Life is Absurd

Dedication page-

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As always this book is dedicated to Judi.  She had to sit through these jokes as I wrote them and that was no small task, let me tell you.  I hope the jokes get better, dear.  Love you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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CHAPTER ONE- Trenton

CHAPTER TWO-Trenton

CHAPTER THREE-CRAP

CHAPTER FOUR-CRAP

CHAPTER FIVE-Atlantic City

CHPATER SIX-Atlantic City

CHAPTE SEVEN-Atlantic City

CHAPTER EIGHT- Philadelphia

CHAPTER NINE-Philadelphia

CHAPTER TEN- Boston

CHAPTER ELEVEN- New York City

CHAPTER TWELVE- Charlotte

CHAPTER THIRTEEN- Salt Lake City

CHAPTER FOURTEEN- Las Vegas

CHAPTER FIFTEEN-San Diego

CHAPTER SIXTEEN-LA

LIFE IS ABSURD

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CHAPTER ONE- Trenton

The light hurts my eyes.

No matter how many times I do this, the stage lights seem to get up under my eyelids and pierce into the squishy parts of my eyeballs, blinding me. Pain and trouble for me when I don’t need it. I can see the stage lights from the wings as the first act (Lizzy) clears my space. I squint.

My eyes are bloodshot tonight and that part is distressingly normal no matter how you look at it. And the pain in my head seems to be semi-permanent.

The announcer, a total dick named Bobby Moon, (real name Robert Monson) practically growls into the microphone, are you ready to laugh?

Fuckin idiot. The people in this room are in a comedy club. They paid money to get in here, for Christ’s sake!  Of course they are ready to laugh.

But it aint so easy.

Making people laugh, I mean.  That is the raison d’etre of a comic after all, and it can be a very difficult thing to do sometimes. Taking complete strangers and by the strength of your wits, make them laugh.  Not chuckle or grin.  But laugh.

The kind of a laugh that makes them forget their shitty day.  Makes them forget their bad job, horrible boss or disappointing spouse.

A belly laugh.  A gut buster.  A knee slapper. Crack them up, and finally have them rolling in the aisles.

There is no better feeling than to take an audience and make them laugh. Just you and your words making magic together. Better than sex. Better than cocaine (slightly). Better.

In my unscientific study it’s about eighty percent the comedian and twenty percent the audience.  They don’t even have to meet you half way

I should know.  I’ve been doing standup since I was nineteen.

Put your hands together for Frankie Spatz! Moon announces me to the crowd.

One hundred twenty-three people clap obediently by putting palms together.

It is not an exaggeration to say the response is underwhelming.

I’m not even headlining the sets.  I’m middle dog in the poodle parade.  The clubs usually have three acts on a weekend bill.  The warmup, middle dog and headliner.

Of course, saying you are the headliner in The Boom-Boom Room in Trenton, New Jersey is not exactly like saying you are top billing at Carnegie Hall.

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen and it is sooo good to be back in my hometown of Trenton!  I’m talking and moving to center stage to let the lighting guy get me good and centered in the spot.  That light doesn’t seem to add to my headache for some reason.  The cool blue light always calms me and lets me breathe.

I tell you I was not among my people last week in Alabama!

I start into the basic frame work of the first part of my set.  I use the fish out of water conceit of trying to order a decent meatball sub in a diner in Alabama as the platform for ten or twelve jokes about the good people in Trenton and the bad people in Alabama.

You can’t walk out on stage and say, the guy behind the counter had three teeth!  And only three teeth.

That’s cruel.

But if you phrase it this way, I looked behind the counter and I swear I heard a banjo play, da na ner ner ner ner ner, (The theme from the movie Deliverance) The audience will recognize the music and fill in the mental picture. Then you can say: The guy had only three teeth!  Hand to God!

The audience gives their first decent laugh and I relax because now they are with me. I smile and start in on the Alabama is so bad jokes. Whack whack whack, I shoot them out.

What does the average Alabama student get on the SAT test?  Drool!

What is the difference between Alabama sports fans and puppies?  Eventually the puppies grow up and stop whining!

What does a jackknifed semi-trailer in Ohio, a tornado in Kansas, and a guy getting divorced in Alabama have in common? They all fixin to lose a trailer!"

That last bit requires me to really sell the accent on the punchline.  I can do that very well because the applause and laughter tell me so.  I count to ten, gauging the reaction from the crowd.  They are in now.  Everyone leaning forward or upright in their chairs.  Smiles are on most of the faces.  Even the bar staff and waitresses are listening. I keep telling the story of the sandwich and tell everyone the part where the waitress says: I’m fixin to put in your order.

Fixin.  That’s a funny word! I tell the crowd. 

The way I pronounce it is Fittin.  It emphasizes the local colloquialism. I’m fixin to go down to the store!  I’m fixin to go get me some moon shine!

