast co-host Chad Shank was on tour with me and Chaille in Montana when we tried to get an escort, only this time it was strictly as a podcast guest. She could be completely anonymous, talk about real-life stories from her career and get paid the same money, plus tip, for the hour. We couldn't get a single girl willing to do it. They'd suck your dick for money but an honest conversation—like kissing on the mouth—was out of the question with a Montana hooker. Andy Andrist and I were somewhere on the road in Tennessee when we crossed paths with Henry Phillips, who was also in town on a shared night off. According to Henry, Andy and I evidently ditched him at some biker bar close to the hotel by miscommunication or by design just to fuck with him. Regardless, we all met up back at the hotel and the talk turned towards calling an escort. I probably started these conversations. I was the only one with disposable hooker funds at the time. The joke conversation turned into a knock at the door. We'd answered an ad for a "dancer" who was available for 24/7 out-call services. You know, in case you have an event where nobody will dance at two-thirty in the morning. The joke was that we just wanted her to dance. We set up a hidden video camera, poorly camouflaged on a nightstand. She showed up and we told her that we were big fans of dance, an art form largely overlooked in this part of the country. We asked what type dance she excelled at, what was her passion. Salsa? Swing? The Forbidden Lambada? She waited for us to break face but we did not. We wanted dancing. Just what she advertised. She would have been less trepidatious if we said we wanted to triple-team her bung-pipe. Stymied and stuttering, she finally fell back on the excuse that she had no music. No music? What dancer has no music? No problem. We put on the radio from the shitty alarm clock radio on whatever station came in the clearest. I would have asked her to dance to Coast to Coast AM George Noory conspiracy talk radio. Whatever we played, she did the best she could do under the circumstances. At some point either Andy or Henry let loose with the fact that I was currently the host of The Man Show and lied that I was auditioning gals for the show's end segment, "Girls on Trampolines." She went from dancing poorly to jumping up and down on the bed. "Nice. We'll be in touch." She left with a story that probably nobody would believe if there was anyone she could tell it to. Good stories for comedians aren't the same as a good story for a prostitute. I don't have to hide the fact that I'm a comedian. [image: ] The "let's call a prostitute as a joke" drunken conversation can wind up with the joke being on you. I was working with Daniel Tosh in West Palm Beach back in the late nineties when the idle, late-night perusing of adult classifieds turned immediately into action when Tosh said, "I dare you." Tosh hadn't believed that I'd actually called and ran to barricade himself in his bedroom when she arrived. Being aware of how drunk I was—one of the primary keys to longevity in being a thriving drunk—I'd already hooker proofed the place, hiding any valuables under my bed. I was paying by credit card so, from the front room, she was the go-between on the phone with the service. She asked for the Visa number and then repeated it into the phone. She asked for the expiration date and then repeated it into the phone. She asked for the Social Security number and it wasn't until she repeated it into the phone that I realized they don't need to know your Social to pay for a call girl. I made a mental note to cancel that credit card in the morning. Now she told me that she needed to use the bathroom. The problem was that the bathroom shared doors from both the hallway and the master bedroom where I'd hidden all my stealables. So, like the Houston insurance salesperson hooker, I invented a fetish as a security measure and told her that I wanted to watch. She happily agreed and hovered high over the bowl while she urinated, making heavy eye contact with me standing at the door. "Do you want me to piss on you?" Nice of you to ask but I'm good right here. All my shit was still there under the bed in the morning. It wasn't until years after that I figured out I'd been robbed. I got a letter from a collection agency for an outstanding phone bill from PacSouth where they'd used my identity to set up a bogus account. I'm sure that if they looked back now, they'd be sorry they hadn't stolen Daniel Tosh's identity instead. He's worth quite a bit more nowadays. [image: ] The one time I made it to a legal brothel in Nevada was while filming for The Man Show for a couple of days. Brothel owner and grand self-promoter Dennis Hof was a fine host, as were all the gals who worked there. I was in a the kitchen one day between shoots and met a gray-haired older guy and we struck up a conversation. I'd always loved disappearing from LA when I had time off and just driving the vast, empty and endless back roads of Nevada and passing the small towns that dot them. Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely and Elko. He said he loved to do the same. He even ran out to grab me a book he had detailing the roads of Nevada. He was a regular guest—actually more of a friend—of the Bunny Ranch. Later on Dennis Hof asked me if I'd met Bob Zmuda. Bob is the legendary coconspirator of Andy Kaufman and the founder of Comic Relief. I told Dennis that I hadn't ever met him. He rushed me back to the kitchen to introduce me to the man I'd just spent forty minutes shooting the shit with. Imagine that. Fucking Bob Zmuda. I didn't recognize him not dressed as Tony Clifton. Dennis told Joe Rogan and me that he'd comp us any girl we wanted. He went on to tell us all these celebrity names of clients who frequented the place. Joe declined the offer. If nothing else, he didn't want to be included in the list next time Dennis was rattling off names of famous clients. (Dennis later explained he only dropped names of people who themselves had publicly acknowledged being clients.) I didn't mind my name being mentioned except that I had a lady at the time. The one prostitute I'd been hanging with the most while I was at the Bunny Ranch was the legendary "Air Force Amy" and she was a fucking riot. Somewhere between Roseanne Barr and Mae West and a veteran hooker. I could drink with her seven nights a week. The last night as the crew was breaking down gear, we all hung at the bar, slamming drinks. Knowing that Dennis would pay for her time, I felt like I owed her for keeping me laughing for the whole shoot. I figured it wouldn't be cheating if I just jacked off while she dildoed herself. It's in the rules. I blew a festive load all over my T-shirt and we went right back to laughing. As for the shirt, that would be wardrobe's problem. I walked back into the bar where a few people knew where I had been. One who didn't know was Man-Dick. He was some assistant producer who we loathed and our working relationship was contentious on a good day. His last name was Mandrake or Mandrick but he became "Man-Dick" to us. I think he thought we called him that in fun. He was just passing the bar coming towards me, splattered in my own nad-matter. I raised my arms. "Man-Dick! Great shoot! Congratulations!" as I went in for a long bear hug. A couple of folks put it together when I started rubbing my chest back and forth against his, and their laughter made him jump back. "Jesus… is that…? OH Fuuuuck!" and he sprinted out, pulling his shirt away from his body like he was on fire. We all cried laughing. Nobody liked Man-Dick. [image: ] The only other legal brothel I've frequented is in Costa Rica at the Hotel Del Rey. Light a cigar and picture Havana in the 1950s. I know. I wasn't there either but you've seen it in the movies. The Hotel Del Rey has everything you want in Costa Rica except the beach. It's got a fantastic bar, restaurant, full casino—antiquated in that the roulette is played with an old hand-spun bingo ball hopper instead of on a wheel, but quaint—as well as sixty to seventy prostitutes roaming the floors along with decent enough hotel rooms upstairs to take them. I don't remember who tipped me off to the place but I went there on my first trip to Costa Rica in 2002. I went on one of my most unbelievable roulette runs of all time, hookers draped on both sides. I couldn't miss. "How old are you?" "Twenty-three." Giant stack of chips on twenty-three red and it hits. "Do you think it will hit again?" She shrugs, the question probably beyond her grasp of the language. "I don't think so, either. Let's move it to thirty-six. That's Jesus's number." Thirty-six red hits. Avalanches of chips were coming my way. I waited for a pit boss to have me thrown out, as I was taking them for so much. I'm not really good with math and exchange rates. I was beating the knees out of the odds but basically all those chips were nickels. But those stacks of nickels bought me four prostitutes that night, the first two at the same time and then two others between more rounds of roulette. Before that, my record was three in one night but those were escorts in the middle of a cocaine binge where I was too fucked up to come—or realize that fact, evidently. This Costa Rica barn burner was a straight-up Viagra binge and gambling has the same effect on me as coke except for the shrink-dick repercussion. I had copies of my first two CDs with me and I had all four women pose holding them naked for my website. I apologize if those pictures being on the Internet have affected their later careers. [image: ] I've gone back to the Hotel Del Rey a few times since but only as a drinker, a gambler and a tour guide. It's an astounding place. I brought my old gal Renee there shortly after The Man Show had started airing. We went directly to the bar after the long flight and chaos cab ride. We sank in and as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, a face across the wide horseshoe bar began to look familiar. When I was fairly certain, I yelled out. "Bob?" Nothing. "BOB!" Zero notice "BOB ZMUDA!!!" He looked up and said, "Oh hey! How you doing! Hey, you ever read that book I gave you?" Fucking Bob Zmuda. Twice in two whorehouses. [image: ] Brothels existed fairly openly in Anchorage, Alaska, from the time I first played there in 1995 up until the early 2000s when they started shutting them down. They'd never been legal but a milky eye was turned away from them and they were all located within walking distance of the club I worked—Chilkoot Charlie's—aka Koot's. When you are a young artist performing with your main objective being planting your dick in an unfamiliar place, having four or five whorehouses within a cold stroll takes the pressure off of actually working the crowd and having to try hard. I didn't have to lie to a girl in order to bed her down. Instead I could be gallant and pay a girl to fuck me without having to be dishonest. Like a gentleman. Koot's is the biggest bar in Alaska, holding something like twelve bars under one roof, all the floors littered in sawdust and every room holding expectations of fistfight or strange pussy. Becker and I were about to do mushrooms. I didn't want to be tripping and thinking with my dick in this cavern full of chaos. Your drunken dick makes just as poor decisions as your tripping brain. By my estimation, my best bet was to take the mushrooms and then duck out to the Ravenite—a whorehouse a block away at the time—dump my genetic instinct into a willing surrogate and then meet up with Becker at my hotel afterwards. I got to the whorehouse just in time. They were closing soon at one a.m. Why the brothel would close three hours before the