I'm Not Gonna Lie (13 page)

Storage units.

Nobody had ever heard of this before.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

“Very simple,” RJ said. “There's this building just off the freeway, which he got cheap. He divided the building into small units, like closets, all different sizes. The idea is, you take everything out of your garage or your basement, all your crap, and you put it into one of these storage units.”

“Into these closets by the freeway?”

“That's right.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, yeah, and then what?”

“Then you get a key, so anytime you want to go over there and see your crap, you just go, open it up, and take a look.”

“You drive over and open up your ‘storage unit' so you can look at your crap?”

“Exactly.”

“I'm not following this. What happens to all the crap in your garage?”

“It's not there anymore. You took it out. You put it in your storage unit.”

“Which, I'm guessing, you paid for.”

“Right.”

“So, you've taken all your crap out of your garage and put it into a different place, and you've written a check—”

“Every month.”

“Oh. You write a check every
month
.”

“It's not that much. You pay, like, sixty bucks.”

“Okay. And for sixty bucks a month, every month for as long as you live, you drive far from your house so you can visit your crap anytime you want.”

“Now you got it.”

I nodded. “I have one question: Who is gonna do that? Who would want to drive somewhere else, near the goddamn freeway—for money—to see the stuff that you could've walked five feet to see in your garage for
free
?”

RJ paused. “It does sound messed-up.”

“It
is
messed-up.”

“The guy is gonna lose his shirt.”

“He's an imbecile.”

“He's an idiot,” RJ said. “I wouldn't give him any money. I wouldn't give him a dime.”

“Please.”

We laughed like hell. Of course, I didn't invest any money in what turned out to be one of the biggest moneymaking ideas of the decade.

Then one day, in the early nineties, RJ rolled into my driveway behind the wheel of a brand-new Mercedes convertible. I ran my palm over the hood and sat down in the passenger seat. The ultrasoft leather squished expensively.

“Man, this is nice. Smells rich.”

“You like it?”

“It's beautiful. How much you put down for this?”

“Nothing,” RJ said. “I paid cash.”

“You what? How can you afford that?”

“An investment I made a few years ago paid off. Did I ever tell you about it? Storage units. It's a dumb idea when you think about it—you know, putting your crap in a different place than your own garage and paying a monthly fee—but, hey, people are stupid. It's like printing money.”

I don't blame RJ. It was my own fault. I couldn't pull the trigger. I get that way sometimes when it comes to taking risks. That's probably why I won't have my body frozen. Too risky. I want to know what to expect when I thaw out. I need someone else to go first. I want a guy I know to come back and tell me how great it is before I commit. I wouldn't trust Simon Cowell. He'd be too critical. And I'm pretty sure Larry King died a few years ago.

I'm also afraid they'll mix me up with somebody else. I've checked the Internet. There are a lot of people with my name. Plus, it's happened to me before.

More than thirty years ago, when I was around twenty, I went on a bender one night and stupidly ended up getting a DUI. I landed in jail overnight. I'll never forget it: It was a Sunday night, and when I slept it off, I woke up Monday morning in a smelly, scary jail cell feeling horrible and embarrassed and disgusted with myself. I woke up lying on a metal bench. Every bone in my body ached. I forced myself to a sitting position and came eye-to-eye with a big dude, a heavyset Latino guy with huge blond hair flying all over, as if Gorgeous George had stuck his finger into a wall socket. He wore black eye makeup that had turned into blotches and spread all over his face, and he had bright orange lipstick smeared kind of near his mouth. I looked down and saw he had bare feet, and he had painted his toes orange to match his lipstick. He crossed his legs and wagged his knee, and I thought, “As if this could get any worse.”

He smiled at me. I smiled back, and I thought, “I really hope this tranny doesn't kill me.”

A few minutes later, a cop came over to our cell. He looked down at a clipboard in his hand, squinted, and said, “Lopez?”

The heavyset dude with the big blond hair and the orange toes and I stood up at the same time. What were the odds? We were both named Lopez. We approached the cop.

“No,” the cop said to me. “
Mrs.
Lopez.”

The tranny winked at me.

My luck. If I agreed to do cryogenics, they would freeze the wrong Lopez. They'd take Tranny Lopez.

So, I've made my decision.

When I die, I do not want to be frozen.

