It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (40 page)

Two days later Steve called. "You got the gig." I couldn't believe my ears. I had been cast in the title role of Woofer on a national TV show, starring Tina Turner with me as co-star. There was a 50 show guarantee @ $3500.00 a week. Ka-ching a ding ding.

The producers met with me and told me how happy they were they found me. There was a lot of ass kissing being done and I thought it was strange.  Oh well. They sent me the script. I read it and my heart sank, it was abysmal. It was drivel. It was unhip. I was sick to my stomach. I had a really good relationship with the producers and I called them. "Hey guys, nice script. I'm using it to line my bird cage."  "Yah it's a little weak." They admitted, "A little weak, this thing couldn't fly with a stick of dynamite up its ass. Let me try a re-write."  They agreed and I spent the entire day rewriting the script. I dropped it off and within two hours they were calling my agent. They wanted to make me head writer, fly me to New York, give me a $100.00 a day per diem and an apartment close to the studio in Manhattan. $5000.00 a week plus perks. If this is a dream and I wake up in a pool of my own body fluid I'm gonna kill myself. But, it was not a dream it was for real. I was co-star and head writer. SOMEBODY SLAP ME NOW!

I thought I had died and gone to heaven. This whole thing happened right around the time Saturday Night Live went on the air. New York was the center of hip because NBC has made it that way; the whole project had an air of hit surrounding it, New York, Tina Turner, rock and roll.  What else could a comedian ask for?

We make the deal for five grand a week for fifty weeks. They fly me to New York two weeks early and I'm set up in an office with a staff to write the shows. No matter what I turned out they loved it. Ass kissing. This had never happened before and I couldn't understand why they were being so nice to me. So I asked, "What's up? My ass is getting chaffed."    Turns out Tina Turner had seen me open for Donna Summer. SHE asked them to find me and cast me in the role opposite her.  They were keeping her happy by signing me and my humor was a bonus. If she loved the script, they loved it... and she loved the script.  This doesn't happen to me, this happens to Jay Leno, Jim Carey, and David Lettermen. I get shows like Good Morning San Diego. I don't get cutting edge shows in which major stars are singing my praises. Nope, this shit doesn't happen to ME. 

The day of shooting for the first episode arrives and I finally get to work with Tina Turner. We are introduced and I make a deep bow of thanks. She laughs. She was absolutely a dream to work with, no temperament, and no ego, just professional and sweet.  The days were long but I didn't care, I was finally living my dream.

We're on the set and Tina has to do a musical number. She stops and says; "I think it would be good if Woofer joined me here." I turn around to see whom she's talking to. She's talking to the network people.... And they're nodding. And so this little Jewish kid gets to sing and dance with Tina Turner. Just shoot me up with heroin and let me die.    After the take, people are coming up to me. "I didn't know you could sing like that."  Evidently they hadn't been to the Golden Anchor on Cape Cod where I was a singing waiter right after college. The truth of the matter is, I can't sing like that but if you think I was gonna not sing like that next to Tina Turner, you are crazy. Mick Jagger suddenly possessed me. I rocked!

The shoot is over and Tina and I kiss and say good-bye. She has to go to Europe for a tour date and will come back in ten days to continue shooting the rest of the series. The production company sends me back to LA and gives me a round trip ticket so I can come back to New York. In the meantime, I'm writing new shows.

My contract had an option that had to be picked up by five p.m. on May 16th (let's say). On May 15th I remembered I had not heard from them and so I called my agent, Steve, and asked what was up. He was going to look into it. On the 16th I still hadn't heard and started to get worried. Steve called again. They didn't return his call. This is not good and this went on all day. At 4:45 p.m. LA time they called. Tina had signed with a new manager, the one she is presently with and who made her an international superstar. He had seen the episode we shot and "It wasn't the direction I want to take her."  And so Tina pulled out of the series. No Tina, no sponsor. No sponsor, no show. The whole thing was cancelled.  Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.... Gone!

