Almost Interesting (4 page)

About ten years later I saw her again. I was back in Arizona taking a victory lap because I was on TV and wanted to bop around my old haunts and act like I hadn’t changed. Even though I had. I was wearing this huge black leather Fonzie/Andrew Dice Clay ill-fitting biker jacket that cost way too much. And weighed roughly fourteen pounds and actually hurt my neck. I looked like a fucking moron, but I wore it proud. The best part of this story was I kept walking around saying, “Everyone’s changed, man.” Even though I had changed, and they hadn’t at all. What an asshole. A few people I ran into mentioned at the club that I was a dick now and that I thought I was cool. I was like “Whatever, I’ve met stars.” (Not exactly the best answer to erase these douchebag comments.) So I bounced from that club and headed to another. I kept repeating my new phrase to everyone: “This place is weak,
I’m gonna bounce
.” So eventually I bounced home. On the way I stopped at the Circle K. This is a convenience store chain, which is basically 7-Eleven. And when I say “basically” I mean it’s exactly 7-Eleven. So I headed in to try to buy a six-pack before it’s last call and lo and behold who is the pretty cashier but my very first bone-down! (No names here. I finally stopped ruining her rep.) So we chatted and flirted because apparently I was a bit more interesting now. She said I wasn’t that bad in bed (a 6 out of 10!), so that made me feel good. She was very sweet. I guess fame makes you better-looking. But, as nice as it was to see her, that ship had sailed, and I wanted to maintain the memory of our one embarrassing moment together (mostly because I’m still no better at fucking and didn’t want her to get that word out on the streets of Scottsdale), so we said our goodbyes. Her last visual of me is me walking out of Circle K with a six-pack of Heineken. Sort of hunched over, less from sadness and more from the enormous weight of my stupid fucking douchebag, new money, Hollywood jacket.

CHAPTER FOUR

MINI SPADE

W
hen I was in high school I was mostly cursed with being the buddy of good-looking chicks. As previously mentioned, I got laid only once the entire four years of high school, despite the fact that my main mission from fourth grade on was to get laid every weekend. I gave myself freshman year to get my footing, and sophomore year was supposed to be for getting laid once a week. Then senior year every day. Well, it was all trickier than I thought.

Up until this moment, I had been the smart kid in school. Well, the desire to play chess, do my homework, and go to class was quickly replaced by the sudden thirsty need to be popular.
Popular
sounds like such an old-fashioned term now. In today’s terminology, you could say that I wanted a lot of Facebook likes or Instagram followers. Of course, when you think about it, lots of followers on Instagram is even more of a bullshit illusion than friends in high school, because at least in school you physically see the people. Facebook is just fake connection, and if you ever delete your account and start over, half would never “like” you a second time. That’s life on the mean streets of Facebook and everyone knows it. In high school you truly believe that all these people will be friends for life. And you’re lucky if you keep in touch with two after graduation. But making those friends was super-important to me.

I figured high school would continue my long-standing trend toward nerd city, but a funny thing happened when I got there. My brother Andy was already there, he was a junior, and he was supercool. He had long brown hair that was blond on the ends from sun (yes, it’s possible not to fake this) and he was tan, good-looking, and artsy. (The puss magnet trifecta!) So out of nowhere, just because I was related to him, word got around that I was cool, too! There’s no definition for cool in high school, so it’s hard to spot or argue against, and with such loose regulations I slipped through the cracks. I’ll admit that I did have some of the components of a cool person. I had long white-blond hair, cool surfer shorts and shirts (even though I had never seen an actual wave at this point), and I could skateboard in pools. In fact, the week before freshman year started I broke both my wrists skating in a pool. I tried an aerial axle stall and fell backward into the deep end. So, on the first day of high school I waltzed in with a crispy white OP shirt from Miller’s Outpost, turquoise cord shorts from Quiksilver, long feathered Farrah Fawcett hair, and two splints on my arms. From a distance, I seemed happening, but in person I had zero game. ZERO. I couldn’t close any chicks. I talked too much, for one thing, and my subject matter was weak, mostly about coin collecting and how I fell easily off a skateboard, but still, the rumor of my coolness persisted. Meanwhile, all four grade schools had merged into this high school so everyone from my old school was saying, “Wait, you don’t understand, he’s a geek, he’s a nerd, he hangs out with a Vietnamese kid!” But it was too late. All of Andy’s hot cheerleader friends, juniors no less, took to calling me “Mini Spade” because they thought I was almost as cool as Andy. (Some of them were just nice to me to get in with Andy, which I spotted but was fine with.) Well, all the guys and girls from my freshman class picked up on this right away. They thought, Oh fuck, we had this kid pegged wrong! He
is
happening! The new coolness spread like wildfire. No one could stop it. Within a few days I was a 100 percent certified non-nerd, aka
the shit.
I adapted quite well to my new status. I’d even walk past the smart guys from my old grade school and rip on them: “Hey nerds, why don’t you go do some flash cards? Hahahahahhhahahaa! Come on, new friends, let’s hit the assembly.” What an asshole.

