Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of my performance?
I recently spotted my teenage self on the Showtime Comedy Store documentary series. Episode 3 included a short clip from the news show 20/20 that was shot on the night I auditioned for the owner of the legendary club. I was on screen for roughly five seconds which is exactly the right length of time to represent my career at the Store, but it brought back a flood of memories. Growing up as a comedy fan during the ’70s, the club vibrated with a mystical and magical aura. Auditioning felt like a dream come true but recalling the events of that day was complicated.
It was Sunday, August 31, 1986 just before noon, I was at my parents’ house in Cerritos, California. I was 19-years old; Ronald Reagan was President, and the U.S. was in a nuclear arms race with the U.S.S.R. I was washing my hands in the bathroom sink, thinking about my audition that night for Mitzi Shore when I suddenly heard the high-pitched scream of a jet engine and the sound of an explosion. My first thought was that it was a nuclear attack. Seconds later there was an enormous explosion that violently shook the house and I felt certain it was the start of WW III. I leapt into the bathtub, rolled myself into a ball, and waited for the blast wave to destroy the house. When it didn’t, I ran outside to find my neighbor standing in the middle of our street, shaking, and holding her hands over her mouth.
I asked what happened, but she couldn’t speak. She pointed to the end of the block. Plumes of thick black smoke and flames were rising above the rows of uniform single-family homes. A small prop plane had lost its engine and was whirling toward the ground. I ran down the street to see what had happened — to see if I could help. I arrived at the same time as the first police. There was wreckage from a DC-9 Areoméxico airliner scattered over hundreds of yards down Carmenita Road. Smoke and jet fuel stung my eyes, hindered my breathing, and clung to my clothes and skin. Everything in the crash zone was either charred or still on fire. The stucco houses with wood thatched roofs across the road had been destroyed by the crash or were going up in flames one-by-one like dominoes falling down the block.
Directly in front of me, and two houses down from the nearest fire, a man stood atop his roof spraying it with a garden hose. As the home next to his took flame, a cop pleaded with him to get down. His house was saturated in fuel and had no chance of surviving. The man came to the edge of his roof and put his foot on the ladder when a jackass in a little Datsun did a brake-slide in the middle of the road and jumped out with his home video camera. The cop left the homeowner to tell the amateur videographer he needed to move his car to make room for emergency vehicles. When the cop turned, the man with the garden hose climbed back on his roof and was recorded being consumed by flames. It is the most horrific thing I have ever seen in real life.
The guy with the camera argued with the cop about “his rights,” before begrudgingly going back to his car. I told him he was responsible for having killed that man. He told me to fuck off and drove to the other end of the block. Everything on the street had been charred the same shade of black making it hard to distinguish one thing from another. As the Datsun drove off, I realized what I thought was scattered luggage strewn amid the wreckage was not shoes and pant legs, but bits and pieces of human remains. I asked the cop what I could do to help. “Go home,” he said. “Nobody should have to see this.”
I compartmentalized what I had seen, shoved it in a box, and went home to prepare for that night’s audition with Mitzi. In retrospect, I understand why others would have made a different decision, but in 1986 I never even considered an alternative. I had a chance to be part of the Comedy Store where so many of my childhood idols had perfected their acts. Mitzi agreed to let me audition to be a doorman, which was like getting drafted into Major League Baseball and being assigned to the Triple A team. It made you a top prospect. Just getting the audition was an accomplishment. Mitzi was known for being temperamental and I didn’t want to cancel and possibly squander my opportunity.
I arrived at the club several hours early as I always did. It was good to get a feel for the audience. I watched the guys in the Original Room for a bit. I remember doorman Don Barris being there; but that might just be because he was always there. I think Louie Anderson, Sam Kinison, and Dice Clay were all there that night too. A guy I didn’t know told a joke about the plane crash, which brought groans. “Too soon?” he joked, “Okay, I’ll try it again next week.” It felt like a gut punch and I left the room.
