I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (6 page)

Not long after we made our deal with the three stations, Ed contracted pneumonia and we didn’t record for two weeks. By the time he recovered, we had one night to record ten routines and have the packages postmarked by midnight. Otherwise we would be in violation of our contract.

To prepare, I had sketched out a few notes, but they were hardly radio-ready scripts. Ed and I met at the Leo Burnett offices in the early evening. Basically, Ed asked me what I wanted to be, and I said, “a card-section coach being interviewed on ‘Your Sports Corner.’ ”

Then we’d improvise:

Ed: “I guess most football fans are familiar with the card section. These are made up of students who hold cards and manipulate them to form designs. You’ve probably seen them at football games all over the country. Tonight we have with us the coach of the Midland College card section. His name, of course, is Denut Crown. He’s one of the best card-section coaches in the country. Coach Crown, it’s good to have you on the show.”

Coach: “Hi, Ed. It’s nice to be on your show.”

Ed: “At Midland, probably your most famous portrait, your famous maneuver with your card section is this portrait of Lincoln that you do.”

Coach: “That seems to go over the best.”

Ed: “You consider that your greatest?”

Coach: “Yes, I would say, at least from the fans’ viewpoint. They seem to enjoy that the most.”

Ed: “How do you look this coming year?”

Coach: “Well, Ed, we’re kind of in the dog days in Midland. We’ve had, as you know, five national champions. This year, we’ve lost both of Lincoln’s eyebrows to graduation, and in February, we are going to lose his left ear.”

Ed: “Gee, that’s a shame. That’s probably going to raise havoc with your team.”

Coach: “It really is, but we think that within two or three years we’re gonna have another fine card-section team.”

Ed: “Speaking of a fine card-section team and about all American mention time … who would you say are the greats of your former card section?”

Coach: “Ah, gee, Ed, I don’t know. We’ve had so many good boys. Of course, whenever you think of card sections, you think of names like Up-Fingers Doolan, Lightnin’ Larry Strickland, Terrible Tommy Wolf, and, of course, the greatest lefty of them all, Lefty Lawrence.”

Ed: “Lefty Lawrence? … Well, if I had to name an all-American card section, I think I would want all of those boys on my team and, most especially, Lefty Lawrence. Now, tell me, what made Lefty great?”

Coach: “Well, Ed, maybe I can give you an example of just what Lefty’s greatness consisted of. It was in 1947. We had a wonderful card section. …”

Ed: “I remember that one …”

Coach: “It wasn’t as good as ’28, I don’t think …”

Ed: “Well, you won the award in ’47 and ’28.”

Coach: “We did, but I think the ’28 team was pretty good.”

Ed: “Anyway, Lefty Lawrence was part of that ’47 team.”

Coach: “We had a little problem. Of course, Lefty … his best position was in the eyebrows. Everyone knew that. He was probably the best. …”

Ed: “He was pretty much an eyebrow man. …”

Coach: “He was one of the best eyebrow men in the game for all time, I would say. I had to take him out of the eyebrow and throw him into the beard because we had a depth problem there. We needed a man—”

Ed: “In the beard? How did he take that switch?”

Coach: “He adjusted right away. That’s the amazing thing. And then later in the year, just to prove his greatness even further, I had to shove him into Lincoln’s nose and he had no problem at all adjusting there. I think that’s the sign of a truly great card-section man.”

Ed: “Well, I think you are being overly modest there. I think we can attribute most of the credit to you. Coach Denut Crown of Midland College.”

Next, Ed and I rooted through the agency’s soundeffects records used for television commercials. We found a nice recording of a train crash. Using the train crash as the blowoff, or sound effect, we worked backward and wrote a routine. The entire story led up to this climactic sound effect, such as Ed playing his typical straight-man interviewer and me as Gasper Hollingsferry, the head train-switcher and dispatcher at the Central Shipping Yard.

It went a little bit like this:

Ed: “Say, I’ve noticed that there’s a tremendous amount of buttons and panels, and, of course, as I look out here through these windows and into the yard, I see these miles and miles of track crisscrossing each other, how do you keep track of all of them, Mr. Hollingsferry?”

Bob: “Well, it’s mostly about trial and error. It took me about four weeks to learn. After the first week, you find you make quite a few mistakes. Then the second week it’s less, and the third week it’s less, and by the end of the fourth week, you got the yards down pretty well.”

Ed: “It seems to me an awfully dangerous way to go about teaching a switchman his business. You don’t have any supervisors? You don’t have any textbooks?”

Bob: “Well, we tried textbooks. We used both methods. It’s sort of expensive, but when you see the cars strewn all over the yard like that, it makes quite an impression and you very seldom will switch them onto that track again. We find it’s the best method.”

Ed: “That certainly is interesting.”

Bob: (Aside to Ed’s crew) “Uh, I thought I told you guys you’re gonna have to keep your wires and cords off the tracks. We’ve got trains coming through here daily—”

Ed: “Well, speaking of trains, sir, I’m sorry to interrupt, but down here on the main track it looks to me as if those two trains are going to crash.”

Bob: “Yeah. … Those two’ll crash.”

Ed: “You say those two are going to crash. Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

Bob: “No, I never got a D-07 on those trains.”

Ed: “A D-07, sir?”

Bob: “That’s a form we have whenever they find a mistake and we switch a train onto the wrong track, as these two obviously are. We’re supposed to get a D-07. I can’t touch these levers until I get a D-07.”

Ed: “Well, sir, you mean to say that you’ll sit here without using the handbrake to stop these two trains from crashing?”

Bob: “It’s not my fault. It’s somebody in the main office.”

Ed: “I fully realize that, sir. … So you mean to say you are going to sit here and do absolutely nothing?”

