The Todd Glass Situation (13 page)

The more the formula was repeated, the more audiences started to identify this particular style of comedy with stand-up as a whole. This was frustrating for two reasons: (1) audiences were getting bored of seeing the same style of jokes over and over again; (2) it was the kind of show that audiences had come to expect, and any efforts by comics to diverge from the formula seemed to confuse the crowd, especially at the clubs on the road that “papered” their audiences in order to survive.

The theory behind “papering” was simple: clubs gave tickets away for free, figuring they could make up the money selling food and drink. The good news was, at least in some cases, they were right.

The bad news was that the audiences really started to suck.

Comedy, it seemed to me, had always attracted a special kind of audience—a certain breed that respected what was going on onstage, the way some people respect the opera. And let me tell you, if they started trying to lure people to the opera with free tickets, those audiences would probably blow, too.

Eventually, it was up to the comedians to take matters into their own hands. The idea was simple: It's better to do a unique show for 30 people who really wanted to be there than a formulaic act for 250 randoms dragged in off the street, more focused on nachos and beer than the onstage craft.

It wasn't glamorous, not at the start, anyway. I remember Dave Rath lugging a PA system into any space that would allow him to do comedy—Chinese restaurants, social clubs, an empty lobby, or anywhere else we could set up a makeshift room and put on a show. The upside was absolute creative freedom to do whatever we wanted, as long as it made people laugh.

The UnCabaret, founded in the late '80s by a performance artist named Beth Lapides, was one of the first venues to try something really new. Her show eliminated the idea that an “act” had to be a series of setups and punch lines—the comedians she chose were usually storytellers. Their performances felt unstructured, even stream-of-consciousness.

The format had its naysayers and critics. I heard a lot of people say it was an excuse to do comedy without punch lines. They weren't altogether wrong. There were comedians who, at least in my eyes, used the unstructured format to cover up a lack of preparation. But I didn't look at it from that angle: If I saw a lineup of seven comedians and three or four of them were doing something unique and different, something that didn't
feel overprocessed or need a generic “ba-DUMP” at the end of every joke, that felt really exciting to me.

I should say that most of the critics weren't great comics, but rather comedians who had been doing the same road act for years and either saw this new scene as being beneath them or, on a deeper level, were maybe too scared to explore a new direction. Over the years I've seen a lot of great comics like David Spade, Brian Regan, Louis C.K., and Jim Gaffigan play both scenes, moving easily between the mainstream comedy clubs and the random makeshift ones that were popping up all over town.

These new venues attracted a lot of talent from local sketch and improvisational groups. This was where Tenacious D got to perform. Janeane Garofalo. Kathy Griffin. Andy Dick. A mock performance art troupe called Simpatico introduced a lot of local crowds to Will Ferrell. Eventually, Scott Aukerman and B. J. Porter started a show at the M Bar called Comedy Death-Ray that gave this emerging scene a place to thrive.

I loved the way that the stand-up and sketch-comedy scenes seemed to be merging. I remember a bit that began with Scott onstage, doing what seemed like a normal stand-up routine, until Matt Besser started making some noise up in the rafters.

“What's going on up there?” Scott yelled.

“I'm just here to fix the air-conditioning,” Matt replied.

“Could you hurry it up? I'm trying to do an act down here.”

“Oh . . . I'm sorry. I didn't hear anyone laughing. I thought you were finished.” Suddenly, Scott was the shill as Matt proceeded to launch into a devastatingly funny critique of the routine.

And, like I said, the audiences were awesome. They were patient and nurturing and, as a direct reward, reaped the benefits of great comedy. Comedians work best when they're comfortable, producing funny material that in turn leads the audiences to become even more patient and nurturing. While traditional stand-up seemed to be stuck in a rut that was collapsing in on itself, venues like UnCabaret and the M Bar made it feel like comedy was really evolving.

I only got to do UnCabaret once or twice—I wasn't a regular, and I was a little bit jealous of the people who were—but I found a scene of my own at a club called Largo.

As I work through this book, I try to stay really conscious of overdramatizing anything because I don't want to delegitimize the stuff that really happened. But the first time I played Largo was one of those truly dramatic moments. I felt like what I imagine a born-again Christian feels like. I wanted to tell everybody about it. I wanted to bring everybody there.

The crowds were fun and supportive. You could be ironic about stand-up comedy and have the audience get it, or act silly in untraditional ways. It was a place for Dana Gould to get up onstage and tap into something honest and occasionally soul-baring. Or for Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Kindler, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, and Sarah Silverman to look for new ways to make people laugh.

And for me! Adjusting to the new format forced me to do a lot of soul-searching, at least as far as my comedy was concerned. I finally had the opportunity to put into action the advice that Dennis Miller had given me, years earlier, about being myself onstage.

I once did an entire set just mocking the big introductions
that some comedians liked to do, bowing and shaking hands with everyone in the audience and bowing some more for what must have felt like an eternity before walking off without telling a single joke. Another time I spent several minutes trying to remember the details of a bit about my parents' age, eventually getting so flustered that I had to pull out my phone and pretend to call my mom.

When you talk about being “real” onstage, a lot of people think that means expressing strong political views or digging into some kind of social realism. Yes, those are ways of being real, but real can also be a silliness you tap into. Steve Martin is a brilliant comedian who has never said a word about social issues or done anything political—his brilliance comes out of his unique style of silliness. I didn't want to be Steve Martin, but I wanted to do what he did, tapping into the silliness that I felt in my gut. This new scene gave me the chance to try. I started keeping two notebooks: one for the traditional material I used mainly on the road; one for the experimental material I could whip out at places like Largo.