I sat at my desk in my house and just stared at the walls. I had just gotten divorced, I had just lost my son, I had just lost my best friend and now THIS.  I went into shock. My hands were numb and my eyes glazed over.  I was frozen in anxiety and could not move from my desk. The sun went down and I was still sitting there.  Suddenly the phone rang; it shook me out of my trance. It was a good, dear, friend, Lynn Turner, who just happens to be a Beverly Hills shrink. (God does put into your life what you need when you need it.) I told her what had happened fully expecting to hear "Oh, Steve, I'm so sorry." But what I heard was "Well, at least you came close."  And something clicked in my head and I said, "Yah! I almost came close." And the anxiety stopped, my muscles freed up and the vise that was holding my neck in a ridged position disappeared. Lynn   said exactly the right thing. She saw the glass half full, and I know in my heart if she said, "Aw, gee, poor Steve."  I would have fallen apart. She would have validated my feelings of being a failure. But that's not what she said; instead she made me feel good about my experience and myself.  And it's why today she is one of the top shrinks in Beverly Hills and remains my dear friend.

I have slides of Tina standing in front of a neon sign that said, "WOOER'S SUPERSONIC CITY."  And when I see her on tour or interviewed in her mansion in the south of France, I know that she deserves it all because she truly is one of the good ones. Her manager was right, the show would have been wrong for her. It was right for me but wrong for her.  I know I may not be a star and I may not be a household name... but at least once, just for about a week, I was all those things and I got to sing with Tina Turner on my own TV show. Now that ain't bad.

My jams and jellies will be for sale in the lobby.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2006 -
MAGGIE VOMIT

I think it's time for a funny one, an all out funny, no point to the story funny one.

I had two dogs, Maggie, the English Springer Spaniel, and Tori Spelling, the mutt. They got along famously in my Northridge, soon to be destroyed by an earthquake, house. One day I came home and I saw a box of ant traps opened and chewed to bits on the garage floor. I look on the box and see "POISON" in big letters. My heart drops. I look at the dogs and say...  "Who did this?" Like I expect them to answer, "Well, that's not an easy question, Steve, she chewed it but I got the box down." Tori, however, sinks her head and runs to her bed.... just like the real Tori Spelling dealing with problems. I scoop her up and call the vet who tells me to bring her in immediately and to bring the poison boxes as well. I'm in the car in two minutes and half way to the vet's when I look at the box. The puncture marks are huge; it couldn't have been Tori, it must have been Maggie. I slam on the brakes and head back home. I open the garage door and Maggie is on her hind legs trying to get a box of soap power off the shelf. "Shit. Caught red handed." She runs out the doggie door and hides in the back yard.

I throw Tori in the house and track Maggie down. I put her in the car (this is my brand new Lexus coupe) and take off for the vet. Maggie is in the back seat and I hear her start to gag. She's coughing and suddenly she projectile vomits on the back of my head.  Ya know that moment when you think... "That didn't just happen. I don't have dog vomit on my head."  That's what it was like inside my car.  I'm gagging myself and I hear Maggie start to throw up again. I scream... "Look Maggie... Squirrels" and she looks to the right and vomits on the back seats. Now she jumps in the front seat and looks at me. It's like that moment when Sigourney Weaver sees the Alien in her cabin. She knows it's going to strike...but when? And then Maggie starts to gag again. It's like the moment before Mount St. Helen exploded. "Look out Momma...she's gonna blow."  I throw a breath mint on the floor and Maggie goes for it as she heaves another stomach full of Alpo between the center console and bucket seats. At this point I'm thinking, "Well, I think we've established it was Maggie who ate the poison."

Have you ever smelled dog vomit inside a Lexus? It's so vile I threw up all over myself.   Maggie jumps in the back seat and she throws up again. It's like she wants it to all be balanced. She jumps in the front seat and heaves some big chunks on the dashboard. I instinctively turn on the windshield wipers. Does nothing.   She jumps in the back and takes a huge shit.  Why not? It was coming out of every hole. My car smelled like a sewage treatment plant on wheels. I can't roll down the windows because Maggie jumps out when the car is running. At this point it's not such a bad idea.  I'm stuck in my own private vomitorium.

