I'll Be Here All Week (11 page)

“Are you married?” Buzz asks him.

“Divorced. But we still see each other,” he says.

“Really?”

“Sort of,” he says. “She doesn't see me. I hide outside and look at all the stuff I used to own.”

“Work out well for you?”

“Sure,” he says. “Why would I want to have financial security and a nice house with all kinds of great stuff when I can be in Peoria, Illinois, at seven a.m., talking to a guy named Monkey-Boy?”

All three of the hosts laugh, and Spence realizes that four minutes is never as long as it seems. He recognizes the routine of “laughing into the commercial break” that all morning shows are excellent at doing. When the laugh carries over longer than even the best joke deserves, he knows what it means. His time is up, and he feels like he barely got started.

“Buzz in the morning with the Friday Funnies,” Buzz says into the microphone. He signals with his eyes to Monkey-Boy and Sheila, who seem to understand the look. “We'll be right back after this.”

With that, all three of them go back to how they were before the show went live. Monkey-Boy checks his phone for text messages, his bangs hanging in his face in a way that makes it hard to tell if he can actually be reading anything. Sheila begins looking at her computer screen, reading the news or checking the weather or whatever the hell she does when she isn't groaning. Buzz pulls his headphones off his ears and leans in.

“Great stuff,” Buzz says to him. “You're really good at this.”

“Thanks,” Spence says with a smile. People occasionally compliment him for what he does on the radio but, from Buzz, it sounds really sincere.

“You ever thought about getting into radio?” Buzz asks.

“Not once,” Spence says and means it.

“You'd be good at it.”

“That's what they said about stand-up comedy.”

“Yeah”—Buzz laughs—“that's what they told me, too.”

“Isn't radio a dead-end job?” Spence asks.

“Isn't stand-up comedy?”

“Ah, we're kindred spirits.”

“Indeed we are.” Buzz gives him a fist bump, and a huge smile spreads across his enormous face.

“You ever do stand-up?” Spence asks.

“A couple of times,” Buzz says, “but I'm no better at being up at midnight than you are at being up at six.”

“Fair enough.”

“Listen”—Buzz looks at the clock on the wall—“screw the giveaways. We'll let you do them with us. It'll be funnier that way. Can you stick around for another hour?”

The Laff Shack is a beautiful comedy club. The room is exactly what comedians dream of performing in when they fantasize about all things stand-up comedy. The ceilings are low, which makes the laughter bounce all over the place. The room itself is tight, making that laughter enormous and powerful. The stage is spacious and well-lit, the seats are comfortable, and the owner obviously put serious money into the upkeep. Inside that club, it looks like 1987. That was the high point of The Boom. If a comedy club can be a time capsule, the Laff Shack is it.

Despite this fact, Spence can't help but be a little bit depressed. The room seats two hundred, but there's maybe twenty people sitting in the audience. A club this beautiful with this much money behind it shouldn't be this empty on a Friday night. The place should be jam-packed with people trying to get in. Something is wrong. There must be a championship basketball game in town or something. Leave it to a popular sporting event to crush the attendance at a comedy club every time.

He looks around the room and notices posters everywhere advertising some old comedian who is going to be there in a couple of weeks. This guy was very popular in the '70s and was on a hit TV show for years. He hasn't done much of anything since then and is now back to doing stand-up comedy. The posters are even emblazoned with the catchphrase he used on that sitcom thirty years ago: “okie-dokie-pokey.” Every poster in the place practically screams it with a large, comical font.

Spence grimaces. Every comedian hopes to get a big TV show one day. No one ever thinks of what it might be like when that fame peaks and you're stuck right back doing small comedy clubs all over again. There are many comedians from twenty-five years ago, still working the same clubs they used to. Almost all of them milk a TV credit that's older than most of the audience. Whenever he sees a comedian touting an appearance on
An Evening at the Improv,
it makes him a little queasy. That show went off the air fourteen years ago. He likes to think that, in another ten years or so, he will have something more to show for himself than his Kilborn appearance.

“Gonna pack the place in,” a voice comes from over his shoulder, and Spence turns around. Frank owns the club. They are around the same age, but Frank looks older because of his hair transplant. The plugs show a little bit, which doesn't help. Frank is short, probably about five foot five, and he dresses like a mobster. His suit is sharp and obviously expensive.

“Tonight?” he asks Frank.

“I wish,” Frank says and points to the poster of the has-been. “You wouldn't believe the money I've dropped getting him here.”

“Really?” Spence asks. He wonders how a guy who hasn't done anything in thirty years can be that expensive.

“Yup,” Frank says.

“Who's his agent?”

