I Drink for a Reason (7 page)

Man, that is
not
for me. I would be working on a way to drink so much seawater that I would get all filled up and drift off to a nice post-meal
nap that I would pray I would never wake up from. Did you read about that teenage girl who was kidnapped by a well-armed stranger
and taken cross-country against her will and managed to leave clues to her whereabouts and outwit her kidnappers leading to
her rescue? Those are the tales of survival I’m awed by. Now, I like to think I’m somewhat clever. Certainly if you were to
see the terrarium I made in sixth grade for Ms. Kowalski’s science class (currently on display at the Carter Center in Atlanta)
you’d give me the benefit of the doubt. But I think if I found myself in any of those situations I would likely end up a pile
of cowardly bones somewhere, providing an unexpected yet delicious carrion treat for the locals. Have you seen
Touching the Void
? Have you seen or read about Shackleton’s
Endurance
? Or better, how about the guy who had to s-l-o-w-l-y chop his arm off at the elbow with a pocket knife because when he was
rock climbing his arm got stuck and he couldn’t get it free and he knew that no one was gonna be coming for weeks and he knew
that it was the only way he was going to have a chance at getting down and remain alive? Are you kidding? I’m such a pussy,
I’d still be dangling there today, a funny-looking skeleton with glasses.

There’s no way I could go through all that shit. I’m not sure it’s even about the pain. I think that the nagging feeling I
have even in the best of times (pizza party!!), the feeling that I don’t think life’s all that great, would take over eventually.
I don’t have kids, so I won’t go through the “I’ve got to do it for the little ones” phase that might imbue me with superhuman
strength. Perhaps in Day 2 of my dilemma, hungrier and weaker in mind and body, I might think about my baseball cards I want
to get back to, or the new Radiohead CD due out next week that I was really looking forward to, but will that really keep
me going? Nope.

I don’t even know the first thing about survival. There are at least a dozen of those bathroom books with subtitles like “Everything
you ever wanted to know about how to get out of every situation ever—and ten you don’t!” that tell you to punch a shark in
the nose or to tell a bear it’s stupid and things like that, but come on—punch a shark in the nose? I guess I’d do it, but
I would have already started the flashback of my life well before I balled up my fist and put on my best shark-punching face—i.e.,
I would already have given up and started saying my goodbyes. If I were lost in the desert by myself, I would just lie there
and cry for two days and then spend the rest of my time alive trying to use my shoes to light a fire or something equally
as inane. I would probably go through a brief phase of hitting rock bottom and then having the epiphany and accompanying surge
in strength where I would stop feeling sorry for myself, rising up and yelling out to the stars, “Get yourself together, dammit!
You’ve got to do something or you’re dead! Now think, motherfucker!” before I got tired and looked around for a relatively
comfortable place to lie down and die. As for kidnapping, well, I’m pretty sure that if I was kidnapped by brutal forces,
dragged around, and beaten regularly but then found myself with a risky but maybe my only chance to try and escape, I’d probably
still be hanging out with the kidnappers asking them if they wanted tea and did they need me to drive.

Now on the other hand, if I was on one of those
Survivor
or
Survivor
-lite reality shows, I think I would do quite well. If I knew that the sound crew who were just out of frame could ultimately
save me or set a broken bone or give me that fucking chocolate bar that every privileged egotistical crybaby with no true
sense of sacrifice seems to miss in a way so histrionic it would make Al Pacino multiplied by Nicolas Cage divided by Tyra
Banks blush, I would be able to get through most any “survival” condition in which I found myself (in the month we were shooting).
Now that I think of it, though, I suppose that if I were in a real, honest-to-goodness true survival situation, I would at
some point become aware of the financial and sexual rewards awaiting me if I were to survive my ordeal. A book, film rights
(and since I am an actor, potential work playing the older version of myself in a fictionalized future scene. The younger
me would of course be played by Orlando Bloom or Jude Law, whichever one is, as of the publishing deadline of this book, “hotter”
in accordance with the scientists at
People
magazine). A separate book about the making of the film and how harsh the conditions were would be in the offering, too.
It would be called
My Story’s Story,
and it would explain in detail how the cast and crew had to make due with very few modern amenities. (No Kiehl’s Green Tea
Infused Eyelid Lotion available, or those towels that I like from that nice hotel in Milan, and also that time when we ran
out of Mandy Patinkin’s
^*
favorite pita chips etc.) Then a documentary film of the book about how difficult it was to make the movie.
My Story’s Story—The Real Story Behind the Story.
Kind of like
Hearts of Darkness
or
Burden of Dreams
but not a straight documentary. More like
Touching the Void
but without the real danger of death and the awe-inspiring triumph over it through superhuman strength and courage. I could
then write and produce a one-man show off and then on, and then off again, Broadway about my experiences of turning the graphic
novella written about the financing of
My Story’s Story’s Behind-the-Scenes of the Making of The Story Casino,
which was thematically designed and inspired from the story the way I told it on a special sixteen-part
Oprah.
My point is this: I would be filthy rich. But ultimately, what we learned here is that Mandy Patinkin not only loves pita
chips but that he has a favorite kind. Can you guess what they are? Answer at the end of this piece.