Finally I arrive at the vets. I open the door and the vomit drips off the door panel. I look in the back seat of my car and, I swear to God to you, the seat wells were filled with vomit; two shimmering pools of it.  I leave the car and run into the vet’s office. The nurse takes one look at me and screams! They rush Maggie into the emergency room and make me take off my clothes and take a shower. They give me scrubs to wear.

Then an assistant says, "You better go out to your car." I go out there and ten million flies are having a meet and greet. It looked like they were trying to lift the car up and take it to wherever flies go to eat dog shit.  The vet gives me towels and hot soapy water and a shovel. I'm serious, a shovel.  I start scooping out dog vomit... I won't eat a soft tomato and I've got dog vomit up to my elbows. Now here's the curious thing... good is good and the interior of that Lexus cleaned up like it had never been used as a toilet.  The carpet repelled the moister, the leather cleaned up beautifully and the seats moved all the way forward so I could get to all the vomit between the bucket seats.  The smell was something else.

When my preliminary clean up was done I ran back inside. Maggie was still in the emergency room. The doctor comes out and takes both my hands. This is not good. She said, "She ate poison. We've stabilized her. The next 24 hours will be very telling." I finally break down and cry. "We'll do everything we can to save her."  But I know I'm about to lose my best friend.

I didn't sleep much that night. The next morning at 9 a.m. the doctor calls. "You have to come over here right now...you won't believe it."  I speed to her office and Maggie is running around the yard jumping and barking and when she sees me she runs to me and pulls me to the door. She's ready to go home. She had made a complete recovery. The vet was astonished.

So, something like 1500 dollars later I'm driving home. Maggie's  head is out the window. The world is good. The next week I take my car in to be detailed. The guy wants to know if someone had been killed in it.  I explain about Maggie and that he'll need an industrial strength deodorant. He nods but I'm sure he thought I was a mass murderer.

One year to the day later that car was stolen. The last vestiges of my success was taken right off Ventura Blvd. I was a basket case but I hoped whoever stole it was forced to sit in it on a nice hot summer day. Oh, by the way, after the whole Maggie poison thing I doggie proofed my garage and nothing like that every happened again. Maggie lived to a ripe old age of 15…

SEPTEMBER 21, 2006 -
SURPRISE GARDENER

Got a surprise package in the mail today, a signed book from Susie Coelho. Did I tell you I was production coordinator on her show SURPRISE GARDENER?  I didn't? Well here goes.

One of my really good friends is TV Producer Gary Bernstein. He and Larry Hovis, from Hogan's Heros, had a production company and they used me a lot on shows they produced. I mean... a lot! I must have done ten pilots for them, all game shows.  I would do the pilot then David Brenner would do the series. Welcome to my world. Gary, who I call my second Gary, and I became good buddies, No one laughs harder at my jokes than Gary Bernstein. I was playing a club in San Jose. Gary, Larry and Susan Simons (then a CBS exec and presently an agent) were in San Francisco for a broadcasters convention and they drove to San Jose to see my show. That night the room was packed and I absolutely destroyed the place but I honestly feel that having Gary in the audience and hearing him laugh, spurred me on to say and do things I never would. All I need is a little encouragement and I'm a wild man.

So the years go on and my road gigs are fewer and fewer. I'm starting to write but it's like starting a whole new career, work was very sparse. I called Gary one day to see what he was up to and he said, "My production coordinator just quit." Then there was a long pause. "Why don't you take the job?" My immediate reaction "I don't know how to be a production coordinator."  And Gary said, "Listen. I've known you for 15 years. There is no one more organized than you. If anyone can do this job, you can."  And so I accepted and became production coordinator on Surprise Gardener for HGTV.  What does that mean? I didn't have the slightest idea.