I just walked into a slumbering house. Ferris met me at the door, wagged her tail like mad, ran a couple of small circles, yawned, and trotted back to my bedroom, where I heard her hop up onto my bed.
74 pounds of dog, most likely on my pillow. That’s going to be fun to move in a few minutes.
Tonight, I met a bunch of ACME people down at a pub on Main street in Santa Monica called O’Brien’s. It was our company director’s birthday, and we were all doing a sort of “get together and have a talent show” thing for him.
Here’s a secret that I don’t share with too many people (so I’ll share it with 500,000 of you all at once): I am probably the least-funny guy in ACME. It’s sad, but true. I’m not as good a writer as Travis or Jeff or Ashley, and I don’t play characters as well as Kristen or Jonna or Ed . . . but somehow I keep my head just enough above the water to stick around. But I have the most fun, ever, when I do shows with these people, and being in the Bravo show back in 2001 kept me sane at a time when nothing in my life seemed to go right. I’m about to start writing for the next show, which starts in the end of Summer. If I don’t make it into this show, I’ll prolly be cut from the company.
But that’s not what this is about. This is about the show we did tonight, how great it was, and how I hit The Big Comeback right when I needed to hit it, rather than in the car an hour later.
The show was full of brilliant comedians, talented musicians and singers, and me. There is no freakin’ way I’m going to go up in front of my friends who are all funnier than me and try to tell my lame jokes: Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One of them says, “I think I lost an electron.” The other one says, “Are you sure?” The first one says, “Yeah. I’m positive.” Thank you. Try the fish.
But I figured that since other people would be doing stuff that wasn’t straight comedy, like singing, I could bring my book, and read a short bit from it.
I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. It is so insanely important to me that I do well around these people . . . it’s like performing in front of my family. But these guys don’t have to tell me that I’m great if I really suck. (It’s so strange that I can stand in front of 5000 Trekkies, and not flinch, but in front of 30 people I know, I panic.)
I went up about halfway down the list, after several extremely funny people, and read a bit from VegasPants.
“I know you all pretty well,” I said, “but we never talk about Star Trek, which is where I spent quite a bit of my life. So I’m going to read you an excerpt from my book, where you can see what a Star Trek convention is like.”
I read them the story of when I totally bombed on stage in Vegas, and how I found my funny. There was some good laughter in places, and I got some nice applause when I was done . . . but I’m not sure if I did well, or if it was even appropriate for the lineup. But I took a chance, and I’m glad I did.
After the show was over, we all left the back room, so a band could take the stage, and most of us gathered on the patio out front to visit and stuff.
I started saying goodbye at about 11, I guess, and didn’t leave until close to 12:30. It’s like that when I get around people I genuinely like, and hardly ever get to see.
I was talking with Kevin, Chris, and Kurt, three of the guys who are also in Earnest Borg9 with me, when a tall fellow comes out of the bar. He puts one arm around my shoulder, holds his Budwieser aloft in his other hand, and says, “Suck my fat one, you cheap dimestore hood!”
He looks at his buddies, who are also holding Bud in bottles, and they all look at me, waiting to see how I react to this frat-guy move.
“Hey, buddy, if you’re going to talk to me like that, you have to take me out to dinner, and buy me a drink,” I said.
He looked a little stunned that I replied with good humor, his friends all looked at him like he was the asshole that just got burned, and then they offered to buy drinks for me and my friends. I declined, because I was on my way out, but they made good on their offer for the rest of the group.
Another performer from Acme, Ashley, turned to me and said, “Does that bother you?”
I shook my head. “It’s not about me. It’s about him and his friends. And that line . . . that’s not even me. That’s some kid from almost 20 years ago. And you got a free drink out of it, so you’d better put me in your sketches in the next show, fucker.”
We laughed.
“Seriously, that doesn’t totally suck for you?” he asked.
I told him, “I’ve been training for this moment since 1986, and it just paid off. That was my best line all night.”