biggest bar in Alaska closed was unfathomable to me. Today as an old rummy who has seen a lot of last-call drunk dudes, it makes perfect sense. I walked in just as the wobbly knees of the mushrooms started to wreck my confidence. The rubber legs were soon joined by the perma-grin smile. I was afraid to be there but at the same time was ready to connect with a girl. There were only two girls still working, as they were about to close the doors, and both were as attractive as they were ready to leave. I took the blonde. She brought me into a room, disrobed and matter-of-factly asked if I wanted to go missionary or doggie style, the same way a waitress would ask how you wanted your eggs cooked. This might seem like a no-brainer to some of you kids. But there is math and physics involved that you only do backwards, after the fact. Any young man who is not a veteran would say doggie style. It is a "style" as opposed to missionary, which is a "position." Style counts. What you don't consider is the person you are playing against. She is a tired prostitute who is just waiting to fill her last order so she can go home to the rest of the wreckage that drove her into this life to begin with. I hadn't considered this either. I hadn't considered that she'd probably spent the whole day being plooked by fat, unwashed businessmen tourists from the lower forty-eight fresh off a week of salmon fishing or moose hunting, with her having little time or need to clean herself between rounds. I didn't weigh in the fact that the mushrooms I'd ingested would have my senses piqued. I could've smelled a gnat fart from the corner of Northern Lights and Spenard. I didn't even put together the basic variable that stink, like smoke, rises. Doggie style was the equivalent to putting fire bellows into her and blowing out a long hard day's worth of fuck-stench into my trip-aware olfactory. My boner collapsed like the controlled demolition of Building 7. It was still important to be polite. I blamed my erectile dysfunction on the alcohol, which would normally be the problem. I did not tell her that her gash stank of a mouth riddled with periodontal disease. I will tell you that with a last-call hooker who asks you to choose between missionary and doggie, treat it like a house fire. Stop, drop and roll. There is a DVD that I put out in 2002 called Word of Mouth with bonus footage of me and Becker—by then tripping hard—in my hotel moments just after I'd arrived back from that debacle. It's twenty-five minutes of bawling with laughter so hard that the conversation is mostly indecipherable but now that you know the backstory, you might be able to catch some references. "I have hooker money and my life is still a shambles!" [image: img] SUCKING ABROAD I didn't exactly say that Irishwomen are too ugly to rape but what I did say couldn't have fit in such a beautifully succinct tabloid headline. And if what I had said onstage were that concise, the audience wouldn't have had the time to boo me and shout me down like they did before I got to the point. Kilkenny, Ireland, is a quaint village that, to my understanding, is somewhere in Ireland. Perhaps it is even the most quaint town in Ireland. I was there for five days and I will tell you that quaint turns into boring faster than lust turns into shame once you've ejaculated. Quaint is good for writing a romance novel that is going to suck and nothing else. They say that if you're bored, it's because you are boring and I have no reason to say they are wrong. I realize on a daily basis that I have very few interests at all. In Kilkenny I found myself consciously trying to stop from complaining but I failed and it seemed that every utterance was straight from the mouth of Mother. Ireland, as luck would have it, couldn't stop complaining at the time either. They were what us city folk like to call "gone apeshit." It seems the news of the day, which turned into the news of the week, had to do with a supreme court ruling that made for a small change in the statutory rape laws of the country. As I understood it, it had been the law in Ireland that if you were convicted of banging someone under seventeen, you went directly to jail, no questions asked, even if you believed the person to be of legal age at the time. Upon my arrival, the courts had ruled that it was unfair not to let a defendant claim that it was an "honest mistake." Being that the drinking age was eighteen and that it is very common to have pubs serve those underage, this all seemed logical to me. Problem was that—due to the court ruling—a convicted pedophile was released from prison pending a new trial and a few others were attempting to do the same. At the time there were only seventeen people in the entire country in prison whose cases could be affected by the new ruling. They called the released pedo "Mr. A," a pseudonym given so they might protect the identity of the accuser. Mr. A was on the cover of all the papers shown with a sport coat over his head and face as he was led from the courthouse. The cover stories of those newspapers sent you to the five or eight inside pages that covered the story or related stories until you thought that all of Ireland was under a siege of kid-fucking. Mass protests in the streets and not just where this Mr. A had been let out on appeal. Across the entire country and even in quaint Kilkenny. They were all putting down their bottles and picking up their pitchforks—and then of course realizing they could hold their pitchfork in one hand and still bring the bottle. Idiots with bottles and pitchforks, not a one wondering why there was still cobblestone under their twentieth-century feet. I do not in any way distort or embellish the level of frothing histrionics that had enveloped this country. From the moment I stepped off the plane, you would have thought rogue pedophile sleeper cells had flown hijacked planes into the asses of Ireland's innocent youth. People are easily swept into this brand of hysteria in almost equal line with their own boredom and how much their own lives suck. They need an enemy when the real enemy is their own poor choices. You didn't even want to have that baby in the first place and now that child has got you anchored in this idyllic little hamlet, glued into a Groundhog Day existence. The only escape from your per diem reality of production and predictability is the newspaper, shot under your door daily like a prison kite. The media gives them an outlet for their boredom and regret the way the lottery gives them their only hope. Today this paper encourages you to believe that one single guy—wearing a sport coat over his head whilst being trailed by a throng of paparazzi, no less—is a DEFCON 1–level risk of slipping into your shrubbery and cornholing your kid. That misplaced anger makes you feel adrenaline for the first time since you initially finger-thumped your now–old lady when you were both roller-skating and drinking pints at fifteen years old. Or however old she said she was. You take that anger to the streets with a cardboard sign, sure in your own head that this is making so much more of a difference in the world than you packing the bananas at whatever Irish version of the Piggly Wiggly. I'd come to do the Kilkenny comedy festival and to my great fortune, this headline news segued perfectly into my favorite new material at the time. I'd already been developing a routine about all the Myspace/child predator fear-mongering in the US so it didn't take too much coffee to rework the two into one long rant about people's overreactions and delusions to the risk of their child taking unwanted cock. I never actually said that Irishwomen are too ugly to rape. I did say in confidence to Hennigan as we walked down a quaint street from breakfast and looked at the ladies—that I'd be surprised if women this ugly get fucked at any age. But I never said it onstage. Too easy, not enough explanation. I'd touched on the subject in the first show in Kilkenny, just using the current national crisis as a segue to previously written material. The audience fell stunned and silent so I went back to the drawing board and wrote even more about their specific situation. The next night was where it really went downhill. Understand that this was before I had any following to speak of in Ireland and was working mixed-bill shows, several comedians of any genre on one show. Comedy night. Like music night. Must all be the same. The second night I was going up in front of beloved Irish comedian Dara O'Briain. I'd say that he was the Jay Leno of Ireland except for the fact that Dara is funny. I just mean that he was that well known from television and most everyone in the audience that night was there to see him. I'd once done a television show of stand-up comedy that he hosted in the UK, opening my set by admitting that I was blown out of my undershorts on Ecstasy. Anyone who'd ever been tripping in that fashion could tell by my eyes that I wasn't kidding. By the time I got to the interview portion at the end of the show, I had to repeat to Dara that I wasn't joking. I didn't actually have to repeat it. I felt compelled to repeat it. Dara had to cut me off. Of course I was kidding, he told the audience. Doug is a comedian. Comedians make jokes. I didn't begrudge him for trying to cover his own ass. That night in Kilkenny, Dara was the main attraction. Not my problem. I started in on the rape issue, on the point of someone making an "honest mistake" and having intercourse with someone they believed—or were misled to believe—to be of legal age. I ventured the idea that, as most of the women in Kilkenny were such misshapen pigs, if you were to actually fuck them, you would be more concerned the next morning about what species they were rather than what age. I proffered that one wouldn't ever consider how old they were until days later when—still staring at it slumbering in the bed—you'd wonder, "How long can one of these things live?" Now, maybe you'd think that's just the same as saying that the Irish are too ugly to rape and perhaps it is, but I like my version better. The crowd did not and before I could segue into my own Myspace pedophile chunk, they were shouting me down in some unintelligible dialect where, although I couldn't make out the words, I was aware of the intent. Impending violence is an international language. On a brief aside, every time I've worked the UK and Ireland, the farther you get from the major cities or sometimes even in the heart of them, the harder it becomes to figure out what people are saying to you. Even though it's the same language. Their common refrain is always: "We don't have an accent! Yooooou have the accent!" I see your point. My point is that nobody on that block of misery has ever had to say to me: "I didn't understand one fucking word that just came out of your mouth." As I have to do all too often when people talk to me after shows. You always understand what I am saying. I understand maybe a few words you say to me. Who doesn't understand whose accent? Maybe you should adopt or at least mimic my accent. It seems to work more consistently. I mean, if you really want to communicate. The angry mob in Kilkenny did not. The uproar at that show rose to a level where me having a microphone still gave me no advantage but I plowed on until a producer gave me the throat-slit hand gesture from the wings to shut it down. I was escorted out a back door for my safety and to the audience's great delight. From the laughs I heard while I was out back smoking, I'm pretty sure Dara had a pretty decent show. To say I was booed off stage sounds exciting but it was the guy who paid me that got me off stage. I was merely booed