But the problem was, I got a little too excited about this newfound social life. My grades started to slip because I spent less time doing algebra and more time at flower parties and football games or just bailing on class and getting stoned. We had two main factions at school: the freaks and the jocks. It was like a failed Apatow pilot. The freaks were the stoners. And jocks were jocks. Freaks basically got high out in the open, and most of the jocks got baked, too. But they hid it well and often wanted to beat up the stoners. I got along with both. I enjoyed toking away and tried out for sports, even though I wasn’t exactly a star. I wasn’t terrible, but I was never going to be a star. Or even pretty good. I went out for baseball and even football. I tried out for football my senior year, weighing in at a wispy 114 pounds; it was exactly like the movie
Lucas
. . . except not everyone liked me and clapped for me. I got pounded. I even had the balls to go out for basketball, just for something to do. The worst thing about that was when I got the ball in our practice games, the other team wouldn’t even try to block my shots, and they would just sit back and yell, “Let him shoot!” This was even more humiliating because they knew that with absolutely no interference I would still miss. And I did. Every time. Obviously I got cut from all three teams, but at least I tried out. By the way, the freaks were restricted to only weed. It wasn’t like today. We had no molly, no acid, no moon rocks, no crack, no coke, no special K, no codeine cough syrup, no Vicodin, no Xanax, no Adderall, no Klonopin. Nope, just booze and weed. Very basic. Like Kicking Wing in
Joe Dirt
. Snakes and sparklers. Not a big assortment.

I’m always asked if I was the class clown. I have to say no. I was sort of funny but I would whisper all my jokes to people in class. I wasn’t the loud attention-getter. I think that’s why the movies with Chris Farley seemed to work, because he was the typical loud class-clown type and I was quietly commenting on what was happening. That combo felt like it had a groove to it. It was a good pairing. I got that style by lack of confidence in my jokes. I felt if I said them quietly and with no spin on them, then it didn’t count if I didn’t get a laugh. I would just say that wasn’t
a joke,
I wasn’t trying, I was just stating something. Because if you really lean on a joke and it whiffs, you look like an asshole and it counts as a strike on your stats. I was more like the guy running for mayor. I was very social at this point, mixing it up with as many people as I could. Shaking hands, kissing babies. You know the drill. Hey, I’d been socially starved my whole life. Now I was experiencing a microlevel of fame. I’d been plucked from grade school obscurity to having folks know who I was. My mom was pissed about my report card shitting the bed, and Andy was annoyed that I was riding his cool-cred coattails, but I didn’t care. I always knew if things got bad I could easily turn into the skid and bust out a 4.0 overnight. Not a problem.

Turns out, it was a problem. My acceptance into Mensa got sidetracked by the idea of doing comedy. It was my sophomore year when I decided that I would try to be funny, not quietly at lunch but onstage.

In my Scottsdale, Arizona high school, one of the offered electives was a motivational speaking class. This was a pretty easy one for me, because it was a perfect way to show off. A lot of the class was learning how to give a speech in front of a group, which terrifies most people, but I seemed to like it (gross). A very sweet but stern older woman named Mrs. Nack taught the class. She was very good at getting the most out of you, and she didn’t make things easy on us. I remember there was an “Ah” meter. Someone hit a bell every time you said “Ah” or “Um” during a speech, which was great training because you would never guess how many times you say that in a conversation and how stupid it sounds. I wish there was a “Like” meter in every bar in Los Angeles. Maybe even an “Amazing” meter for whenever a girl talks for more than five seconds.