Oh! Hello! It’s the end of the piece!

Answer: Roasted garlic!

“I’
VE BEEN TO
P
HOENIX
, A
RIZONA
,
ALL THE WAY TO
T
ACOMA
, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A. Northern California where the girls are warm so I could be with my sweet baby, yeah.” Steve
Miller sang those words and, thanks to the borderline tragic need of aging boomers to remind themselves of a fantastic youth
that is more than likely 75 percent imagined, probably still does at the Verizon/Delta/Capri Sun amphitheater near you. By
the time I was in my early twenties I had been to all of those places (yes, even Tacoma), living in two of them for at least
nine years and another for six months. I’m using this to illustrate the point that, because of an unstable childhood in which
my family moved at least once a year if not more, and because of an early entry into the world of stand-up, traveling “the
road,” I too, like Mr. Miller, have been all over America. The only states I have not been to are Alaska and North Dakota,
and North Dakota doesn’t even count. And Alaska is so far away that it might as well be Tasmania. And to say you haven’t really
been to all of Australia just because you didn’t go to Tasmania is silly. So, I’ve been all over America. 

People are often lulled into attributing blanket generalizations to people of different regions—i.e., the good folks of New
England are tight-assed and prudent, people in the South are friendly and move at a slower pace, people in the Midwest are
useless tweakers who don’t shower for weeks on end, etc. etc. Sometimes, of course, there are some truths to these assessments.
People in the South are, indeed, on the whole, more “polite” (in the sense that they say “hello” and stuff like that) than
most other masses of people. That’s not to say there aren’t any racist assholes who would shoot a hippie faggot in the back
rather than hear about two of them getting married in a strange progressive land far, far away. And I’m sure there’s at least
one person in the Midwest who’s not selling her 9-year-old’s pussy for another hit on the ol’ glass dick. For the most part,
these generalizations exist for a reason. I am going to do my best (through my thoroughly jaded jaundiced eyes of biased bitterness)
to convey what a day or lifetime spent in some of these charming hamlets of care-free nuclear families grilling their bulk-bought
Mexican hot dogs and scooping potato salad from a 5-gallon plastic bucket, is like.

Let’s start with where I was born and where I return to at least a couple of times a year—Atlanta, Georgia. Now I don’t want
to turn this into a memoir, as I’m a bit young for that yet. But I do have some pretty amazing stories to tell. You can turn
to page 54 for a teaser of some of the stories I’ll be relating in the memoir that will be forthcoming at some point down
the line. When people find out that I grew up in Atlanta, they will usually say, “Where’s your accent?” which is ridiculous,
since everyone should know by now that I sold it to Larry the Cable Guy for twenty bucks and a set of “Git-R-Done” tire covers.
Actually I grew up in Roswell, a sleepy (read: boring) suburb just north of the city. Now it’s all connected and pretty much
part of the poorly planned sprawl of Greater Atlanta (see “The City in Mind” by James Kunstler for a sensible, well-researched
essay on how and why Atlanta blew it), but back when I was a kid it wasn’t.