onstage. As my comedian friend Basil White used to tell audiences when a joke invoked their wrath—"I bathe in your hate!" I'd created a Jacuzzi of hate and could have exfoliated all night. So long as they kept bringing the beer it would have seemed like fun to me. The only person that can boo me off stage is the paymaster and he has to use a murder hand signal to inform me that I've fulfilled my contractual obligation. History is written by the winners or just as easily by the alcohol. The press started calling only because Hennigan started calling the press. "Unknown Comedian Has Shitty Show That Nobody Knew Was Happening" would not make the headlines without PR people making it happen. One journalist called my hotel and asked if it was true that I'd said that Irishwomen are too ugly to rape. I laughed and replied, "Yes, I guess I did say that… in a way… but what I really said was…" and then explained the entire bit. In her article she only quoted the part where I said, "Yes, I guess I did say that." I was pulled from the two remaining showcase shows—shows featuring multiple comics—yet had an extra solo show added. Those shows sold out quickly due to all the hubbub and went fantastically. I kept with the bit, ironed it out and it eventually, down the road, it became one of my most viewed bits ever on the Internet. I'd long since ditched the part about the Irish as by then nobody anywhere else knew about that news story or cared about Irish people. But at the time, as I left Ireland, the tabloid headline at the airport read: "Irish Women Are Too Ugly to Rape: Fury at Comic's Outburst!" No press is bad press—unless you're the pedophile with the sport coat over your head being lead from the courthouse. [image: ] Sucking overseas is different in that you don't always know why they hate you or even if they really hate you at all. Sometimes they are simply being polite. Sometimes they are screaming words of approval that you don't understand and assume are an assault. Sometimes you just stop caring when you realize that you'll never understand. Serenity prayer. Accept the things you cannot change. I was never a good comedy host. I think that is what got me bumped up to a middle act early on in my career. The host is supposed to make people feel at home, welcome. Just like at a dinner party. My act was the guy who got drunk too early and jumped into the pool naked. But I learned how to fake it long enough to be pushed up from host to weird naked guy. I learned a few tricks to get me through but forgot them as soon as they were no longer necessary. I still suck at hosting. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland is a month-long cluster-fucked jubilee of a million acts that you don't want to see and a million people who come to get drunk and not want to see them. But they come to the shows anyway. Comedians will do shows literally anywhere. I was there once when a comedian did shows on a cab ride to the three people in the back. And I'm sure that even he had shows that weren't sold out. I was asked to host a late-night show in a small bar called the Tron, the same bar that I'd done on my first Fringe fest. Late-night shows usually have the "dirty" or "X-rated" theme so I'm your guy. But I'm a shitty host. By this point I treated all crowds like they were my own audience and these were not. Opening the show by telling everyone that they're "an assembly of idiots" who should "just shut the fuck up and drink" would work at my own show. Here it only made folks a bit tense and agitated. There is no way to know how long I'd been awake at that point or how many shows I'd done. The truth is that most likely I'd been shut in my apartment all day, done my own show and was reasonably drunk enough to host this late show. In hindsight it feels like every Edinburgh show was one wobbling binge meeting another. Regardless, I was in no mood to be dealing with after-hours drunks as is the job description at this gig. In between acts, I did a bit about Ecstasy when some girl started screaming, "That's not funny! My sister died from Ecstasy!" I was out of time and patience and began railing on her, saying, "Nobody dies from doing Ecstasy! You die from garbage that was sold to you as Ecstasy that was shit that some dude made in his toilet. And your sister should have known to drink more water if she's going to dance all night like an asshole." As I went on and ranted about how her story was the reason drugs should be legalized and regulated, she ran out of the room crying in a fit of histrionics. Well, there's a good break to bring up the next comedian! And now that I had 'em all fired up… "Ladies and gentlemen, your next act coming to the stage, all the way from America… Scott Capurro!" Scott Capurro, a flamingly gay American comic, is very funny. But he isn't better than cigarettes so I went to my usual spot out on the back stairwell to smoke. Evidently the crying girl had gone upstairs to her two thug friends or brothers or husbands and told them that the American comic downstairs was making fun of her dead sister! So these two fucking knot-headed hooligans came down and walked onto the stage on either side of Scott, thinking that this must be the American comedian who'd talked shit about the sister. And they were going to kick the eyeballs out of him. Scott, having no idea why he was being flanked onstage, got even more gay and asked, "Whoooo are you???" I wasn't in the room but I imagine him twirling his hand and snapping his fingers. Regardless, by all accounts he was not intimidated in the least. There were no bouncers and the ladies who were running the door somehow calmed and eventually removed the savage beasts from the stage. I was out back oblivious to the whole event until someone ran out and said, "You've got to get out of here NOW! We've got to get you to another bar!" We ran for our lives before they could even explain to me why we had to run. I used to defend my usage of the word "faggot" in that I only used it as a word meaning weakness, without stapling it to any type of sexuality. If I were in Scott Capurro's shoes that night, I would have been the bottom with no place to run. Scott was a queer who saved my ass and stared adversity in its ugliest ranks while I ran like a faggot. I'd feel like I owe him a blow job but I'm not that attractive and my giant teeth don't suit the experience. And I'm not that good of a host. [image: image] At the AVN Awards with Chloe and Nina Hartley. [image: img] FUCKING THE WAITSTAFF I don't know the temperature of the current comedy club landscape but I do know that for a while in my earlier years, most comedy clubs would try to implement a "no fraternization" rule between comedians and waitresses. That means "don't fuck the waitresses." The motivation for this rule was never clear. It may have been so that comics didn't relentlessly hit on uninterested waitresses while they were trying to get their side-work done after a show. It may have been that the club owner was trying to fuck all of his waitresses himself and didn't want to compete with talent. It may have been that they wanted to use a big word like "fraternization" in a sentence. I've done the same with big words in this book. Clubs would always have a yellowed copy of these type of rules listed on the greenroom wall. I always took that as a list of dares. The list of comics who fucked waitresses regardless would be longer by far. Many of them are still together, some now with families. The rule might as well have included "don't fall in love." I fell in love with a comedy club waitress in the mid-nineties. It didn't work out. She's now married to some other guy and they own a coffee shop together in Switzerland. Not that I still stalk her on the Internet like I did in person back then. People are always quick to justify the aftermath of a bad relationship by simply using standard and somewhat empty words to describe intangible emotions. "I thought I was in love but it turned out I was just obsessed," they'll say, as though they'd just gotten the results of lab work done to pinpoint it. It's a common cover story for the relationship that ended when she had to change her phone number to get away from you. I'll call this girl Krystal. She was one of those girls, one of those circumstances that I couldn't be held responsible for. I was a victim of her beauty and her mystery, as mysterious as any girl could be at twenty-one years old. Mysterious and mischievous, the kind of girl who'd talk you into having sex in public only to walk away just in time for you to get caught all alone with your pants at your ankles, and then giggle while you were hauled off to jail. I met her during a two-week stint at a comedy club in Minneapolis in the summer of 1994, after having lived on the road for a little over a year and a half. She was one of two out-of-my-league women who decided in the same week to show interest in me, leading me to buy my own press and suddenly dismiss a lifetime of being ignored by hot chicks as a fluke, a mere oversight on their part. I left town feeling like a pimp on navy payday and imagined both of these ladies crying into a pillow at my absence. I never considered the possibility that they may have only shown interest in me because I was leaving town. It didn't occur to me then, nor did it occur to me several weeks later when, on seeing an empty couple months on my calendar, I decided to return to my waiting angels. My cockiness quickly ruined things with the other girl within a very short time of my arrival but it didn't matter, as I was sure Krystal was the one I really wanted. For one reason, she was the one I hadn't had sex with yet, and two… Well, there was no reason two. Reason one was plenty. And I was so sure she wanted me that I honestly hadn't detected her obvious sarcasm when she'd said on the phone before my arrival: "Sure. You can stay with me. My mother will love it." Now I was scrambling for a place to stay. I wound up doing couch time at my friend Paula's house and spent my days corrupting her thirteen-year-old son Jonathan. My car had shit the bed a hundred miles outside of town so I showed up broke, homeless and without a ride or a place to be. I was no longer the life of the party. Krystal would take me out and get crazy on occasion at best. One minute she was giving me a noncommittal and unsolicited hand job while we sat in her car and the next minute she'd go out of town for days with friends that she didn't want to talk about. She'd fuck me and a week later deny to me that she ever had, straight-faced save for a devious sparkle in her eye. It drove me mad. One time whilst I tried to make the love with her on Paula's couch, she became bored and said, "Just rape me." "Whu???" "Rape me!" Spindly as she was, I couldn't even pin her arms. She'd just throw me off of her and onto the floor. I'm the worst fuck alive. She blew me off a few times on plans we'd made and started to become more distant. I became stalkery but in inventive and entertaining ways. She had a day job as a secretary for some classified ad circular. I got a job there telemarketing for a day, just to see the look on her face when I punched in for work. I put on a big fawning display of bullshit in the interview and the boss couldn't have been more impressed. Krystal hadn't seen me come in but was at her desk when I walked out with her boss—perfectly timed—telling me: "Well, we look forward to seeing you first thing Monday morning." I put on an over-the-top, cheese-dick smile, looked right at her and said, "Oh, believe me, I'm looking forward to working here, too!" She tilted her head back, rocked it sideways and yawn-laughed in defeat. It was funny until