Crash and Burn (5 page)

From taint to waist, the seat of my pants was fully separated, leaving my ass comfortably hanging in the breeze except that I wasn’t alone in my backyard. The thing is, I was bombing so badly
that I’m not sure anyone in the audience even noticed this. And my ass was facing them when it happened, but not one person reacted in any way. I know this because by then, just three minutes into this fiasco, I was already hyperattuned to every breath those ignoring-me motherfuckers took. All I heard was the unconcerned, self-involved chatter of their cocktail-party chitchat: I heard hot chicks laughing above the noise of plates of food being delivered. I could have broken my neck or had a heart attack and no one would have noticed.

There was a clock at the side of the stage that I could see too easily from wherever I stood. And that clock became my personal hell for the next seventeen minutes, as I watched it ticking away each minute I had to endure insult and injury to get my money. After my pants split in two, despite the fact that no one probably noticed, I shuffled up to the mic, keeping my ass to the back of the stage, where the band’s instruments were, and when I got there I just started mumbling because I literally had nothing. I’d been doing stand-up for fifteen years by then; I’d seen all kinds of shitty rooms and taken on disinterested crowds, but all of the defenses I’d built up were nowhere to be found. I was reminded that day that no matter how great you think you are, shit like this can happen at any time, and when it does you probably won’t be ready for it. I did what anyone completely unprepared would do: I kept mumbling. It was pathetic. Did I mention that I was at the Playboy Mansion?

Out in the crowd, the dudes at Jerry Buss’s table were starting to make out with the girls, because all of them were probably on Ecstasy. They were all touching each other, and that’s when I realized that I could not be more insignificant in this scheme of things. That reality check might have broken my spirit, but it wasn’t so earth-shattering that I lost sight of what I had to do to get paid. The gig was below my usual fee, and it seemed like all I was going to get out of this was humiliation, so I was determined to get the cash. By then I had wandered my way through nine minutes, so I had eleven left to go. That might not seem like a lot in the real world, but in stand-up
minutes that’s a fucking lifetime. If you don’t believe me, bring your best jokes to the next open-mic comedy night in your hometown and then tell me how you do. You can tell those jokes at home to your friends, you can time yourself and think you’ve got it all figured out, but you don’t. When you’re up there, minutes are hours, trust me. So I had the equivalent of one of the Police Academy movies left on the clock, and I had no idea what to do. Considering how well my other material was going over, I did the only thing that made sense to me and started singing “Dixie Land,” as interpreted by my Elvis impression. I felt no need for an extravagant setup: “Everybody, sometimes I like to pretend I’m Elvis.” That had to get people’s attention.

No such luck.

Maybe the song would do it.

“Ohhhhh, baby! . . . I . . . .wish I was in the land of cotton / Old times there are not forgotten! Look awaay! Look awaaay! Look awaaay! Look awaay!”

No one looked, not even once, toward the stage. Anyone who’s heard me knows I’m not a good singer, and most of my impressions are obnoxious, so you’d think that the racket of me on the microphone alone would have alarmed somebody—anybody. Nope, not that night, not a fucking soul. I should have announced that an ICBM was headed toward Los Angeles.

I looked at the clock again and saw that I had about six minutes left. I figured I’d started something with this Elvis thing, so I should stick with it. How could I go back to jokes after exposing them to my singing voice? I dipped into my bag of songs and pulled out the only thing that made sense.

“You know something, ladies and gentlemen,” I said, still imitating Elvis. “I really like it when Elvis sings this here song. It really is one from the great American songbook.” And then I launched into “My Way.”

“And now . . . the end is . . . near.” I started camping it up too. “Yes, it is, ladies and gentlemen, the end is near.”

For the first time people started laughing, but I knew what was going on. They weren’t laughing with me, but I soon realized they weren’t even laughing at me. By that point I would have jumped for fucking joy to be laughed at or made fun of. No, the dudes busting up at table five were laughing at whatever stupid jokes the hot waitresses were telling them. I could not catch a fucking break. These girls, all of them nineteen, on Ecstasy, and asking where Jerry Bruckheimer’s house was, were getting more laughs than I was.

