It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (52 page)

Walter takes out the joint and lights up. He's doing some idle chat but I don't hear a word of it. I'm keeping an eye out for the FBI. He hands me the joint; my life is over, I'm a drug addict. I can hear every bad thing I've ever been told about drugs being flushed down the toilet. And yet, I could feel my independence from that insane, over bearing bitch I called Mom. I take the joint and have my first hit as the rain intensifies. The sound of it pinging on the roof remains with me to this day.  We pass the joint back and forth a few times... "Feel anything?" Walter queries. "NO?" I sputter because I didn't. I felt nothing. Walter shrugs and starts the car. We're going to a club in Harlem. We're driving uptown and I happen to open the glove box. It's a mess. I pull everything out and start rearranging the papers. "What are you doing?" Walter asks. "Cleaning your glove box." And he starts screaming... "HA! You're stoned." "No I'm not.... But I'M starving. Have you anything to eat?" "HA-HA! YOU'RE STONED!!"  He screams again.  I find a half eaten candy bar on the floor and devour it. Me, Mr. I won't eat unwashed fruit, I'm eating a six month old Snickers bar.

That was the first time I got stoned. It wasn't the last, however, I found a freedom in smoking grass that I had never felt before. I was funnier, I was brighter, I could talk to people, I thought I looked better... in retrospect, I was a mess but it was the 60's and everyone was smoking grass so I didn't feel THAT fucked up, just guilty.

IT PROGRESSED

Walter had introduced me to a world I had only read about. But, I was a fast learner. I got the bong, I got the rolling papers, and I had the roach clip.  I never bought grass, however. I was always too broke. Because, I had been fired from United Artists and was now working at Alexander's Department store waiting for my big break in show business.  There was this guy from Atlanta I worked with at Alexander's, can't remember his name. Ach!!. Must be the drugs. He was my main source for grass. I was living a block from the store so he would come over at lunch break and light up. I never did. I had rules.

Not during working hours.

Not when you had to drive.

Not when your family was coming over.

Always wipe the joint off before passing it.

I was the most uptight pothead of the 60's. If I had gone to Woodstock I would have insisted on having a reservation. Anyway, one night after work my Atlanta connection came over with a bag of grass. We smoked some and were planning on doing some more when the doorbell rang. "Who is it?" "Police!" It's 30 years and I can still feel my heart sinking into my shoes. I turned to my friend. "It's the Police!!" I ran to turn on the air conditioning. It would clean the air, however it was January and probably would look suspicious. I sprayed Lysol cause that doesn't look suspicious at all.   We tossed the roach clips and bong out the window. And in our final attempt to stay out of jail flushed 60 dollars worth of grass down the toilet. 60 dollars back then was like flushing the Hope Diamond.

I pulled myself together and buzzed the Police in. I lived on the 3rd floor and it took them a few minutes to get to my front door. Tap-tap. I open it. Standing there is Stanley from Men's Shoes. "You guys got any weed?"  It was like Reefer madness, we wanted to kill Stanley and almost did. However, he made it up to us with a nice baggie of something he got for his birthday. The world was good again.

I'M IN FULL SWING

So it doesn't take too long for me to start smoking on a regular basis. I guess all that pent up, repressed feelings of being controlled by an insane mother came flooding out. I was finally on my own, doing what I wanted to do and what I wanted to do was smoke grass whenever I wasn't being responsible. I was a weekend and evening smoker.

One weekend I'm at Larry Sobol's apartment in the Village. Larry had just gotten married to Francine who would later divorce him and marry, Corky, the drummer from MOUNTAIN. Remember them? I thought it was very strange since I had been seated next to Corky at Larry's wedding and felt a very strange vibe from him when he looked at Francine. But for now Larry and Francine were happy and married and living in a converted power station on Jane Street.