I had to do telemarketing for a few hours that Monday. As soon as Krystal went to lunch and the joke had run its course, I went permanently AWOL. It was clever but eventually that type of nonsense wore thin. Krystal told me she had another boyfriend and that I should, in so many words, fuck off. I was devastated. I had gigs coming up out of town and got myself together to get back to life on the road. The night I was set to leave, I took out the trash at Paula's apartment complex and noticed an enormous box next to the Dumpster filled four feet deep with brand new stuffed animals. I couldn't imagine why anyone would throw them away. So I got the bright idea and headed off to the club where Krystal was working. I found her car, a tiny old Honda Civic, unlocked, and as my parting romantic gesture, I filled it to the walls with stuffed animals, covering every inch but the driver's seat. I called her drunk late the next night after a gig in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. She seemed mildly amused at the stuffed animal gag, only because I had left town more than likely. But the conversation wound up in one of those sad, slurring "I loved you and you didn't care" diatribes where you could hear her eyes roll. She called me a psycho and told me not to call again. I'm sure I did a few more times till she took the phone off the hook. I woke up with that familiar stink of shame and left it to actual road miles to distance me from the embarrassment. About a year later I made contact with Krystal and we went out for lunch. "Remember how ridiculous I used to be back when I was young last year? Ha-ha, those were crazy times." Eventually conversation turned to that night with the stuffed animals. After several minutes of "Oh my Gods" and light histrionics, it finally came out that she had driven around for weeks with the stuffed animals in her car only to have her and her boyfriend wind up catching a vicious case of scabies from them. Scabies are much like pubic lice that crawl down into your hair follicles where they party and lay eggs. She said they were everywhere—heads, eyebrows, everywhere. She said the boyfriend still had scars in his genital region from scratching so much. She'd thought I'd done it on purpose. I wished I had. I just couldn't understand why anyone would chuck out perfectly good stuffed animals like that. She used to come out to shows now and again after that when our paths crossed and we always had fun. She had the greatest laugh and she somehow always made me a thousand times funnier. I haven't heard from her for several years and finding out she married another guy in the Alps on Facebook, I'm not sure that we're ever gonna take our friendship to the "next level." Love and obsession are the same emotion, only love requires the obsession of both parties to lay claim to the title. Being obsessed with someone who is obsessed with you, fleeting as it may be, is quite possibly the best feeling in the world. Being in love with someone all by yourself and unreciprocated just ends up making you feel like a chump. Still, I may fly to Switzerland and apply for a job at her coffee shop. It's only funny if you actually do it. [image: ] The first time I worked at the Improv in Tempe, Arizona, was December of 1995 so the Santa hat I'd taken to wearing year round didn't look as ridiculous as it had in July. The staff were cool and let me in a football pool of some kind. A cute waitress was grandstanding and gloating about having won the pool the week before so, under the pretense of "chicks don't know dick about football," I made her a side bet of something deviant in nature, which she laughingly but not seriously agreed to. This wasn't too long after I'd had similar success with Bobbie. If you are new to my work and don't know that story, I'll gloss over it quickly. Bobbie was a girl I'd met after a gig in Minneapolis and ended up going to a Twins-Red Sox baseball game with, each of our home teams. After some shit-talking when my team was being crucified, I made her a bet that would require that she put out if she lost. And she lost and she put out. That is the quick and unfunny version. The full story, however, to this day remains my most downloaded track on iTunes. Go have a listen. I kept that "talk shit and then bet her" move up my sleeve from then on, as though it was the move itself that worked rather than an idiot's luck. This time I just lobbed the wager out there like it was a joke, as it was in the presence of other staff, one of whom I was to find out later was her boyfriend. She didn't tell me about the boyfriend at the time of the bet because they were keeping their relationship a secret. Evidently that club had a "no fraternization" rule that applied to interoffice love as well as with the talent. The waiter wasn't really taken aback by the bet, as it was all done in a jokey-flirty manner and, you know, I'm a comedian. Of course I'm kidding. The drink policy for comics at the Tempe Improv was that you were assigned a member of the waitstaff each night and you would order through that person rather than going to the bar yourself. That night this same guy had been assigned as my waiter and when I tried to tip him a buck for a beer, he'd politely refused my gratuity. Yeah, it was only a buck but I wasn't rich and with as much as I drink, a buck a beer will add up. But he wouldn't take my money so I knew he wasn't pissed off about the hitting on his girl thing. Just a joke, see? But I still thought I might be able to fuck her. After the last show of the week, a Sunday, the three of us met up with some other staff to go to a disco night at some dance club and started in on the Goldschläger pretty heavy. At one point in the evening the boyfriend was out dancing while the girl and I were talking about road trysts. She asked me, hypothetically, that if she were to sleep with me, if I'd respect her in the morning. She actually used that 1950s cliché. And I'm sure that it may have been strictly hypothetical but at the time, in my saturated head, it meant she was going to blow off her boyfriend and fuck me. We stumbled out at last call and they drove me back to the comedy condo, the boyfriend driving her car with me in the back trying to focus, somehow thinking I could still pull this off. They dropped me in the parking lot and I said goodbye and thanks to the boy and then leaned through the passenger window and gave the girl a big sloppy kiss good night, smiled and weaved my way inside. I stood in the condo laughing for a few minutes listening for the car to drive away, part of me actually thinking she might leave him with her car and come inside. I could still hear the car running after a while so I walked back out to see what was going on. The boyfriend was standing outside of the car, yelling through the open window to his lady: "… no, he owes you an apology!" I went over and said that if anything, I owed him an apology but I'm sure I said it in a way that insinuated that I didn't owe her an apology at all since she wanted to fuck me. This seemed to rile him up even more, who'da guessed, and after a long exchange of words he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into a car. The girl dragged him off of me (probably leading me to believe she wanted to protect me, her secret love) and tried to cool him down. I went back over, full of adrenaline and beer-bravado and after another few heated words, head-butted him in the mouth. This was another poor choice in a long night of them but the ensuing scuffle was brief and again, she pulled him away, sat him on the curb and tried to calm him down while, perhaps, devising a plan to give him the slip and come fuck me. Now, as he sat enraged on the sidewalk, I had a hilarious idea to diffuse the situation. I walked over and said, "So hey. I guess you want that dollar now." This set him off completely. He sprang from the curb breathing fire and chased me as I ran airplane style around parked cars, adding in a few Three Stooges Curlyesque "Woo-woo-woos" before quickly running out of gas and falling down in the parking lot, where he promptly began delivering a well-deserved ass-beating. I've always had a problem with nervous laughter, one that's gotten me hit by any number of girlfriends in the heat of an argument. The more you yell at me, the harder I laugh. I can't help it. I wished I could at this point because, as the waiter sat on top of me punching me in the back of my head, I continued to laugh. Which only seemed to goad him into hitting me harder, which made me laugh more, etc. And he was really beating the fuck out of me. Finally somebody came along and tried to get him off of me, to which he replied, "He tried to beat up that girl!" It was akin to me tapping out in MMA and having my opponent tell the ref that I was still good to fight. The passerby chimed in with: "Oh, you like to beat up chicks, huh?" I managed to squeak out: "No I didn't, go ask her!" The passerby asked the girl and she of course denied that I'd tried to beat her up. The pummeling stopped just as the police showed up. They separated us and sent us on our way, him with the girl (who after seeing how much punishment I could take, most certainly wanted to fuck me) and me with a broken nose, chipped tooth, various contusions and a commitment never to drink Goldschläger again. Brand-shaming. The next day I talked with the manager of the club after he'd spoken with the other two and I found out that the only punch I'd landed in the fight aside from the head-butt was a nice closed-eyed roundhouse that struck right at the point when the girl was leaning in to break us up. It had landed on her head, not his. I've never been anything near a fighter and probably wouldn't have done any better sober, aside from not getting myself into that position in the first place. The manager asked if I wanted to take any action against the waiter and I told him no, that it was certainly a beating I was asking for. In fact, when I look back over the years, I'm surprised that I didn't get my ass kicked a lot more often. One heavy-handed trouncing in all these years of being an asshole is pretty good odds and I think I'll quit while I'm ahead. The beauty of the story was that when I returned to LA with two black eyes, everybody asked me if I'd gotten a nose job. In a way, I had. When I'd tell them the truth, that I'd been a drunken dick and somebody stoved my head in, they felt sorry for me. Sorry that I was too embarrassed to admit that I'd gotten a nose job. It was like being a girl in a town full of wife beaters, trying to convince everybody that I really just fell. [image: img] RETARDED re·tard·ed /rә'tärdәd/ adjective adjective: retarded dated offensive less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age. Informal offensive very foolish or stupid. "in retrospect, it was a totally retarded idea" —Google search Here, both descriptions apply. The first definition will be apparent in the story. The second applies to me posting it in the first place. I was searching my archives looking for a related story. I found this update that I put on my website in 2002. If a vague through line of this book is why I'm not famous, there couldn't be a better example than this. If I were to post this on my website today, I'd be assassinated, castigated or more likely, still be unnoticed. Here it is unedited. [image: ] Here's a comedy rule that shouldn't have to be spelled out but evidently does. If you don't have any limbs—don't heckle. I'm with Andy Andrist, who is perhaps the funniest person on the top side of the earth, at the Acme Comedy club in Minneapolis last week. Andy tells me he's worried about his extensive "fat