Mainly because I'm not afraid of dying.

I came to peace with death by surviving kidney disease, turning fifty, and from my friend, golfing great Lee Trevino.

Lee didn't just look death in the face; he literally
died
and came back to life.

June 1975.

Lee and two other golfers walked onto a long par three at the Western Open at Butler National Golf Course in Oak Brook, Illinois, outside Chicago. Ominous silvery clouds had shadowed them all match. The clouds suddenly darkened, faded to pitch-black, and the winds kicked up. A crash of thunder jolted them and then the rains came. Some golfers, including Jack Nicklaus, scrambled off the fairway, sought shelter in the clubhouse and huts just off the course. Not Lee. He shrugged off the rain that pelted his shirt. He stood on the tee and squinted through the rain at the green a couple hundred yards away. The rain started coming down in sheets, slamming into the pond at the edge of the tee, not far from where Super Mex stood.

Lee bent over and stuck his ball and tee into the ground, stood up, and measured the distance from the tee to the green by extending his arm straight at the flag. He then pulled a one iron out of his bag, a tough club to hit, an unusual choice for this shot. But given the rain and wind, Lee knew that the one iron was the right choice, maybe even an inspired one. Few people struck a golf ball with the precision of Lee Trevino, and nobody hit with more swagger or more style. Lee took a practice swing and wiggled his shoulders as the rain slapped at his shirt and dribbled off the brim of his cap. He picked up his right foot and knocked off a clump of wet grass caught in his metal spikes.

Lee stepped up to his ball, swung, and smacked his drive through the pelting rain, now a torrent, jabbing the pond like a million needles. He locked his eyes on the flight of the ball, the one iron held straight up in perfect follow-through, aimed like a conqueror's sword. The ball arched toward the green, plopped onto the fringe, and rolled toward the cup, stopping a birdie length away. Thunder clapped. A flash of lightning zigzagged in front of him and spiderwebbed the pond.

Lee slowly lowered the one iron.

The lightning jumped the water and hopped across the grass, pulled by the attraction of a lightning rod. . . .

Lee's metal spikes.

Broosh!

The lightning smoked him, wrapping him in a cloak of fire and light.

Then the smell of something burning engulfed him, drifted into the air.

It smelled like someone was having a cookout, making carne asada.

And then far away, he heard the sound of footsteps squishing into the wet ground, followed by voices and screaming.

“Lee!”

He lay naked on the ground. The lightning had burned off his clothes. Towels flew through the rain, finding him, covering him.

More screaming, running, panic.

“I heard everything,” Lee told me. “I didn't know the lightning burned off my clothes, but I heard all the commotion and then I heard somebody say, ‘He's dead.'”

“You heard that?” I said.

“Yes. And then I felt myself being lifted. I started going up, up into the air above the golf course. Floating. Hovering. I was above the whole thing. Then I looked down and I saw myself. That's when I realized I was dead.”

“Unbelievable. You actually died.”

“Yes. And then I saw that light. It was exactly what people talk about. But it's warm. Soothing. It
bathes
you. You feel very warm and comfortable and calm. Then I saw my mother. And I saw my grandmother. I saw my whole family, everybody who died. Then all of a sudden I heard a voice coming from far away, like from down a hallway.
‘Lee, Lee.'
The voice got stronger and stronger, and I saw my family standing there and I wanted to go to them. I tried to go to them, but the voice calling my name got louder and I turned toward it and the faces of my family got dimmer and then they all faded out.”

“What about the light?”

“It went out. It sort of clicked off. And then I woke up and I was on the ground, people all around me. Then I realized I was alive, but I had died. My back hurt like hell, and I was thankful to be alive, and from now on I'll think twice about hitting a one iron.”

He paused.

“But, you know, when it's time for me to go, I'm not afraid anymore, because I already know what it's like. I've been there. I know it's not horrible.”

So, thanks to Lee Trevino, I'm not afraid of dying. And after Lee told me about seeing that light, I heard it from other people, too. A guitar player who played in the band on my show had the same experience. He had a terrible accident; he died, saw the light, and came back.

When you hit fifty, you do think about the end. It all feels as if it's coming at you a little too fast. Maybe that's because it is. There are more days behind you than ahead of you. It's that simple. But when the end comes, I'm ready. Or as ready anybody can be.