I was invited over for dinner and remember Larry having the best shit I had ever smoked. Ok, so Francine is going to broil a steak, she is in no better condition than I. She pops the steak in the oven and within five minutes there are flames shooting out everywhere.  The three of us are standing in front of the flaming oven. "I always wanted a fireplace." Larry says.  Larry and Francine are laughing. I'm thinking, "This is how Chicago burned." I take a pitcher of water and throw it at the steak. The flame shoots up around six feet. Larry kicks the tray off the stove with his foot and stomps it out. Francine says, "You want mashed potatoes or fries?"   We ate it off the floor.

SOMETIMES IT'S MAGICAL

I'm in Susan Hertzberg's apartment on the 16th floor. Susan and I went to College together. She wanted to be a singer and was trying to break into the music industry. She had gotten a job at one of the agencies, I think it was IFA and was introduced to Marsha Day who had this new group called Seals and Crofts.  Long story short, Susan leaves IFA and works with Marsha, she later becomes the manager of England Dan and John Ford Coley and Laura Branigan. (Rest her soul)

Any way... it's New Year's Eve and Susan is having a party. I walk over to her place and it's packed with people. The food was sparse but I remember it being a clear, crisp winter night in New York.  Susan's place had a balcony and at about 11:55 p.m. I snuck out there to welcome in the New Year. From this vantage point I could over look the entire city. I was leaning on the railing smoking a joint but I could hear the party inside. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and then the appropriate Happy New Year. I looked out onto the city and was so stoned I could actually "feel" the New Year coming in. I could almost touch New Years on that balcony and it's a moment in my life that I will never forget.  I remember feeling good, for the first time in my life. I had an apartment, I had a job, I had lots of friends and I was away from Boston and the insanity of my childhood.

Those were the feelings back then. The reality was I was a freight train heading for a brick wall.  I had no idea how much damage those drugs were doing and how it was to affect me later in my life. This was only the beginning. It got much worse when I moved to LA. By then I was suffering from massive insecurity and inferiority feelings and the worse I felt the more I medicated.  Only now I found a wife and she was to become more of the problem than the solution. She produced a son that I later learned I was not the father of.  Everything in my life up until now, everything that I had considered horrific was a piece of cake. The house of cards came tumbling down around me. It was a complete breakdown.

Damn, this shit sure is funny, huh? How did I get off on this tangent? I guess it's all part of the process... know where you've been so you can understand where you're going. And yet, maybe that's what makes me funny.  The pain. I use the funny as a defense against getting hurt; my quick wit is my best weapon. Fuck! We're getting to know the real me here. I don't know if I like this. My mind tells me if you, the readers, get to know the real me you won't like me. It's why I always keep you laughing.

DEEP BREATH

I've got to stop now. I need a meeting.

DECEMBER 10, 2006 -
THE FAMOUS MANAGER

When The Comedy Store first opened the comedy scene was not like it is today. Today, comedy clubs are part of the American society much like movie theaters and drive-ins. Back then they were a new entity. No one knew what they would become or how many careers they would give birth to. It was an adventure, an exciting adventure and I was there from almost day one.   In the very beginning a comedian would just go to the club with hopes of getting on stage. Sometimes you'd wait around for hours and not get your chance but there'd always be the promise of "tomorrow". You'd come back tomorrow and some big star would come in and another night passed with you not getting on stage, but there was always the next night. Eventually you would get on and that's how it went night after night, month after month, year after year. It wasn't until Mitzi Shore took over The Comedy Store that scheduled shows were established. She had a line-up of comedians so a customer would know who would be on at 9 p.m. and who wouldn't.  Comedians had to call into the club for time slots and then call back later to be told when their slots were or if they even got a slot. It was a hell way to get a career started but hopefuls, like myself, would flock to The Comedy Store like moths to the flame. It was the only game in town.