Then it was time for my audition. As the 20/20 cameras followed Mitzi around, so too did Arsenio Hall and some other comics who I mostly can’t remember. My audition was in the Belly Room, which is the smallest of the club’s three rooms. If I passed the audition, I would be able to perform on that stage anytime and I would be eligible for spots in the Original Room. Then, if I got really good — the ultimate next step was the Main Room, where the nation’s top acts performed. I was a long way from that.
Roseanne Barr was with Mitzi. I loved her stand-up. This was before her sitcom but she was already a huge comic. She’s become many things since, but she was always very nice to me and very supportive. She reassured me before my audition that I was funny, “just go be funny, everyone fucking loves you,” she said. “You’re like Bambi. Nobody hates Bambi.”
Pauly Shore, Mitzi’s son, who was not yet “The Weasel,” introduced me. There were more people on the TV crew and sitting at the bar as part of Mitzi’s entourage than were in the audience. Pauly’s set didn’t go well. He got angry, berated the crowd and then brought me on by saying, something like, I don’t know why this fucking guy is even auditioning. I don’t know his name and it doesn’t matter.
Auditions were three minutes and I dedicated one of them to making fun of the owner’s son. This made Roseanne’s trademark laugh echo through the room and helped bring the crowd over to my side. I had a pretty good set, but I wasn’t sure if it was good enough. I talked with Arsenio after and he warned me of something I’d heard 100 times since getting the audition. Don’t ever talk with Mitzi after your set. Just wait and call her at the assigned time. But Roseanne said, “you were funny, just ask her!” Arsenio shook his head no in an exaggerated way, mouthed the words, “don’t do it,” as a last warning.
Ultimately, I decided to listen to Arsenio and went out to the patio to see if any of my friends were hanging out. There were no comics, which often meant someone big was performing, so I turned to go back inside. Mitzi was walking toward me. I imagined, this must be fate, and asked her what she thought of my set. The 20/20 producer was frantically waving to crew. Mitzi waited for the camera to frame the shot. I thought here comes my star-is-born moment and she said, “You’re not ready for the Store, yet.” The cameraman shouted that he got Mitzi’s rejection just as the film ran out, and the crew let out a cheer, which I pretended to ignore.
After the camera stopped rolling, Mitzi said, “you were funny, but you’re not ready for the Main Room. You can perform in the Belly Room anytime.” I told her that I was auditioning for the Belly Room. “I know,” she admitted with a smile, “but that wouldn’t have been good TV,” she hugged me and told me to call her for spots. If you’re looking for the clip in the documentary it comes just after Don Barris says, “she was heartless to some people, just heartless—”
I performed comedy for another four years, but I never went back to the Comedy Store. There was sort of two tracks of comics at that time, with some crossover, but you either aspired to work at the Improvs or the Comedy Store. My friends convinced me that I should focus on the Improvs. That era at the Store was a little dark but it was still a magical place. I started working at the Irvine and San Diego Improvs, and for the founder of the Store, Sammy Shore, who had rooms in Marina Del Ray. I loved Sammy.
Why I left stand-up is story for another day, but I’ve always thought of it as more than an art form. In some ways it feels more like a cultural or religious tradition. You can leave it, but it never completely leaves you — I’m a lapsed comic. That feeling may stem from the fact that I was 18 when I began; it’s like my formative college years wrapped in a gilded age of comedy. It immersed me in a set of beliefs, a way of thinking about the world, language, time, conventions, work ethic, sacrifice, and my place in the world. The things I learned during those years have been instrumental in every phase of my life.
I sometimes miss performing, but the thing I miss most is being around other comics. I often feel like an interloper in my own life, but around comics I felt completely at home. At this point I might be slipping from nostalgia into psychosis, but I feel confident that all the people I admired in those days would have made the same decision about performing that night. The world is always filled with horror, injustice, and brutality, but there’s a healing power in laughter that helps us cope, but there’s also tremendous healing power in making people laugh. It’s hard to know which side of that coin was driving me that night. Maybe both.