people getting handicapped parking/people in wheelchairs shouldn't get special privileges because a lot of them are in chairs because they are fuckups" bit due to a couple of patrons who are wheelchair bound in the crowd, one being little more than a torso. The bit is absolutely ripping funny and can be worked so as not to offend, but it's still tricky to pull off. Andy is going to do it anyway because Andy doesn't give a fuck but before he can even venture into it, the torso starts blurting shit out and throwing the room into funeral-parlor silence. That's what happens when freaks heckle. If you—the regular drunk-off-the-street guy—starts bellowing out shit, trying to be the life of the party, then you know what to expect and will be verbally pummeled. But when a mop-top inebriate with ten-inch stubs for limbs decides to be the asshole for the evening it turns into a black hole of comedy because the comic can't say shit back without the crowd looking at him like he's gut punting a crack baby. This has happened to me on many occasions. There was the time where the midget couple brought their retarded son to the front row of a show at Jokers in Dayton. The more I tried to fight out of the hole, the worse I made it. The worst was when I used to work at the other club in Minneapolis years back. There was a regular group of rubberheads who would be brought in now and then under what I assumed to be some kind of "laughter is the best medicine" program. I assume this because these people weren't just a little bit touched. They were full-blown butternoggins who hadn't a clue where they were or why they were there. So you'd walk onto the stage, oblivious to their presence and right in the middle of a setup you hear a terrifying "DAAAAAAAAAARFPH!" from the back of the room. You don't know if you're being heckled or if you have one ball hanging out of your pants. If you're lucky, you spot the problem, give a shrug and a wink to the audience and try to plow through. But good luck if they happen to be behind the lights somewhere and you go into knee-jerk heckler mode and spew out your best "Hey, Chico, why don't you go eat a bag of dicks, you fucking retard!" Now you wonder why the audience hasn't started yelping approval as they usually would, so you cup your hand over your eyes and see that you've just publicly berated a low-watt gurgler in a high-back chair who begins to break the icy silence with guttural sobs. Try pulling out of that hole. "Sorry, I didn't know you were really a retard" won't get the audience back on your side. Skip your closer and head for the farthest barroom. Am I saying retards shouldn't be allowed in comedy clubs? Yes. Yes I am. I'm not saying it should be a law nor would I post a sign, but use some common sense for fuck sake. The caretakers/handlers who brought them would say that it was good therapy for them to be around laughter and smiling people. Well, good for them. Put 'em in a circle and throw a burning raccoon in the middle. They'll all laugh and smile for hours. Instead you put them here where they've turned laughter and smiling people into awkward silence and people who wish they were at the movies instead. I applaud the people who work with people afflicted with these disabilities and can think of no job that is more selfless or requires more patience and understanding. That's why I didn't take that job and why I don't want you to put me in that position against my will. The case with Andy is different. This person had all of his mental faculties (save for what he drank away that night); he just didn't have arms or legs. And he was a belligerent asshole. Andy played it perfectly and just gave benign jabs in return until he could feel that the audience had spent its full supply of empathy. Then, among other things, he challenged him to a race up stairs and closed by saying he now understood why God punishes some people. [image: ] I could still make the same argument using less derogatory language. But if I had been famous when I posted this, I would have lost my Disney contract, my Burger King commercials and all hopes of ever being president. Or at least the first two. There is no logical argument against how Andy dealt with the Torso. Even the Torso loved it as all hecklers do, thinking their assholery made the show so much better. Torsos are no worse than the average legged person. As for my argument that "retards" shouldn't be allowed at comedy shows, well, I guess I can see where that could come across as somewhat caustic. If I were stating that case in a court of law, I would have taken a less vitriolic and more eloquent approach. I would have simply stated that perhaps there were venues and activities that might be better suited and more enjoyable for these fine folks. I searched my archives for that old post to tell a different story of a girl who had been a caretaker for a "low-watt gurgler in a high-back chair" and brought him to a show in Portland. He did the same discordant hollering out that I described in that original web posting. By this time, I was better equipped for dealing with the unforeseen at shows. I saw the girl at the bar later and we talked. She said that her charge—the guy in the chair—was unable to speak or hear. She explained that she brought him to the comedy club because he indeed liked to be around laughing people. When other people were laughing, he would laugh. I had no problem with that as, unlike those old Knuckleheads days, I'd now developed enough chops to deal with dicey situations like that. I understood and I felt some compassion. She and I spent the weekend together. Back then her name was Amy Bingaman. Now we call her "Bingo." And she's a fucking retard. You don't even know what love is! [image: ] I later used the term "low-watt gurgler in a high-back chair" in the film The Aristocrats. The term is now listed in the Urban Dictionary. I am not cited as a source. But I know and whoever made the entry knows. I'm happy to languish in the infamy. [image: ] When I die, there will be a small chorus of comedians who will say it was sad that I was underappreciated and could or should have been so much more recognized. And if they die before me, I will say it was sad that their own unquenchable desire to need more, get more, be more might have made them miss out on that one night that you had to cling to the driveway, out of your brain on psychedelics, to the point that you pissed your pants on purpose, leaving your wife to change you like a baby. You would have never taken the time to skip drunkenly into the ocean with Roseanne. You would have missed the time the girls from the band Birdcloud peed on you. And you would have slept through that vacuum cleaner salesman story in Alaska. It wouldn't have seemed believable even if you were awake. Some of the best nights in your life will never make it onto your Wikipedia page. Stop worrying about your credits and consider enjoying your day. You die at the end. [image: ] I left Los Angeles in 2005 to live in Bisbee, Arizona, the hidden, eclectic cul-de-sac of the desert Southwest just at the border of a Mexican town that Mexicans have never heard of either. People asked me why I'd suddenly picked up roots of an arguably rising career to seemingly go on the lam in a place that was too remote for even a vigilant stalker to make time to visit. I'd tell them that I moved here to make it big. It used to be a joke but, using my own personal barometer of what it means to be successful, that is exactly what happened. There is no comedy scene here and I'm glad for that. I miss the comedians but I don't miss being around the business. Living in Bisbee made me love comedy again. Now when I have to go to LA or New York, I feel giddy like it's a high school reunion every time. I laugh at acts that I would have crucified under my breath in the back of the room, back when this business was my life instead of my living. Nobody knows stand-up comedy here. When I come back from the road, at best my local friends will ask me "How was your trip?" No differently or in-depth than "How was your vacation?" Then we move on to football or who of our friends made it into the "Police Beat" back page of the weekly newspaper. I'm only famous here at Safeway. As a customer, not as a comedian. We've had some legendary Super Bowl parties here at the house over the last ten years, some of them lasting as long as nine days. We would generally have a show in the yard with live bands on the Saturday night before Super Bowl but that trailed off after Nowhere Man and Whiskey Girl died. They were a married local musician duo and close friends who could be the foundation of any makeshift jam band that could be put together at the last minute. No matter how sloppy drunk or amateur the rest of the participants were, Nowhere and Whiskey could make them great. But then Whiskey died of a lupus-related blood infection just after turning forty. Nowhere Man followed her out later that day with a bullet through his head. Jam bands kinda fell off after that, without them as a cornerstone. The neighbors are probably happier because of it. You need to know that the small neighborhood we live in is so quiet that you can hear someone's television at night a block away and six houses down. And it's usually something boring. So having a live band on your patio means that everyone in the entire neighborhood can't help but listen. The noise ordinance says it has to be shut down by 10 p.m. and we stick by it, but sometimes they call the cops anyway. The first visit from the police was when, after the music, I thought it would be a good idea to put some comedians on the stage. We had quite a few top-notch comics who were drunk and ready to go. Kristine Levine went up first and I immediately saw the problems coming. I knew that our crowd would love her but I hadn't considered that my neighbors, who had never called the police about the music, might take exception to most of what we consider funny. I remembered Brandt Tobler who was evicted for having me play his backyard. I paced like a nervous club owner anticipating the bad comment cards. Kristine Levine, unnecessarily amplified, graphically detailed the condition of her obese undercarriage after having three children. "My pussy looks like it swallowed a dog that chewed its way out!" Imagine this kind of material and worse resounding through the walls of every house within three blocks in any direction. It wasn't after 10 p.m. but I still waited by the gate for the police to show up, which took all of about eight minutes. The way my house is situated on a downslope, you can't see the patio and yard from the street over the corrugated tin fence. I walked out to the cop car to try to circumvent the problem. As the cop and his partner came out of the car onto the street, I politely asked them if there was a noise complaint. He said that it was in fact a language complaint as he swung open the gate into the driveway. There he was greeted by about eighty people and a comedian onstage, all silent and staring at him. Like he'd inadvertently opened a side door of a live theater production and the entire play shut down because he'd accidently walked onto the stage. The pause lasted an eternity. "Okay, first question. Why weren't we invited?" That's a cool cop. Granted that it's easy to be the most popular guy at the party when you're the only one with a gun, but that's still pretty fucking cool. We told him that we'd move the comedy portion of the show indoors. I completely understood the complaints. I might be annoyed at hearing "Mustang Sally" at top levels on my Saturday night at home but comedy is different. If I had to listen to Jeff Dunham while I'm trying