There weren't many comedians back then when I started.  I would say maybe there were 60. Today I'm sure there are upwards of 6000 comedians working at any given night across the country. Today if you have a suit and can string two words together, you can be a comedian. Back when I started it was a club of exclusive entertainers, mostly men, mostly white and surprisingly enough being Jewish was not an advantage. They'd seen that. They were looking for the next big ethnic group to become popular. So we had an Indian Comedian, Charlie Hill, one from Russia Yakov Smirnoff, one from Bangladesh and so on and so on.  Back then you felt special being a comedian. It was an exclusive club you belonged to, one that not everyone was invited to be a member of.  Today everyone is a comedian. Case in point, I was having a colonoscopy. I'm on the table and the doctor says to me, "So what do you do?"  "I'm a comedian.", is my reply. "Really? So is my nurse."  To which I said, "No, I'm a professional comedian... that's all I do. I don't spend my days helping you look up people's asses."

In any case, those 60 comedians were a tight knit group in the beginning. We hung out together, we played together, we fought, we loved, we were a family.  The only people who did not get along were Budd Friedman, owner of the Improv and Mitzi Shore, owner of The Comedy Store, and here's why. There was always this feud between them as to who opened the first comedy club. Budd says he did and so did Mitzi but I will set the record straight right here and now... they both did.

Budd Friedman had the first club. There is no doubt about it. I went to the Improv in 1969 to see The Ace Trucking Company with Fred Willard. It was a small club with an outer bar where the acts hung out and then a small show room right next to it.  The building was a typical New York building and as many of those buildings did in those days, it had an exposed brick wall where the stage was. And that is why today in most comedy clubs a brick wall is used as the background to the stage.   So Budd had the first club but here's where it gets sticky. Budd not only had comedians but he also had singers, piano players, entertainers. His club was in the theater district and so when the shows broke many of the kids from the shows would come to perform at The Improv. Yes, Budd had the first club but it wasn't an exclusive comedy club... it was a club that did have comedians though. 

Now in 1971 or 1972 Sammy Shore decided to open a club on the Sunset Strip for only comedians. There was a popular club at the time called The Candy Store and so Sammy named his club The Comedy Store.  The difference between Sammy's club and Budd's club was Sammy's was exclusively comedy. Why? Sammy was a comedian and he needed a place where he could showcase his act. The irony being that The Comedy Store must have started at least 100 careers to stardom... not one was Sammy's. Just a footnote, in the very beginning, maybe once in a great while, a singer would get up but 98% of the time it was all comedy and that was the difference between Sammy’s club and Budd's. The purpose of Sammy's club was comedy, the purpose of Budd's was entertainment... until the comedy thing took off and there was so much money to be made. THEN, The Improv became exclusively comedy. Interesting, no?

When Sammy and Mitzi Shore (Parents of Pauly Shore) were getting a divorce The Comedy Store was dying. Sammy was not a great businessman and the club had been run into the ground. There were no audiences anymore and interest from the show-business crowd was waning. Mitzi got the club as part of the divorce settlement. She wanted it; Sammy did not. Now Mitzi has a reputation of being a little eccentric, which she might be, but she is a marketing genius. She took that dying club and gave it a look. The first thing she did was paint the club black. Then she created those turn of the century lettering that are so famous today. She had matches made with The Comedy Store logo on them so people would take them and talk about their night out. She changed the ways the shows were produced too. She scheduled them so they had a beginning middle and end. She nurtured the comedians and created what is today an industry... The Comedy Club.  Oh by the way, she did it by not paying the comedians. She considered her club a school where people were learning to be comedians. That all changed with the comedian strike, which I was the PR person for, but we'll talk about that another time. There's someone I wanted to talk about now.

So now you know the history of the comedy club scene in the 70's. It was a very exciting time back then. Every night another star would walk in, every night a new guy would get on stage and there would be a buzz about him, every night it was something new and different.  One of those new guys was Franklin Ajaye. From the moment he got on stage he was special. He was intellectual, fresh, smart, good... he shone from the pack. He was immediately signed by a manager, an African American man named...well, I'll tell you later. But I remember this manager well. He was slight of build, always had a smile on his face and was a smart businessman. I had trouble talking to many of the managers, they scared me...still do. I never had trouble talking with this guy. Why? He never looked down on anyone; he always was open and encouraging.