Bob: “If we were to do away with a D-07, as you’re obviously suggesting, we’d have nothing but plain chaos. …”

(A loud
crash
is heard.)

Ed: “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Hollingsferry. We now take you back to your announcer.”

And the routine fades out to the sound of flames crackling and chaos.

With that, I dashed to the post office with the tapes.

Soon we discovered that we hadn’t costed things out very well. Worse still, we didn’t immediately realize this because we didn’t bill until after thirteen weeks.

On paper, we were earning $22.50 a week from three radio stations, but we were spending forty. That left us with a loss of nearly $18 a week. Then one of the radio stations refused to pay, so it turned out we were only collecting $15 a week, leaving us $25 a week in the red. After thirteen weeks, we had lost $325 on the venture, and our comedy enterprise collapsed in financial ruin.

When the other two stations asked to renew our contracts, we wrote back and told them that we couldn’t afford it. You don’t have to be an accountant to figure that out.

CHAPTER FOUR

Part-time Jobs
That Sustained Me

Still, I didn’t intend to be a stand-up comedian. I just wanted to see if I could somehow make a living at being funny. I had to find out if what people had been telling me up to that point in my life was true—that I was funny. I had to leave the world of accounting and see if I could earn a living at being funny. That was the drive. I had to find out. I couldn’t live my entire life not knowing. Even if I flopped, at least I would have known that I tried comedy, I couldn’t make a living at it, and I was only funny to my friends.

My partnership with Ed had been on hold ever since we figured out how much money we were losing. It officially ended when he was offered a position at the BBDO ad agency in New York. Ed had a wife and two sons to support, so he accepted the job. His feeling was that we had fun, we didn’t make any money, and it was something that we could always be proud of doing. But the bottom line was that he had to provide for his family.

Unlike Ed, I had no obligation to anybody except myself. I was single and living at home, so I decided to take part-time jobs to tide me over financially until I was able to somehow make a living at being funny. I admit it wasn’t a foolproof career plan, and it was one I often questioned.

I always liked the Christmas season because part-time jobs were plentiful. Stores like Goldblatts and V, L & A, a subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch, were always hiring part-timers.

One year when I was working at V, L & A in the cigar, cigarette, and pipe department, a salesman from the camera department asked if I would watch his station so he could go to lunch. A customer came in and began looking around. I knew nothing about cameras, but I asked the gentleman if he needed help.

“There is one thing,” the man said in a Connecticut malocclusion. “I cannot find good batteries. I travel to Africa and the humidity saps the energy from my camera batteries. For the life of me, I haven’t been able to find batteries that last a fortnight in Africa.”

I thought to myself, well, I think I’ve got problems. I’m moping around because I don’t have a regular job, the radio show isn’t working, my friends are getting married, buying houses, and starting families, and I’m not going anywhere in life. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and put myself in this guy’s shoes. This poor bastard can’t find batteries that work in Africa.

My biggest and most harrowing sale at V, L & A happened one afternoon when a very dapper gentleman came into the store and placed a large order for crystal plunger ashtrays shaped like roulette wheels with accompanying lighters. I rang up his purchase, and the bill came to $3,000.

I asked the customer, whom I didn’t immediately recognize, if he would like these gift-wrapped and sent, and he said that he would.

“Could you give me your name, please?”

“It’s Anthony.”

“And your last name, please?”

“It’s Accardo. Anthony Accardo.”

If life all comes down to a few moments, then this was one of them. Anyone who grew up in Chicago, particularly on the West Side, was familiar with this name: Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo was, for forty years, the reputed head of the Chicago mob, which was affectionately known as “the outfit.” Accardo had gotten his start as a bodyguard and “special enforcer” to Al Capone. There was no way I could screw this order up.

I carefully wrote down Mr. Accardo’s address in River Forest, a tony suburb. Then I felt it was incumbent upon me for his full customer satisfaction, as well as for my own personal safety, to explain to him the ordering and shipping process.

“Mr. Accardo,” I said, “I’m going to take your presents, and I am going to put them over there.” I pointed across the room to a table piled high with gift boxes. “The shipping department will pick them up from over there.” Again I pointed across the room, away from my workstation. “So if any of them should arrive damaged in any way, that would be the responsibility of the shipping department. Being over here in sales, I would have nothing to do with that.”

The reason I accepted only part-time jobs was because I didn’t want to give the impression to a company that I had any intention of staying on. I felt it was only fair to inform them that I would be there only on a temporary basis and they, in turn, would acknowledge that they only needed me for a short time. This eliminated any of the B.S. of the guy who professes his long-term loyalty to the company, but really just wants to make as much money as he can in three months so he can buy a convertible and move to California.

Stating my intention didn’t stop the occasional full-time offer from coming my way. When I worked at the Illinois State Compensation Board, they tried to extend me. It was a six-week job, and they had advertised it as a six-week job. Looking back, there were several possibilities why they wanted to keep me on.

One guy I trained would have been better off on the other side of the counter. He was a musician who usually had a hangover from whatever booze or drug he had consumed the night before. As his supervisor, I instructed him on how to file the unemployment claims, a tedious process by which each claim was catalogued by the last four digits of the claimant’s Social Security number.

This fella wasn’t the brightest guy. One day he had a headache at lunch, so he decided to take an Alka-Seltzer. In those days, each Alka-Seltzer tablet had a plastic protec tive coating around it. So I sat there watching him drop the plastic-covered Alka-Seltzer into a cup, waiting for it to dissolve, and then repeating the process. Nobody else seemed to notice him, but I was fascinated watching him futilely push this tablet to the bottom and then curse in frustration at its refusal to dissolve. It was one of those oddities that stuck with me.