Wednesday, October 17, 2007  

The Hour Of The Time

Then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the window on the Orange Line on your way into work, your hollow, baggy eyes staring back at you, the sheen of night sweats still evaporating after six swirling hours of tortured baseball dreams, and you think, "How did it come to this?"

Right there, on the inbound train, wedged between a fat woman that smells like Fancy Feast and an old man muttering about "the coloreds," you see yourself, clearly, for the first time in years, and you look like a substitute teacher, but at least substitute teachers do something. They don't sit in a cube and read blogs on the sly and try to sense the boss's footsteps on the carpet like Jay Silverheels trying to sense the approach of the illegal Mexican immigrants they hired to play banditos on that episode.

And while this wretched epiphany steals over you, the absurdity of it all is crystal clear. You're on this train, with these people, going to this dirty trick of a job, but in twelve short hours, you will be opening for Doug Stanhope, and you goddamn well better not have the stink of the cubicle on you, or they will sense it, and they will devour you like wolves.

Let me tell you something about Doug Stanhope: Back in the day, during the dark times of comedy, after the boom had boomed but before everyone and their retarded cousin were trying to become YouTube heroes, there were a stealthy handful of us who roamed the country, doing comedy for the love and love alone. There were plenty of brickwallers out there, latched on and sucking the last few drops of marrow from the skeleton of the 80's, but there was a new generation, too, raised on standup on the teevee and promised an Eden of A-rooms and weeklong clubs, only to have that rug yanked away at the last second. I consider myself one of that generation; Stanhope's one of us, too.

There was a club, in Arizona, where a guy still felt like a rock star, or at least like he could become one. Nobody was writing a screenplay, and we were all making dangerous choices for the right reasons. One night at this club, I went up with a bellyful of scotch and dressed as Santa Claus, not because I thought it would be a funny comedy sketch but because I happened to be dressed as Santa and drunk on whisky for entirely unrelated reasons that day. It was that kind of club, you dig?

There was a picture taken that night, me in the Santa suit, a pint glass of Dewar's in one hand and a cigarette dangling from my mouth, giving an old woman in the front row the finger, my lips curled in contempt and the manager's panicked face just barely discernable in the background. That picture hung prominently on the bulletin board for a year. We'd laugh about it every time I came through.

And then it was gone, replaced by another picture of another comic, onstage and naked, all white legs and elbows, wearing a Santa hat of his own. It was Doug Stanhope, and it looked for all the world like somehow he'd snuck out of his picture and stolen the hat out of mine. He'd upped the ante, and it's all been downhill for me from there.

Now here I am, on the Orange Line, a day like every day I can remember, my comedy career as incomprehensibly comatose as a patient on House, while Doug Stanhope gallops around the country like some kind of hilarious Scarlet Pimpernel.

He lives in the desert I wanted to live in.
He vacations in the country I still haven't visited.
He does the gigs I thought I'd get to do.

Meanwhile, I'm typing words at a monkey job for people too rich to remember my name, and it all started the day Stanhope stole my Santa hat.

Let me tell you something about Doug Stanhope, my friends.

He is pure evil.
He is a warlock.
He is a goddamn LIFE VAMPIRE.

Tonight, there will be a reckoning. Oh, yes. There will be a reckoning.

Labels: comedy, standup, stanhope