“Rodney Carnes,” Frank says.

Fuck you, Rodney,
Spence thinks.

“Small world,” he says.

“Plus, we've gone all out on advertising,” Frank says. “Newspaper, radio, TV. You name it. Even doubled the ticket prices.”

“All for him.”

“Yup. Spent a shitload on the whole thing. That's one reason we're slow tonight.”

“What do you mean?” Spence asks. It's not lost on him that his own headshot wasn't on display in the lobby. Three different posters of the has-been are there instead. In fact, if it weren't for all of the posters and signs promoting the has-been, there'd be no proof that
any
other comics perform there at all.

“Well, we normally do more PR and advertising,” Frank says. “But we cut back on it this week and next week so we can promote the special event.”

“But you said you're going to sell it out.”

“We will,” Frank says.

“Isn't he famous enough that you could've packed it anyway?” Spence asks. He wonders why they would spend all that money on advertising a sure thing.

Frank shrugs. “I'm not taking any chances. He cost us ten grand.”

Spence almost swallows his own tongue. He's making eight hundred dollars for the week. He doesn't even have ten grand in savings. In fact, he doesn't even have a savings account.

“Couldn't you sell out every week if you spent half that on advertising and PR?” he asks.

“I dunno,” Frank says. “We often do sell out.”

“No matter who is onstage?”

“Yep.”

Then why bring in the celebrity act at all?
Spence thinks.
Don't you wind up making the same money after expenses?

He can't say this because it will only get him in trouble. He knows that he can never tell a club owner that the guy has made a bad decision. It will just get him banned from the club for being a jerk. He has to let Frank believe that overspending is a good idea.

“I like bringing in the big names,” Frank says with a big smile. “Hell, we're thinking about bringing in Gallagher.”

Spence smiles and pretends to be impressed. He's not sure why club owners always expect him to be excited when they brag about other acts. Why would he want to hear about people getting paid a hundred times what he makes to work in the exact same place? He wonders what kind of career he needs in order to have his pay shoot up to ten grand a week. He suddenly finds himself a bit depressed that he didn't get the body spray commercial. The guy who got it looked exactly like him.

“C'mere”—Frank motions for him to follow—“I wanna show you something.”

He follows Frank outside into the parking lot and turns to look at the club. He can't help but notice his name isn't on the marquee. Instead it promotes the has-been's show that isn't for another two weeks.

“Check it out,” Frank says and extends his right hand. At the end of where his hand is pointing is a very new, very shiny, very expensive Corvette. It is red and gorgeous and easily cost more than most comedians will make in two years.

“Whad'ya think?” Frank stands in front of the car as if it's a child who just won the spelling bee.

“Nice!” Spence says, acting like he gives a damn. He should win an Oscar for being able to grin and bear it.

“Just a little toy I decided to get myself,” Frank says.

“It's hot.” Spence wonders again why he's only getting paid eight hundred dollars for the week. Frank can apparently afford ten grand for a comedian and five times that for a sports car.

“Yeah, I love it,” Frank says, “Life is too short, my man. Sometimes you've gotta treat yourself. Know what I mean?”

“Hell, yes,” Spence lies. The last thing he treated himself to was an extra night in a Days Inn instead of sleeping on what used to be his sofa at Beth's house. He looks at the car and the has-been's name on the marquee and wants to drag his car key across the Corvette's hood. “You deserve it.”

He doesn't hear Frank yammering on about the car because he is still wondering what it must be like to make ten grand in a week. The best month he ever had in stand-up comedy, he made a little over five. That kind of ride dried up pretty quickly. But the shelf life on a '70s sitcom is apparently endless.

Inside the club, the twenty people in the audience are giving a very mild reception to the opening act. The kid is very white and yet seems to think he's black. He was probably raised in the suburbs but tries to play it as if he's from the streets. Every sentence ends with “knowwhatI'msaying” and begins with “fuck.”

“All I'm saying is you girls gotta wash that shit every day,” the kid says and points to his crotch. “That shit is nasty if you don't wash the shit outta it. KnowwhatI'msaying?”

The audience does know what he's saying. The problem is that what he's saying isn't funny. New comics often mistake profanity for real material. Just saying “fuck” doesn't necessarily make the joke funny. The kid onstage hasn't learned that yet.

“Fuck,” the kid says, “all I'm saying is that if the bitch don't wash that shit, I ain't going anywhere near it. If I wanna eat tuna, I'll go get myself a foot-long at Subway.”