to watch TV, I'm calling the cops. The next year on the same Saturday night before the Super Bowl, the cops came again. This time it was just party noise in general and well after the 10 p.m. ordinance. It was one of those fortuitous times where the party happened to break up in the minutes between the complaint and the arrival of the police. They walked into a few drunken conversations still chattering on in the yard and assumed that the complainant was just overly sensitive. I told him that I tried to be observant of the rules and was myself concerned about disturbing the neighbors. He said he was aware of that because he'd been called here the year before. "Wait, are you the 'Why weren't we invited' guy?" "Yeah! And why weren't we invited again?" The next morning I called the police station and invited them all to the game. They didn't show but laughed and appreciated the offer. That was years ago. As I write this, the Patriots just defeated the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51. It was the biggest comeback ever in Super Bowl history and the only one to ever go into overtime. And again, that same cop showed up. This time he came to watch the game with his wife and kids. I don't allow kids in my house but I make an exception for famous people. Officer Bob Friendly is famous to me and I love to drop his name. [image: img] BROWNER PASTURES The herpes on my dick are not nearly as disconcerting as the herpes on my resume. Before the stink of The Man Show could even blemish my nameless profile, I went one step deeper. I hosted an episode of Girls Gone Wild just on a goof in the same way I pretended to be a traveling salesman on Jerry Springer years before. It seemed funny at the time—another discounted but worthy title for this book. I was sitting home alone in Venice, California, on one of those empty nights where you think you might just drink a little bit and take care of yourself. Then Paulie from the bar pounded at my door with a friend in tow. They had to inform me of the genius idea they'd concocted down at O'Brien's. This is one of those moments that reminds you why sober people bitch about how irritating it is to be around drunkards, while still understanding that the opposite is also true. Paulie's friend ran the Girls Gone Wild website. Their previous host was Snoop Dogg. If I spelled Snoop Dogg incorrectly, don't fix it. It's fucking stupid. They were looking for a new host for the next DVD and, with me being the new host of The Man Show, it was a slam dunk in their eyes. I told them to set it up and call me just to get them out of my house. I'm a drunk too so I assumed they would forget. They called the next day and had arranged a meeting with the smarmy, barnacle-to-the-stars owner of GGW—Joe Francis—who wanted me to be the new host. I went to his office and we spent a few obligatory minutes of trying to be cordial. The connection was weak and the bullshit was strained. In short time, a reeking silence draped the office. It turned out that while they'd told me that Joe Francis wanted to pitch me on being the new host, they'd told him that I wanted to pitch him on me being the new host. We drummed our fingers on the desk, each of us waiting for the pitch to start. Finally he asked me what my idea was. I told him I was under the impression I was there to hear his idea. The fake laugh we shared when the puzzle was finally put together was the most genuine laugh we'd fake for the rest of our short relationship. I told him I'd put some thought into it and get back to him. Paulie and I went to my apartment and instead of putting thought into it, we put beer into it. We got drunk and wrote up a proposal that held little or no substance other than over-the-top braggadocio as to why I was the perfect host for the show and that with my new position as host of The Man Show and the inherent cross-promotion, they would be insane not to hire me at once. The email was jammed with every industry jargon cliché I could come up with and weeping with all the groundless self-confidence that is the foundation of Hollywood. It was a spoof of a proposal. We were crying by the time it was done and for good measure at the end I added: "PS. Don't Fuck This Up." Hit "Send"! This must have been the exact kind of moxie they were looking for in a new, unknown host and I was hired. We went out to seven or eight college towns in Georgia, Texas and Arizona—those are the ones I vaguely remember anyway. They all blended together like an MTV Spring Break montage of drunken idiots. All I had to do was be funny. But my brand of humor wasn't copacetic with what dumb chicks who'd show their tits on camera for a free trucker's hat would find funny. And I don't find dumb chicks attractive. Maybe the word "dumb" is inaccurate. I don't mean that they'd be any more attractive if they could find Canada on a map, or didn't dot their i's with hearts. I'm talking about a complete lack of soul, desire for knowledge, curiosity or original thought. Girls who parrot television sexuality as a replacement for anything interesting to say and don't really mean it. Girls who confuse name brands for style and money with joy. Girls who just don't get it. Dumb chicks. And the rolling cameras were like a bug light drawing them in. My cracking wise did anything but make these girls go wild. In fact, it could make a girl who was in the midst of going wild stop immediately on her heels and leave. There were times I wasn't allowed on the bus during tapings so I didn't ruin the wildness in progress. The only girls who ever seemed like they wanted anything to do with me were the ones nobody wanted going even the least bit giddy, much less wild. They were mutants like myself and were always the first to show up. "Okay, I'm gonna take my top off! Are you ready???" "Ah sure. Go right ahead." "Are you filming?" "Of course. Go ahead and show us." Tits or something like them appear. "Did you get it?" "Yep, we got it." "But the red light wasn't on." "Don't worry, we got it. Here's your free T-shirt. A large, I'm guessing?" "Do you know when it's going to air???" in desperation as the crew quickly disappears. The whole thing was sad and abusive on every level, starting and ballooning at the top. Joe Francis is such a boorish, vile and megalomaniacal person that at times I even skipped his private jet in favor of taking the bus with the crew. Imagine Donald Trump if he were young and could get an erection. A frat boy worth fifty million who'd still bang a girl in the hotel suite toilet and come out saying, "Smell my fingers." Not in the funny way like a comedian would. Like some guy who would fuck girls at after-parties and then immediately throw them out just to make them cry. Like some dude who would brag about it and collect his high-fives. Nobody said shit to Joe until he left the room. Everybody hated him. But his pig teats were lactating cash and everybody continued to nurse. I wish I had said something. He is fucking disgusting. I tried my best to avoid him but that doesn't excuse what I'd become part of and still doesn't. All the while Eric—the "vice president of production" whose real title should have been "flunky"—followed behind me with his tail wagging. He was the one who pulled the trigger on hiring me and now I was his liability. "I'll never forget what you said in that first email! 'Don't Fuck This Up'!" Remember that I was only hired to do one single video in an endless series of soft-core titty flicks for semi-hard men. But that one video would be the one they advertised. The ploy was to get you to buy the one video advertised on TV and that started you on a perpetual subscription you could cancel anytime. On one of my first tours of the GGW offices we passed an empty bank of desks with ringing phones. Eric said, "That's the cancellation lines. Our running joke is that anyone who answers them gets fired." My video came out and every late-night cable viewer was bludgeoned with it every fifteen minutes for seemingly years. I'd done it as a joke and for the money but the commercials still aired long after that money was gone and the joke had turned embarrassing. But I wasn't out of the woods yet, contractually or morally. Whatever I thought about Joe Francis as a subhuman being, I bit one more time. Not long after we'd finished filming, I was asked if I'd host their upcoming Super Bowl pay-per-view halftime special on the fictional Girls Gone Wild Island, which is just a large estate on a beach in Mexico. To be fair, it was fucking huge and beautiful but that wasn't enough for Joe Francis. He had to lie and call it an island. The halftime special would pay twenty-five thousand dollars for a day's work. My concern for how many girls could get harmed in the making of the show got lost in my periphery and I signed on the dotted line. But as the original commercial continued to run and become a growing source of embarrassment, I asked my then-manager to get me out of the halftime contract. She said she would and by the time it was supposed to be taping, I was comfortably on vacation in Costa Rica with at least a dozen friends including Becker and the Alaska contingent. There, my manager tracked me down with word that Joe Francis was still expecting me and was threatening to sue if I broke the contract and didn't show up. Becker and I had been going to Costa Rica for a few years by then—before I had any problems in that country—and had always talked about buying a place there over too many Pilsen beers. Lesser men drink Imperial in Costa Rica. Becker and I are Pilsen men through and through. We decided that it was best I leave the party and go do the GGW bullshit and that I would put the money towards whatever property Becker could find. Becker did find property and has since built a house on it so that I have a place to hide if I'm ever on the lam. I know you won't find it. I've been there and I know I couldn't find it again. Leaving Costa Rica to GGW island meant flying back through US customs in Houston and then back through Mexico City, where I can still smell the rotting sewage outside the airport while I smoked, and then to Puerto Vallarta before a ten-mile drive to the GGW campsite. I made the production well aware that I didn't want to be there and that I would be drunk for as much of it as was possible. I did not disappoint. I have three memories. I had a lady co-host who took too long getting ready and we were late for rehearsals that night before the filming. Joe told our driver he'd be fired if he didn't get us there ten minutes ago. Thank fuck I was already potato-faced because the ensuing race at a hundred miles per hour on winding twenty-five-mile-per-hour roads would have surely had me in a high-pitch squeal. Instead, I was happy to die. I'd noticed during the day that cops drove pickup trucks with tall roll-bars holding spotlights. On that insane, roller-coaster suicide drive, I spotted headlights coming towards us and cringed. When I saw the spotlights flash from above a police vehicle, I was happy that we were about to be pulled over. When I saw our driver respond in kind by flashing his own high beams, I thought we'd die in a shoot-out. When the police didn't even turn around, I was perplexed. We finally arrived at the rehearsal and I asked the driver how he pulled that off. He explained that when you drive an expensive car that looks official—in that case a black Suburban with tinted windows—the show of aggression he'd displayed makes the local cops think you're someone of higher authority. That's some fucking balls. And money. Years later I did a private show for American time-share salespeople in Cancun. The guy who booked me said he could never go back to