I dragged my exposed ass through “My Way,” and made that piece of shit last as long as I could. I drew in as much breath as I could, and I think I held the last “waaaay” for at least a minute and thirty-five seconds. I had one eye on the clock, hoping I could end on this high note, but that wasn’t going to happen; I still had four minutes to go. Four minutes of hell ahead and no turning back, so I launched right into “Hey Jude.” To make matters worse I forgot the words, which on any other night I know by heart. As anyone who has ever tried to sing “Hey Jude” can tell you, there’s only one way out of it if you forget the words: head right into the “nah-nah-nahs” and pray for the best. Well, I did that way too early—I did it after like the third line of the first verse. It was a complete train wreck, but considering my set overall, I think it was the highlight. I was so painfully aware of just how bad I was that I wondered if the guy paying me was going to try to skip out on my check. I mean, technically he could claim that I didn’t do a stand-up set, seeing how I’d opted to perform so many of my well-honed musical routines.

There are only so many “nah-nahs” a man can do, and when I’d exhausted them, the clock of doom informed me that I still had two minutes left.

Fuck me
, I thought.

Then I started singing a truly earnest version of “Happy Birthday,” somewhere between Marilyn Monroe’s serenade of JFK and a crackhead trying to impress his dealer.

“I know it’s somebody’s birthday in the house tonight, and
I promised them I’d sing them a song, so join me, won’t you, ladies and gentleman, in wishing that person, wherever they are, a happy one.”

For the first time during those twenty minutes I actually started enjoying what I was doing, so much that I actually went over the scheduled twenty minutes by ninety seconds. I was really proud of that.

“Thank you, everyone, good night,” I said after I wrapped up the song. “You’ve been really great.”

It was a horrible night, but I knew there was some kind of prize awaiting me: I had heard that after the performances were done there would be whores galore and that they were all fair game. With paid-for sex dangling as the carrot that would numb my embarrassment, I shuffled offstage, keeping my air-cooled ass turned away from the audience’s eye. “Great job, great fucking job, man,” the MC for this fine event said to me, nodding his head like a nutcracker as he took the mic from my hand. Clearly he was high or maybe he’d been nowhere near the stage during my set for the last twenty minutes, because he was so enthusiastic that he clearly wasn’t busting my balls.

“Give it up one more time for Artie Lange!” he shouted into the mic. No one clapped, no one cheered, no one did anything. I laughed out loud because that moment was funnier than anything I’d done up there—asking them to give it up one more time as if they’d even given it up one time. The band played a few songs as I stood there feeling like a loser, wanting another drink but not wanting to walk anywhere with my ripped-open pants. My mind was consumed with just one crystal clear thought:
Where the fuck is Teddy?
We’ve already covered how much I love the kid as well as how much he is capable of pissing me off, but I have to say, this night took the prize. Standing there with ripped pants, with no assistant in sight, I was pretty justified in my anger. I needed pants to cover my ass and I needed painkillers to cover my shame. And hopefully a whore to make me forget about all of it for the time it took her to blow me. This
was the kind of party where pills were everywhere, that was obvious, but I wasn’t in any condition to go asking around—I expected Teddy to do it.

As I stood there with my ass to a hedgerow, my blood began to boil because the kid was nowhere to be found. By that point the pain of my failure onstage had sobered me up, and just then one of the two guys in charge of the event came over to me.

“Great job, Artie, we really loved it,” he said.

He had to be kidding.

“Thanks, man,” I said. “I knew I had to try something special for this crowd, you know?” This guy had to be fucking with me.

“Well, you really did great, I mean it,” he said with a big grin.

Then I noticed the camera behind him, taping us. If my pants were in one piece I would have shit them.

“That’s cool, man, I’m so glad you enjoyed it. So, the camera—are you taping us?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Did you tape my set too?”

“We did, but it’s just for our purposes.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “What are your purposes?”

“Well, it’s just a souvenir of the night,” he said, smiling.

I kind of wanted to punch him. “A souvenir?” I asked. “What am I? A bobblehead?”

“That’s funny, Artie!” he said, slapping my shoulder. “We’re just going to show it in-house.”

In my mind that was worse than having twelve-year-olds in Nebraska poring over it on YouTube. What kind of viewing party were they saving it for? If anyone ever watched it they’d see every bit of the crap sandwich I’d made that night.