Sitting down in a booth in the back of the club, Spence watches the new kid slowly dying onstage. He feels a headache coming on, knowing that he has to follow this train wreck. The audience isn't offended as much as insulted. Their response is tepid at best. The kid has two minutes left to bring them over to his side and close big. After that, it's all over. Going onstage after another comedian has bombed is like going up first; the show essentially has to start all over again cold. Going on after this kid is worse. It's like being in the band playing on the deck of the
Titanic
.

“You ever take a shit that smells like pussy?” the kid says and hammers the final nail in his own coffin. It's all over for him. Executions have ended better. His time is up, and he wasn't able to pull the crowd around, leaving an awkward silence hanging over the room like someone who just confessed at the dinner table to having an abortion.

Spence starts to feel uneasy and looks at his watch. This isn't good. It's been thirty minutes. The kid was supposed to do twenty minutes but is running long and no one seems to notice. He's still struggling to get chuckles, yet keeps hitting them with more alleged jokes. The audience isn't even lukewarm at this point and dangerously close to becoming hostile.

Spence looks around the club and looks down at his watch. Someone needs to give the kid a signal and let him know it's time to get offstage. It's hard enough to follow an act that bombed. It's even harder to follow one that ran too long and sucked all the life out of the audience. A root canal is easier.

Where the hell is Frank?
he thinks to himself.
Outside with his penis in the tailpipe of his new car, actually trying to have sex with it?

When forty minutes rolls round, a blind man could see that Spence is pissed off. The kid is still onstage and still eating it, yet still ranting away. Every comedian knows before he goes onstage just how much time he's expected to do. Going over by a few minutes is usually forgivable. Doing double the time you were supposed to do is absolute bullshit. But since Frank is apparently masturbating all over his car, there's nothing to be done about it this time around.

What the hell are you doing?
Spence wants to scream at the stage.
They aren't into this. Read the crowd, you idiot. Do they seem like they are remotely into this kind of crap?

Just watching it makes him cringe. Every comic has a night that goes badly. Everyone knows what it's like to be bombing and wanting to turn it around. But there comes a time when you simply accept that you're never going to win them over. You do your time, cut your losses, and go home to lick your wounds. The only thing you do by digging the hole deeper is drag the next comedian down into it with you.

It used to be inexcusable and was the kind of behavior that got you banned from comedy clubs. At some point over the past several years, a trend started with young comics who find it more amusing to offend the audience than to make it laugh. Rather than adapt and try to read them a little better, young comedians started going onstage almost daring audiences to laugh. The desire to shock the crowd is more important than making it laugh.

It's because of that kind of thinking that this kid onstage doesn't know he's digging himself into that hole. He doesn't see that he's bombing. The few awkward chuckles he's getting is the best response an audience has ever given him. To that kid onstage, this is a good set.

“That's it for me, bitches.” He finally wraps up the disaster that was his act. “Peace out, muthafuckas.”

With that, the kid takes the microphone and slams it to the ground. The audience makes a noise that sounds like a mixture of mild amusement and disgust. A table of five people gets up and walks out of the club. That leaves only fifteen audience members left to watch a show that is now running almost thirty minutes behind.

“They're a rough crowd, yo,” he says to Spence as he brushes past. Spence nods when what he really wants to do is punch the kid in the throat.

He is not looking forward to this. He's been more optimistic about getting a catheter inserted into his penis. He takes the stage with the same smile and high energy he gives when the club is packed. Taking the dented microphone into his hand, he goes straight into his first joke. He cannot see through the lights, but he feels himself slip right into the same persona he always does. Here is where he belongs. Here is where he lets everything that was bothering him go away for at least forty-five minutes. Here he doesn't think about Frank or the unfunny kid or the has-been who makes a truckload of money. Here he is ready to just enjoy himself. Here is where he is in charge. He is ready for them.

“And that's why I only date Asian women,” he says.

Nothing happens. The audience doesn't laugh; they simply look at him. It's the same joke he has done a million times before. They don't go for it at all. He's had some jokes go over better than others, but his opening bit always kills. That's why he uses it. It gets the audience on his side right away. Not this time. He is shocked.

“When he said he was smacking the midget, I just assumed he was talking about masturbation,” he says. Nothing again. He can't believe it. He wonders if the audience is too tired. Maybe that opening act pulled all the energy out of the room by going too long? Is everyone in the room an Asian midget and he somehow missed it and offended them all? It's bad enough to feel like he's not connecting with the audience, but now he's flat-out bombing. This hasn't happened in years.

“I'll tell you the best part of being divorced . . .” he says. He rolls into another surefire hit; an old joke about divorce that he pulls out of the cobwebs whenever he needs a quick fix to a dull show. Again, he is met with blank eyes and a silent room. The cold feeling of sweat down his back hits him. He hasn't felt it in years.