living in the States because the corruption in Mexico made living too easy. He told me about a time he'd been pulled over on a Christmas Eve in an otherwise total blackout and simply gave the cop fifty bucks to continue on his way home. I did that show on a slowly revolving dance floor to a nightclub in the round. It was horrible and I couldn't bribe my way out of it. After the Death Race 2000 to the GGW rehearsal, I went into a banquet room of a hotel where thirty-some women sat in four different team uniforms. Joe Francis stood at the front and shouted directions for what was to happen the next day. The special was a series of sports-meets-titty-dancing-related obstacles, a low-budget American Gladiators with tits on a beach. I don't remember a single one of them, nor would anybody else who watched it. At the end of the rehearsal, one girl said she wanted to change back into her street clothes to go out on the town. Francis went into a fit of madness and told her she could not. It was suggested that she be put on a bus back home. She burst into tears. This was some Hitler-level power tripping and we all looked at our feet. We knew it was all bluster but she didn't. I would have flown her home myself. I didn't need the money this bad. Nobody did. I spent the next day filming so drunk I'm amazed I could make words. The only snapshot memory I have is of them filming me crawling on all fours to my room. I was that drunk that crawling was probably all I could accomplish but somehow I sold them that it would be funny for the show. The next morning I took the same insidious flight back to Costa Rica. I knew what the expression "blood money" meant but now I "got" what it meant. I never went back to ask about the supposed residual checks. I was happy not to have them. It ain't over. The worst part was that I still had to promote it. I think of this every time I hear an actor promoting a film they know is a plate of slop. Porn chicks and prostitutes who have to promote—like those from the Bunny Ranch HBO reality show Cathouse are in the most unenviable spots. They could never come clean and say, "I fucking hate it. It's humiliating but once I got into it, I couldn't find a way out." Nobody wants to jerk off to a girl you know is crying on the inside, save for maybe Joe Francis. I'm sure there are a few who love what they do or at least prefer it to answering phones in a cubicle with the same fake smile for pennies on the dollar. As I had with The Man Show, I now had to put on the face and sell this porn-sploitation to any media outlet that would have me. Girls Gone Wild was worse in that I had to go on Howard Stern with Joe Francis and a handful of girls and dishonestly encourage people to buy this dreck, which I purposely did poorly. Stern has a reputation for making you say shit you might never tell a close friend, much less divulge on the air. I have a reputation for saying it anyway. More than once Howard has actually told me not to say things that were true but might get me in trouble. Stern was my hero and my "I've made it!" moment the first time he had me on. To have to sell some Girls Gone Wild bullshit out of contractual obligation on Stern was dishonorable at best. Fortunately for me, Howard likes to focus on the fucking and there were girls there. That took the focus off of me. At some point during the show, Stern asked me how much pussy I got filming GGW. I told him honestly that I got none. I added that it wasn't only because I was married at the time. I told him that I didn't want my DNA anywhere within a hundred yards or miles of Joe Francis. Even after the money was spent and the commercials stopped airing, the herpes scar of GGW still haunted me. A few years later Joe Francis—GGW megalo-patriarch and predator, not new to being locked up—got arrested again for some financial or moral malfeasance. Fox News ran the story on the hour and every time they ran the same footage; the graphic "Girls Gone Wild Owner Under Arrest" ran with commentary over an endless, silent loop of footage of my drunken face from the infomercial, making it look like I was the one who'd been busted. They say no press is bad press. I would have preferred no press. [image: img] WRONG AGAIN Diana Hone thought that suicide would at minimum help her financially struggling family when they got her life insurance. She was a beautiful and hopelessly shy girl that would come with her husband to my shows at Winstons in Ocean Beach, California. She was the type who would always apologize for being polite and think that she had overstepped her boundaries for simply offering a compliment. She'd even painted a portrait of Bingo and me that she brought to a show, saying she was sorry that it wasn't finished yet. She hated herself for being everything you wanted in a fan or a friend. I remembered this about her because it was endearing and because she was hot. I'm sorry if the latter seems base or shallow but it's intrinsic to human nature. Really beautiful and extraordinarily ugly people stand out in one's memory. Congratulations to you if you fall into either camp. I'm far less likely to remember the middles. Diana had heard me talk about my mother's suicide on a Netflix special and this was the email I got from her. Hi Doug, I was hoping you could help me out with a medical question, if possible. I don't have any cool doctor or lawyer friends, but given your experience, I thought you might know someone I could ask. I'm done and need to check out this week. I have 50 30mg OxyContin and I need to know if that will be enough. I'm fairly opioid tolerant (I usually take 5 at a time, up to twice a day so that's around 300mg), so I want to know how much will be enough, or if there is something else I should take with it to make sure I don't wake up. I'm sorry to bug you with this shit, and if you can help me, I'll ask my husband in my letter to donate some of my life insurance money to some charity you like or some bullshit. This has been a long time coming, and unfortunately it's really hard to find this information online. I'm a useless shit, but at least I'll be able to financially help my family when I kick it. I'm sorry I never finished your painting. Self loathing makes it difficult to accomplish much. I still have it because the delusional part of my brain keeps thinking I'll finish it tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow. Like everything else. But it never happens, and it never will. Anyway, thanks for bringing some laughs to us in OB. You're one of a kind man. Oh, your Netflix special was fucking great. I only include it because I get suicide emails frequently. The detail and utter lack of emotion in this one made me sure that she wasn't bluffing for attention. I wrote back a simple "Finish the painting." Not much of a pep talk but you never know how famous you are in someone else's eyes. If nothing else, maybe it would give her some temporary purpose. She came back with "It's not gonna happen. I have other shit to wrap up in the next couple days. Please let me know if you get any info. This is as far as I got btw. Bye." [image: image] My own mother's suicide had been planned and she'd been advised by a doctor on exactly how much morphine would be a minimum dosage to ensure success. Diana's wasn't the first email I'd received since talking about it on that Netflix special. Several people who were in the same position were asking for specific doses or what kind of drugs could be used. Diana made it clear that she wanted nothing but information. No sympathy, no talking down. Just the facts. I don't exactly remember Mother's dosages and surely wouldn't tell a stranger if I did. I was sure you could find it on the Internet and told her that. I did offer that she had to stay alive for the finale of Breaking Bad that was coming up that Sunday but that was just selfish. I myself was terrified of dying before the last episode. She responded with the following. Every forum on the net just ends up with a thousand people talking about how precious baby's farts are, therefore don't kill yourself. No real clear guidelines. Oh well, thanks anyway. Enjoy your tv show. After assuring her I would in no way try to interfere with her plans, she opened up. I'm unfortunately one of those sorry fucks that used drugs to cope with life instead of for fun (oxy, that is… the other ones were fun). It was manageable from 15-25/26 years old, but it got out of control and I made myself quit cold turkey because I couldn't stand how pathetic I was. I've been (oxy)sober since, I'm a few weeks shy of 29, and each year I hate being alive more than the last. I've tried shrinks and all the other nonsense to no avail. I have a wonderful family that is unbearable to be around because I feel either loathing, hate or nothing at all, but I don't want to make their life any more difficult so I put on my happy face (which worked for a while but is near impossible now). This has nothing to do with why I wanna off myself, but my whole family is financially fucked so they're constantly stressed and miserable which is awful because they're such good people and I'm worth $250k dead, so that's just icing on the cake. She included a naked selfie taken in a bathroom mirror and wrote: "Now I have to kill myself because I'll never be able to see you in person after sending this picture for fear of dying of embarrassment." Other comedians get naked pics from ladies who want to fuck them. I've even been sent nude photos from girls asking if I could forward them to my famous friends whose emails are not public. Me, I get naked pictures from suicidal girls so the shame keeps them on task. Even with poor lighting it was pretty fucking hot. I'm keen to believe that wasn't the only reason I began to question my promise not to interfere. She had it planned to do the next day so I didn't have a lot of time to ponder the moral dilemma. I was the only person who knew about her plan. I was on tour but I told her that I'd even stay on the phone with her and have cocktails while she ate pills, à la Mother, so she wouldn't have to be alone. I told her to delete all of our text messages and emails so I couldn't be seen as complicit after the fact. If I was gonna lose one fan, I didn't want to lose a second when her husband checked her phone. She kept telling me what a good guy I was for not judging her or trying to stop her. We kept in communication through phone calls, texts and emails throughout that day and the next. All the while, I'd be questioning Chaille, Bingo and Junior Stopka in the van as to what the proper move was. If I ratted her out and she killed herself anyway, she'd die alone being betrayed by the only person she trusted to tell. If I let her go through with it, it's on my head forever. She wasn't terminally ill or facing prison. She was twenty-nine, perpetually depressed and gorgeous. I KNOW HER LOOKS SHOULDN'T MATTER! Bingo thought I needed to let her husband know what was going on. Chaille was of the mind that this was none of my business, should have never been put on my shoulders to begin with and reminded me to plug merch during my set. Junior likes pie. So I was the deciding vote and I reluctantly erred on the side of betrayal. I found her husband on Facebook and left him a message to call me ASAP. I didn't say why. Shortly after he called. "Are you fucking serious? This is Doug Stanhope? I can't fucking believe Doug Stanhope is on my phone!" I told him to relax, that I was calling to tell him that his wife had been in contact with me and that she was planning to kill herself. "Oh, is she doing that again?" His demeanor was both encouraging and demoralizing. If it was that common an occurrence, then