I hope I'm not hit by lightning, though. I don't want to be smoked and barbecued. Especially in public. I'm gonna try to stay out of storms. I'm sure as hell not running to lightning. It's bad enough that I have to see myself with no clothes on.

AND
now a word about the executive at TBS who canceled my talk show,
Lopez Tonight,
less than two years after it began, and gave me, my staff, my crew, and my band thirty-six hours to get out of the building.

Fuck that
puto.

I know. That's not right.

That's three words.

Do I seem bitter?

I'm not.

I gave up being bitter, angry, vengeful, and feeling stabbed in the back when I turned fifty.

I still might feel a little pissed off. . . .

Hey, at least I'm not lying.

In 2004, a dear friend, Jim Paratore, a top television executive, asked if he could meet with me.

“You ever consider doing a talk show?” Jim asked me.

“Thanks, Jim, but I got a job,” I said. At the time, I was working day and night on
The George Lopez Show,
which was still going strong on ABC. I also had kidney disease and was fighting for my life. I felt kind of overextended.

“Your sitcom won't run forever,” Jim said. “Think about it.”

“I will.”

Two years later, we shot our one hundredth
George Lopez Show
episode. By the end of that season, the sitcom's run on the network came to an end. Jim didn't waste much time. He called me a few weeks later and again pitched me a late-night talk show.

Jim was passionate and convincing. The more he sold me, the more he won me over. I started to embrace the idea. “If I do a late-night show, I want to use
Arsenio
as a template,” I said. “I want to do a show that you can't see on TV right now. I want the show to be diverse and inclusive and edgy.”

“So do we,” Jim said.

“I want the show to be a reflection of me,” I said.

“Us, too,” Jim said.

With Jim as our champion, we put together a top-notch staff and crew and added the unbelievable Michael Bearden to lead our kick-ass band. Sadly, Jim recently passed away. I'll always be grateful for his support. He was one of the truly good guys.

Lopez Tonight
debuted November 9, 2009. My first guests were Eva Longoria, Ellen DeGeneres, and my friends Carlos Santana and Kobe Bryant. That night our ratings blew the roof off. We beat everybody—Leno, Letterman, Kimmel, Conan, and Jon Stewart. We beat 'em all.

Of course, we couldn't keep it up. We strove to keep the show honest and fun and diverse as we struggled to maintain solid ratings. Creatively, we wrote sketches and introduced segments that definitely went outside the box. Way outside, like the popular “Creepy Little White Girl,” featuring a little kid holding a headless doll and singing “Ring Around the Rosie” before she gave me terrible news. Some sketches worked, some didn't, but we kept trying to push the envelope. All new shows suffer growing pains, and we experienced our share. We adjusted. We brought in a new executive producer who had worked with David Letterman. We knew that in order for us to succeed, everyone had to commit to the long term. Talk shows are a grind, and most experts agree that it takes at least three years to find your groove. Some say you need a minimum of five years.

I never worked harder. Some nights after doing the show I would walk into my house, have a few bites of dinner, and literally collapse. I loved the show, loved the people I worked with, felt proud of what we were doing. But sometimes I wondered if this grueling schedule was worth it. I would ask myself, “Am I doing the right thing? Is this what I should be doing, spending my career talking about other people's careers?”

Every so often something would happen that would energize me and validate all our hard work. That first year our bookers scored a major showbiz coup. They booked Prince, who never does talk shows and rarely does TV. When he sat down next to me on the set and the audience frenzy died down, I said to him, “I have one question. Why? Why choose me?”

Prince said, “I find this show represents all people. I see all kinds of guests on here.” The audience erupted in applause, and while the cheering nearly drowned him out, he added, “I'm on this show because you're kind to everyone.”

That moment gave me chills. Prince made me feel that we were offering viewers a real alternative, and that on this night, at least, we were doing something special.

By then, TBS had assigned a new executive to our show, a guy I'll call Mel after Mel Cooley from the old
Dick Van Dyke
Show
. I thought I'd start hearing from Mel pretty regularly after the show with Prince, because with that show I felt we'd turned a corner.

No.

Didn't hear from him.

Silence.

Then, in early 2010, the late-night talk-show world exploded.