As
a comedian, I felt more invigorated than I had in years. As for the rest of my life, well, it left me wanting more.

Or anything. I wanted to have a relationship that went deeper than just fooling around. But I was still running into the same old problem: Every guy I was attracted to turned out to be straight.

I didn't know how to meet people who were like me. Gay bars clearly weren't my scene. Sometimes, maybe once every year or two, I'd stumble into a random hookup. But most of my love life involved hoping for opportunities that never materialized.

Goddamn was I frustrated. Sometimes doing stand-up for a living felt like a curse—it was a fun thing for guys to do, so
of course
they'd come when you'd invite them to a show.
Of course
I was going to think that they really liked me. Most of them wouldn't even look at girls when they went out with me. What took me a while to realize is that I was confusing their interest in me as a comedian with some deeper level of attraction. Tonight they were hanging out with a stand-up comic; they could get laid any other night of the week.

I was always so careful. I said nothing, revealed nothing, and did everything in my power to keep sex out of the conversation. I liked to imagine that someday I'd find the courage to open up to the world, which would be terrifying enough without people going, “Oh! So
that's
why he made me so uncomfortable that night.” I didn't want any stories out there. No matter how powerful the crush, I never did anything.

I felt one of those crushes coming on one night after I did a show at the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. He was a waiter there, just hanging out in the greenroom after the show chatting with some of the other comics. I knew that he was straight. But for some reason, when I started talking to him, I mentioned that I was headed to a Halloween party later at a friend's house and that he should come. Which I quickly followed, in my typically self-conscious way, by inviting everyone in the room to come, too.

I didn't think there was any way he was going to go. But as everyone began to leave, he asked me for the address. A little while later, we were at the party, the two of us sitting on the kitchen counter, just talking and talking and drinking and talking and drinking some more. His sense of humor and way of looking at the world reminded me of onetime best friend Katy, only this time, Katy was a guy.

The more I drank, the more I started to feel like a fifteen-year-old. I started saying the kinds of things that a drunk, awkward, fumbling fifteen-year-old might say:

“There's something I want to tell you—there's someone at this party that I really, really like.”

“Who?” replied the waiter, who I'd since learned had a name: Chris.

“I don't want to tell you.”

“Why?”

“It might make them feel uncomfortable.”

“Why would it make them uncomfortable?”

“I don't know.”

“Tell me.”

“What if it was you?”

Chris paused and looked down at his drink. “Ah, dude . . . that's not me. I'm not into that.”

Fuckfuckfuck!
Not only did I feel like shit, but I was petrified. Tomorrow he'd go back to his job at the club and tell everyone that I hit on him. “I'm going outside to smoke a cigarette,” I said.

I was a little bit surprised when Chris came outside to join me. We walked around the block. Then we turned a corner and he surprised me again: He pulled me in close and kissed me.

We both ended up crashing at my friend's house that night—me on the couch and Chris on the floor, both of us terrified that someone would suspect that something had happened. By the time I woke up the next morning, he was gone. I got into my car. A few blocks from the house, I pulled over and started to cry.

I was so fucking tired. The way I was leading my life was taking an enormous emotional toll on me. Even though Chris
and I had exchanged numbers, I knew we'd never use them. Plenty of people have one-night stands and never see one another again—sometimes you know right away that you're not going to be compatible. But this situation didn't have anything to do with incompatibility; in fact, it felt like the opposite was true. Everything had been easy. We'd talked for hours while the party seemed to disappear around us. This should have been the start of something—a first date. But I was hiding who I was, and he was twenty-two and confused about what he was feeling. The only future we had was the discomfort we'd both feel the next time I returned to the Comedy & Magic Club. It would probably be best for both of us if I avoided the club altogether.

I don't know how long I sat there before I drove home, deciding to put last night, Chris, and everything else away for now.

We didn't have cell phones yet. The light on my answering machine was blinking when I walked into my room. It was Chris, asking if I wanted to go see a show with him that night. I called him back immediately and left a message on his machine. In his return message he left three of his numbers—“Here's my home, my work, and my pager.”

Holy shit. He really wants me to call him back!

Chris
and I went out again that night. And the next night after that. We seemed to connect on every level, laughing at the same jokes and sharing a similar appreciation for doing absolutely nothing. Before we knew it, we were in a new relationship, which felt amazing—except for the part where I couldn't share it with anyone.

My friend Chris. That's how I introduced him to people when he came to pick me up on the set of
Married . . . with Children,
where I was filming a guest spot. I told everyone that my friend Chris and I were going out to lunch at a nearby restaurant.

“Hey, I was going to drop my car off near there,” said Ed O'Neill, the star of the show. “You think you could give me a ride back?”

We parked illegally in an alley and met Ed at the dealership. By the time the three of us got back to my car, it was being wheeled onto a flatbed tow truck.

I did my best to reason with the tow truck driver. When that didn't work, I got down on my knees and begged. The guy wouldn't have it.

“I know what to do,” Chris whispered in my ear. “Just walk around the corner to the other side of the building.” Ed looked at me quizzically. I shrugged—I didn't have a clue. We walked around the corner as Chris approached the tow truck driver, asking if he could retrieve his medicine from the back of the car.

Ten seconds later, I heard the motor rev and the tires screech as Chris backed the car off the truck, hitting the ground with a thud. Ed and I started walking a little faster, looking to put some distance between us and the tow truck driver, who was unleashing a string of expletives at the car, which was already disappearing around the corner.

Ed and I made it to the other side of the building. It was hard to tell what part of the experience felt stranger—that I was on the run with TV's Al Bundy, or that I was in a new relationship with a guy who was capable of doing something this crazy. Chris pulled over and picked us up. The three of us cracked up all the way back to the set.