maybe it was just another bluff and I'd misread her determination. Or I was right and she was going to kill herself but he'd heard it too many times to take it seriously. He told me that she'd been having a rough time and had been telling him she was going to commit suicide quite often. "But still, Holy Shit, I can't believe I'm talking to Doug Stanhope!" He said he was leaving work to go check on her. He must have called her first because she texted me. "Really wish you would have talked to me first. It's my own fault for opening my fat mouth." I sent a few texts trying to explain my reasoning but she wasn't having it. I'd fucked her over. I told her I'd be there for her and then I stabbed her in the back. And then I didn't hear back from her. Her husband and I had said that whoever heard from her first would notify the other. It wasn't until the next night after the show that he let me know she'd been found in a motel bathroom. She left a note that explained how she'd woken up after taking the pills. As she said she would in the note, she had to finish the job by cutting her wrists as well as stabbing herself. To this day I still feel like a fucking rat traitor. I regret my decision as much as I know I'd probably repeat it. I also regret, like Liam Hughes and the helium, that I didn't think to tell Diana that your family can't collect insurance from a suicide. Stupid. I don't try to talk anyone out of suicide. I don't know you and don't know what you're going through that has driven you to that brink. I've shared emails with a twenty-one-year-old kid in the UK who suffers from trigeminal neuralgia, also known as the "suicide disease," regarded as the most painful known medical condition and has a 25 percent suicide rate for those afflicted. He hasn't killed himself as of this writing but would you be the one to tell him that it's wrong to take your own life? This brings us to the case of Tony Nicklinson, who in a roundabout way gave my most hardcore fans their title. [image: img] IF SOMEONE IS A CUNT TO YOU, HOLD IT IN YOUR HEART FOR LIFE My early life in the wilderness of the road seemed nothing but a happy time with all the comedians having a certain bond. Even if we hated each other, the audience was always our common enemy. We were weak and outnumbered. And we mostly sucked, so we were usually fighting uphill. When I moved to LA, I had that same innocent, naive assumption that all comics were a tribe. Let me cut straight to the shit-talking. I got my first Comedy Central television spot on a show called Premium Blend. It went well by my standards of not having many standards at all and I was jubilant. The theater where it was being filmed had a bar attached, much to my appreciation. California had just passed their first smoking ban that only allowed you to smoke in bars but not restaurants. I strutted into the bar with my hot redheaded actress girlfriend, finally feeling like I deserved her. I wanted a beer and a cigarette and polite round of applause for my genius performance, but mostly the cigarette. My heart sank when I saw that the bar was full. That was my pole position. The nonsmoking restaurant side was nearly empty but the bartender said that the corner horseshoe booth between the two sides—the DMZ if you will—was still smoker friendly. I looked in that special booth and I saw David Cross holding court with other people who I assumed were comedians and friends from the shows that had just taped. I knew this table from the road. All the comics on the road would hunker down in a safe place in the back corner and distance themselves from the plebes in the audience. Comics were all friends from my limited road experience. My gal was getting impatient as I waited for any seat at the bar or that table to open up. Finally a few people left David Cross's table and I breathed a sigh of relief. I could smoke and drink and be the guy who just killed on his first Comedy Central show. "Thank God." That's what I remember saying as I pulled into the booth with my gal and lit up a cigarette. David Cross looked at me incredulously, like I'd just pissed in his calamari. "Um… I'm with people???" He couldn't have said it cuntier. I felt like I'd just walked into a wedding and knocked over the cake. I thought I was sitting down at the regular road comics' table after the show. To say that I felt humiliated is not strong enough. The fact that it still bothers me some twenty years later is telling. Having nothing else to say, I almost begged for forgiveness at a transgression I didn't even understand. I stammered that I was sorry and that I was told this was the only table I could smoke at. He looked at me like I was throwing bad excuses for trying to get past the velvet rope into his VIP section as he pointed to all the empty tables in the restaurant. I was too embarrassed to explain the recent smoking ordinances, much less how I thought comedians were all a tight-knit group of friends. It wasn't until later that I realized that "road comics" were generally derided in those circles as boring hacks. That wasn't wrong for the most part. I didn't know that "alternative comedy" meant a bunch of elitist, exclusionary piss-jackets until around that time either. Or at least a few of them. You shouldn't label. Even when it generally works. Be polite and find exceptions to the rule. I've hated David Cross ever since—even though I like a lot of his comedy and the fact that I've probably been that much of a self-involved asshole to many more young comedians in my later years. I was just trying to take up a corner booth with friends and have a quiet conversation. But I never would be a cunt to anyone who just wanted to smoke. Even when I won't give homeless people money, I will never deny them a cigarette.* Randomly, as of this last draft of this book, David Cross followed me on Twitter. So maybe he's not that bad after all. Fucking ego. * I've caught myself at least thirty times denying homeless people cigarettes since I wrote this. I'm a hypocrite. [image: img] INTRODUCTION I usually skip the introduction to a book if it doesn't immediately strike me as important. So I will tell you now, read this introduction. I will assume that you read like I read, plodding and without much patience. There is no letdown greater for me than reading a bio of a degenerate rocker or an otherwise renowned derelict with sordid stories only to have them sober up two-thirds of the way through the book. You know that the rest is gonna suck but you've invested so much time, you know that you have to see it through. At no point in this book will I find God, go on the straight and narrow or find any higher purpose. You will always find yourself better than me even when I am calling you a nugget of shit. There is no happy ending. There is no ending at all. I'm not dead, at least at this writing. I also hate reading memoirs when you have to wade through someone's childhood years and their parents in order to get to the good parts. If their childhood was compelling, they would have written the book back then. If the parents were of any interest, they'd have a book of their own. Fortunately I got all of that detritus of being raised out in my first book. I hope you enjoyed it. Like the first book, I use a lot of fancy words when I can. This has nothing to do with a strong vocabulary. I get excited when I find a big word on my own but mostly I use a thesaurus. It feels like cheating but I pride myself on making decent choices in the absence of actual knowledge. Here are some of the main people who will come in and out of these stories. Amy Bingaman, known in the book as "Bingo," is my gal pal of nearly twelve years as of this writing. She has a history of mental illness and being adorable. She is the soul and the muse of the operation. And occasionally the monkey wrench in the gears when her brain goes bad on her. Greg Chaille, only known as "Chaille" anywhere in the civilized world, is my "tour manager." He is known as my tour manager as that is his one job. Managing the tours. He also produces, edits and co-hosts the podcasts, runs the website, and packages and ships the merchandise from said website as well as selling it on the road. He also drives the van, sets the GPS for the next town's gig and hotel, gets us breakfast and makes sure that the gig has sound, greenroom booze and that we get paid afterwards when we are too drunk to see. He also finds the shortest route from the greenroom to where I can smoke and makes sure I have a stool onstage for my drink. He mules our drugs in his anus even though they are usually over-the-counter drugs for heartburn or seasonal allergies. At home, he is currently fixing the Christmas lights after making me fish sticks. His hobbies include gassing up the cars, picking up my friends from the airport and running sound and lights for comics and bands that perform at parties at the house. He will even fill in on most instruments on any given jam band playing at the house, so long as he can get time away from his one job. Tour manager. Brian Hennigan, known mostly as "Hennigan" in this book, is a filthy, uncut Scotsman. He is my "business manager" who manages business things like book deals, television appearances and booking tour dates. That means he forces us to make money. He is evidently sometimes a prick about this with booking agents and in other business dealings, but we try to ignore his barbarous and impolite tactics. Too often, on the road Chaille has been confused for Hennigan because of the common "manager" title. Hennigan has the benefit of being able to hide his fancy-lad Scottish accent when he only has to communicate his boorish vitriol via email. Then when Chaille shows up at the gig, the local booker assumes Chaille was the asshole who the booker had to deal with in order to hire me. Chaille gets all the dirty looks that Hennigan has earned. Chaille doesn't do any of the bookings. He's only got one job and that keeps him busy enough. Andy Andrist and Matt Becker are two of my oldest and closest friends and two of the funniest people who have ever walked this planet. For that reason they show up in the book quite a bit. Save for Bingo who runs ten years behind, we are all around the fifty-year mark and we have all been together for many a moon. We probably should have stopped being fuckups a long time ago. That doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. This book is a journey of a life in the breakdown lane on the highway of fame, a motivational opus for those who strive for the margins. A highlight reel of a life on the stage when most people were looking at a bar fight in a different direction. Often enough, that worked in my favor. Everyone wants to be in the spotlight until it's their own prison break. Mitch Hedberg had a joke where he said, "As a comedian, I always get into situations where I'm auditioning for movies and sitcoms, you know? As a comedian, they want you to do things besides comedy. They say, 'All right, you're a comedian, can you write? Write us a script. Act in this sitcom.' They want me to do shit that is related to comedy, but it's not comedy, man. It's not fair, you know? It's as though if I was a cook, and I worked my ass off to become a really good cook, and they said, 'All right, you're a cook… can you farm?'" The joke is that it isn't a joke at all. It's the truth with a fantastic analogy. People in the industry look at stand-up as an audition to a shittier platform. If you can do well in a pure, unadulterated and raw format of your own making, then you might be given a chance to be elevated to a place where you can be diluted and neutered for mass appeal. And be made famous. Like Hedberg, I neve