“Oh, that’s cool, man,” I said. “It’s not going to end up anywhere, though, right?”

“No, not at all.”

After that exchange, he left for a minute and came back with my
check for $10,000, which I immediately noticed wasn’t made out to “Too Fat to Fish, Inc.,” as it should have been. It was made out to “R. D. Lang,” a famous Scottish psychiatrist who specialized in treating psychosis. He also died in 1989.
This is what I pay Teddy for, isn’t it?
I thought. I didn’t want to have a conversation with this guy about the check; I wanted to get into some new pants, I wanted pills and booze, and I wanted to be first in line when the hooker bus showed up. Where the fuck was Teddy?

“Uh, hey, man, thanks for the check, but it’s made out to the wrong guy; I’m not R. D. Lang,” I said. “From what I understand he was a great man, but he’s dead. The check should be made out to ‘Too Fat to Fish.’ ”

“What?”

Saying that name turned more heads than any joke I’d said all night.

“Too Fat to Fish, what’s that?” he asked.

“It’s the name of my corporation. It comes from something my mother said once.”

There were a pair of girls talking to us and one of them thought this was literally the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

“Too fat to fish?” she squealed. “That’s so funny! Where does that come from?”

The last thing I wanted to do with my ass hanging out, an empty drink, and no opiates in sight was tell some broad who didn’t seem like a sure thing the too-fat-to-fish story. I told it half-assed and without the usual enthusiasm I bring to it, and it went over just about as well as my set had. When I finished it, the promoter guy and the chicks were staring at me blankly.

“That’s it?” one of them asked.

“Yeah. That’s it,” I said.

“I thought there would be, like, more to it,” the other chick said. The promoter guy started laughing.

“I’m sorry, J. D. Salinger,” I said to her, “but that’s as complex as
the narrative arc is gonna get in this tale.” Fuck her, that bitch was straight off the bus from Kansas City, destined to fuck Pauly Shore as her greatest achievement, and she was critiquing my storytelling?

“Hey, man, can you cut me a new check tonight?” At least I hoped to get out of there with my money. My dignity, what little I had, was a long-lost cause.

“No, R.D., I’m sorry, we’ll have to mail it to you,” the guy said.

Jesus, really? How much worse could this night get? The answer, my friends, is much, much worse. By the way, they did mail me the check, but it took eight months and a few phone calls to get it. Fucking R. D. Lang.

So I’m standing there at the Playboy Mansion, just a complete wallflower, with my ass to the bushes, having, in every way, the opposite experience that James Caan had his first time there (from ’74–’76 he held the record for fucking consecutive Playmates, or so I’ve heard). His memory of his time there, however, has probably been lost in a jungle of enormous ’70s bush. Anyway, I’d been dreaming of coming to this place since I was a teenager, and I’d finally made it, but there I was, unable to move, just bombing and repulsing people over and over. I mean literally, as I wandered around, everyone I met looked at me as if I’d just puked on them. It was terrible.

Just then I finally caught sight of Teddy, who was down by the monkey cages, laughing hysterically with Sarah Silverman, whom I’d had a crush on since 1992, and because of that I was beyond furious. They were having the time of their lives while I suffered through one of the worst sets of my career, and I was paying that kid to be there. I decided that if they started making out, if I had to watch him kiss her, I would gladly do the time in prison for the joy I’d have received choking him to death with my bare hands. Can you blame me? I was still standing there in ripped pants. What the FUCK?

“Teddy!” I shouted. “Ted-day!”

He didn’t hear me (of course he didn’t), so I shuffled along the hedge, keeping my bare ass to the bush, inching closer to them. My
blood was boiling—literally boiling—with every inch I crept closer. I got within four feet and, fuck you, man, I was fuming by then.

“TEDDY!!!”

He turned, looked at me, then walked over. “Oh, hey!” he said, as if we were old friends running into each other at a high school reunion, just all full of good times and hugs. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” I asked, barely choking back my rage. “I don’t know, Teddy. . . . What am I doing? Well, let’s see . . . I just did stand-up comedy, which is the whole reason we are here. ‘We’ meaning ‘you and me’; you’re aware of that . . . right, Teddy? That’s what I’ve been doing. Earning money. . . . So, how have you been? What have you been doing?”