NBC's experiment of moving Jay Leno to ten o'clock, five nights a week, while handing over
The Tonight Show
to Conan O'Brien, had turned into a ratings disaster. Basically, America—yes, the entire country—decided not to watch either of them. Trying to correct this mistake, NBC handed
The Tonight Show
back to Leno and bought out Conan—for $40 million. TBS immediately swarmed in and went after Conan to do a late-night show. I pictured Mel in intense closed-door meetings selling Conan, as if Mel were a used-car salesman. What I didn't expect was the closed-door meeting Mel had with me.

“I have a chance to get Conan,” he said. “It's a track meet, and we have to beat somebody else to the finish line. We're gonna win. We want Conan bad.”

“Great, okay, good luck with it,” I said. “And what does this have to do with me?”

“We want you to slide to midnight,” Mel said. “We're going to put Conan on at eleven.”

“My time slot.”

“Yes. But it's all good. We'll promote you as a block, you and Conan together. The new faces of late night. It's win-win.”

“When would this happen?”

“November.”

“November,” I repeated. “Our show will be less than a year old.”

“Correct,” Mel said. “So what do you think?”

Even though I hesitated for probably less than five seconds, I felt that time had stopped. I thought, “Should I do this? Should I slide over? Do I really need this? Should I say no? But you know what? You're a team player. It's the nice thing to do. It's the right thing to do. Yes. You should do it.”

“I'll do it,” I said to Mel.

I never should've done it.

I know the old saying that hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I believe moving
Lopez Tonight
to midnight did us in. But I tried to please everybody. I wanted to be Mr. Nice Guy, the good soldier, the team player.

I should've listened to what my idol, Bill Cosby, said years ago. I look up to him more than anybody. Cos said, “I can't tell you the formula for success. But I can tell you that the formula for failure is trying to make everybody happy.”

That was my problem. I tried to make everybody happy.

It turned out that I didn't make anybody happy, including me.

After TBS announced that they signed Conan for a billion dollars, or whatever they gave him on top of his $40 million buyout from NBC, I brought on Chris Rock as a guest. We caught up with each other on the air for a minute or so, and then I said, “You heard that Conan's coming to TBS?”

Chris said, “Conan's coming?”

“Yes.”

“Where you going?”

“I'm staying,” I said. “I'm going to midnight. He's coming on at eleven o'clock.”

“Get the hell outta here.”

“It's true.”

“So you gonna move for the white man, huh? I hope he appreciates that.”

“I think he does,” I said quietly.

“And you don't have to clean or park nothing?”

“No,” I said. “And here's the best part: I get to go to work an hour later. It's a Latino's dream, man.”

The studio audience roared and Chris cracked up and I felt pretty good. At that moment, I was convinced that Conan and I would form an edgy, fresh, powerful two-hour block of late-night entertainment that the network would nurture and promote the hell out of.

I was wrong.

I drank the Kool-Aid.

TBS did promote the hell out of Conan. They just lost sight of me. Or they lost faith in the show. Or they thought that we had too much “flavor” for the time slot. Or the “flavor” of our show caused the Conan audience to drop off. Or—

I really don't know.

I do know that TBS canceled
Lopez Tonight
less than two years after we started.

When the media reported the show was canceled, the Reverend Jesse Jackson himself stepped in and tried to save it. He called Mel at TBS directly, and said television needed more diversity, and without us there would be a void. But TBS shot him down, too.

Mel never broke the news to me directly. He never called me. He told my agents the news. I got an e-mail. Mel also informed us that we had thirty-six hours to vacate the building. All of a sudden he became the Creepy Little White Girl.

Man, talk about night and day.

Conan got $40 million to leave NBC and I got thirty-six hours to get out of town.

I took the high road. I wanted our last show to be a party, and it was. I invited a few friends, Slash, and some other rockers, and I booked Derek Fisher and Metta World Peace (then Ron Artest) from my beloved Los Angeles Lakers, and Eva Longoria, who appeared on my first show. In the monologue I joked about being unemployed.

“Now that I lost my job, people want to know what I'm gonna do next. Well, like every other unemployed TV star, I'm gonna find me some crack. Yes. I'm going on the pipe. I'm gonna lose that unwanted hundred and ten pounds.”

Everybody laughed and applauded, and at the end of the show the band played “Rock and Roll All Nite,” and everybody stood up and danced.

We had a party, man.

It's all good.

But late night lost a little flavor.