Not everyone acquires an accent from wherever they are from. How come Jewel doesn’t sound “Alaskan”? Why doesn’t Stephen Colbert
have a thick South Carolina drawl like that retard who works at the “Lil’ Peach” on Sundays? What about Amy Sedaris? Or David
Sedaris? Or Dan Rather? He’s from Texas, for chrissakes! What about James Taylor? He’s from Martha’s Vineyard. Why doesn’t
he sound like some elitist, liberal Kennedy-lite asshole? And how about Marlon Brando and Johnny Carson? They were from Nebraska.
How come they didn’t sound like horses? Etc. etc. But as I’ve said before on my Grammy-losing
^*
CD
Shut Up, You Fucking Baby
the Southern accent, in particular the “redneck” accent, the accent of the stupid and lazy, is mysteriously the most ubiquitous
regional accent in all of America. Outside of the annoying upspeak of teenage (and not so teenage, sometimes) girls—which
is its own, albeit less mysterious, phenomenon—the redneck accent can be found in places as diverse as Modesto, California;
Hot Springs, Arkansas; and Cumberland, Maine. I don’t know why. I’m no sociologist, so stop asking. It just is.

One of the more curious but lasting things about the South is the amount of science/blacks/Jews/fag/progessive-liberal/secular
atheist/foreigner haters that particular region has a history of producing (albeit thankfully decreasing) and the corresponding
cultural vacuum that exists outside of the larger cities. Is there a correlation to be made? Probably, but that would just
open me up to cries of “elitist” or “condescending prick.” Hey, come to think about it, that doesn’t sound so bad to me. Who’s
gonna call me a condescending prick, anyway? Jeanette Dunwoody? That Baptist home-schooling mom who will never even read one
of my dirty devil words, or Cooter Dupree, that government-cheese-eating, welfare-soaking asshole alchoholic who does nothing
all day but watch
The A-Team
and mildly torture his dog? I don’t give a shit about them, anyway. Nope, most likely I’ll be set upon by the other kind
of narrow-minded, tone-deaf clown that is the biological sister to the lunacy of the well-heeled, Jello-salad-serving pride
of the South—her counterpart to the northwest.

The northern Californian über PC, well-meaning but sadly feckless lover of all living colors of the rainbow, be they black,
white, brown, yellow, blah blah blah. I loves me a good hippie/ “anarchy now” dialogue. While there is very little if nothing
I can appreciate about the couple in Vernon, Georgia, who will stamp their feet in anger and twist and sputter about at the
idea of two gay guys in San Francisco who want the right to be legally recognized as married, I do somewhat empathize with
that same gay guy who is upset with my “intolerance.” But sometimes it gets out of hand. A couple of years ago I did a show
in San Francisco. I usually have pretty good shows there, but quite often, and this has been true of doing shows there my
entire career, I will face pockets of invariable and wholly predictable PC anger at something I’ve said. By far, most of the
time the audience has my back, and if they didn’t necessarily agree with my point, at least understood the exaggerated comic
intent of the bit. But sometimes sincerely well-intentioned people are so overly sensitive and myopic that any sense of irony,
parody, or satire is squeezed out of the bit, leaving a bone-dry statement devoid of humor lying dead on the hot sidewalk
in its wake.

At this show I did a bit that at its core was about how an atheist running for office in America (this was in 2006 during
the beginning of the primaries), no matter how viable, equitable, and universally accepted his ideas for improving the lives
of all might be, will never be a major party candidate in my lifetime. Then I talked about how Mitt Romney (who was doing
very well at the time) could very likely end up being the Republican nominee and then talked about what he, as a Mormon, believes.
Obviously there are no jokes in the above. I just wanted to give you a synopsis of the bit, which was probably ten minutes
long and wouldn’t translate all that well on the page. So I did the bit, made my point, and moved on to some hilarious abortion
jokes. A couple of days later, because back then I was foolish and vain enough to have a “Google Alert” for myself, I stumbled
upon a blog entry from someone named Emily who had been at the show. Here it is, quoted in its entirety from the blog
SFist:

SFist
was excited to hit SketchFest’s Comedy Death-Ray act last night at Cobb’s. The lineup (full of
Mr. Show
and
I LOVE the ’80’s alums
) looked promising. After the usher told us to give him $10 we landed front row seats. Which served us well for the surprise
star of the night, Paul F. Tompkins—who had by far the strongest set of the night. Seriously, give that guy his own TV show!
The other notable act was the vocal stylings of Hard ’n’Phirm, who ended the night with their rendition of a Latin power love
ballad, which brought down the house, and which
SFist
is secretly hoping someone will sing to us this Valentine’s Day.