This class was also my introduction to “the Light.” The light is the famous red light on the back wall they flick on at the end of your stand-up routine. It means you have about two minutes to wrap it up. And I have learned through my stand-up career that a lot of places are not fucking around when they give you the light. I have gotten screamed at, and even fired on the road for not getting the fuck offstage when the light came on. Comics get bad reps for going over their time. So back to the speech class . . . If you had a five-minute speech, it was like a traffic light in the back: green for the first three minutes, then yellow for the fourth minute, then red for the last minute. We learned not to blather on, and to keep it tight. If you have experienced my comedy stylings, you know I never blather on, well, rarely . . . okay, always. Sorry, Mrs. Nack.

The motivational part of this class involved a traveling team called Motivation in Motion, which consisted of this bunch of idiots going to grade schools and giving motivational speeches. Just picture Joel Osteen but younger, less religious, constantly stoned, and making absolutely no sense. That was us. It was almost comical how unqualified we were to be “motivating” but it was a fun way to get out of school for the afternoon.

Now, the main reason I took this class for three years was that Mrs. Nack had the keys to the kingdom. The Extravaganza. Extravaganza was a two-day, once-a-year talent/variety show. The whole school went, the whole school talked about it, and the only way you could get a slot on the program was if you were in the speech class. And I was so horny to get onstage at this point, ripping off old
Saturday Night Live
sketches, that I played all my cards with old Mrs. Nack. This was also the time that I first tried my hand at writing sketches. You will soon find out that I should have worked on that a little bit more, but in high school I was just getting started. I wrote a super-stupid sketch called “The Malachi Brothers,” which was about two cocky guys hitting on women. It played pretty well, and with the positive feedback I got, I decided that comedy was maybe something for me. Sports and skateboarding weren’t going to take me to the top, not even the middle. The sketches were super-stupid but they got me writing. And I couldn’t rely on Andy forever. Comedy was the only place I could pretty much fit in and possibly stand out a bit. I still was into skateboarding with my brother, my friend Jody, and a handful of other burnouts, and no one cared about that. Performing was on campus, which made it more in the mix.

Unfortunately, writing practice and showing off wasn’t the only thing I got at the Extravaganza. The first time I performed, it was sophomore year. It was a big deal I made the cut, because most of the slots were for juniors and seniors. This was my first vote of comedy confidence. (And I’ve been begging for pats on the back ever since.)

If you know me, you know I have a long history of neck pain and problems, and the Extravaganza is where they started. When I’m doing
Ellen
or
Fallon
, you’ll see that I sit awkwardly on the couch, sort of cockeyed, or with my knees tucked under me. This is because I can’t sit like a normal person for more than three minutes, because of what happened during my first Extravaganza. One of the sketches I was in was a dance number set to “Macho Man” (Remember that song? Very catchy.), and at the end of the dance number, I had planned to do a standing backflip . . . for no reason. Mostly just to show off, actually. As I tell this, I realize that there are a few red flags in this story but we’re not going to focus on those. (Dancing, gymnastics, men everywhere, the term
macho man
. Ding ding ding.)

I was backstage before the show, going over my lines and dance steps. We were in the cafetorium, the combo cafeteria/auditorium where all the major shit went down. My buddy was there, decked out in his karate gi (he was also in “Macho Man”). I stupidly said, “Hey Williamson, can you spot me during my backflip, because I’m going to practice it?” And then, in a majorly regrettable move, I switched gears: “You know what? Don’t spot me, I have to do it in an hour. I have to be ready.” So his job was really to do nothing, just sit and watch the disaster unfold. I stood still and suddenly sprung straight up. After the flip I was supposed to land on my feet and stick the dismount like Mary Lou Retton. This did not happen. I came out of my tuck (lingo) a little early and I missed my feet, and landed on my FACE . . . yes, folks, all my weight, all on my face. There was a stunned pause; my friend stood there with his jaw dropped. Then I bounced up, holding on to my front four teeth, which were now bent straight back. Blood was squirting everywhere, and black paint from the stage was now tattooed on my teeth like a grill made out of Sharpie. “Are you okay?” my friend finally said. “Not at all,” I reply, and as I walk away I hear music in my head. (“Hello darkness, my old friend”). I dropped to one knee, aaaaaaand . . . black out.