Titters come from the crowd.

The other big word I learned down there is mash.  As in mash that button right there.

This joke requires a complete blank stare at the crowd for at least five full seconds. You have to sell the confusion.

You mean press? Like press that button right there? I ask the nonexistent waitress.

Press? Shit honey, they aint clothes!

I have to say that line like a fifty-year-old southern white waitress. In other words, like Flo from the TV show Alice.

I say the line in my Flo voice and then switch to the blank confusion stare.  I subtly turn my body left to say the line and then right to stare at the audience.  It lets them know I’m playing two characters.

I can gauge my audience here.  If they are older and know Flo, then I get a nice laugh at this bit.  If they are younger and don’t remember an eighteen-year-old TV show, I do have a follow on bit.  I blurt out the catch phrase: Kiss my grits!

People will laugh at that, because it sounds funny; even if they have no idea what it means.

This time the audience doesn’t know Flo very well and they don’t laugh very hard.  I can’t use the stretch line. I’m going to have to insert another joke or two into one of the other parts to make up for some short time here. My mind is focusing on the structure of the set so I miss some of the uneasy clues the audience is sending me.

I continue on with the sandwich story getting to the part where the plate arrives at my table with the three teeth guy and the waitress all waiting for my reaction with smiles on their faces.

Of course my reaction to three tiny Swedish meatballs on Wonder bread with jarred spaghetti sauce and weird cheese is: Madonna! No! No! No! No!"

That has to be said with full Italian hand gestures and an accent with aggravation in my voice.

Then the full stop to stare at the audience.

But they were smiling at me so nicely! Such ANTICIPATION that I would enjoy this sandwich! SO proud that they’d made a real Italian meatball sub! I say in a whiney, pained voice.

I have to make my face swallow all that pain, anger and disappointment. That’s a tricky piece of physical comedy.

That’s what gets the laugh.  The punchline is really an applause line: I’d starve to death if I lived in Alabama!

The audience doesn’t miss their que, and the applause washes over me and I smile. I let it go for a long ten count.

I’m eleven minutes and thirty seconds into the set.  Short but very near the mark. I can see the clock in the side wing back stage area. I have a finely developed sense of time and rhythm after doing this for so long.

I don’t think I could date a southern woman either, I start the middle section of the set.  Relationships. Its older material; stuff I’ve done before.

"Of course I’ve dated plenty of New Jersey Italian women.’

I almost choke on the line.

It’s a cheap, lazy way to get an audience on your side.

Three or four Rita’s in the crowd give me the obligatory Whoo!

I dated this woman and she was almost too Italian.  Again I have to do a female voice but this time it’s a female version of myself.  Frankie, I’d like to introduce you to my brothers:  Big Tony, Anthony and Little Tony.

I have to come out of the female character to become myself again and do the big, middle, and small handshake mime.  That gets a minimal knowing laugh.

I’m not saying the brothers were connected but...

And at this point I use my left hand to push my nose out of joint.

The reaction is...terrible!

Only a few laughs and a lot of blank stares.

Why?

Who knows.  Maybe the broken nose gesture for a mafia guy is out of date and these people don’t know it.  Maybe they do know it and are sick of it. It is 2004 after all.  Maybe The Sopranos, Goodfella’s, and Casino have driven the Jersey Italian mob connection down everyone’s throats for so long that they no longer find it funny.

Now it’s my problem. 

Now I gotta revamp on the fly.  I shift into a non-Italian generic relationship bit with only a few stumbles.

I tell you...I gotta say...it’s that my last girlfriend was pretty good but we didn’t see eye to eye on the little things...

My voice sounds stressed out to my ears and the pain in my head is starting to pound. I stalk around the stage.

The joke is pure comedy rule of three stuff:  Give them two normal things and then an outlier.

Little things. Such as she didn’t like it when I left the cap off the toothpaste. She didn’t like it when I left the toilet seat up.  She didn’t like it when I slept with her sister.

Normally that gets a big laugh and I can follow up with a quick throwaway line: little things like that, which when said deadpanned helps to milk out the laughter.

Tonight the basic joke generates only few chuckles and I cannot add the throwaway line to stretch the set.

Jesus!  It’s a tough crowd. The thought makes my head hurt more.

But what really is hurting my head, besides the cocaine and alcohol, is the knowledge that my act isn’t up to par.

I commit a cardinal sin.  I backtracked on a joke.

Nah!  I wouldn’t cheat on my girlfriend.  We argued over stuff too much.  You know, she wanted cats.  I was allergic to cats. So we compromised and only got two!

This joke has to be accompanied by an aggrieved morally outraged face looking straight at the audience.

The face requires the crowd to be behind you. Rooting for you, in order to be funny.

Not tonight.

Some nervous laughs and coughing alerts me to the fact that I’ve lost them.  No one is paying attention now.  No one is sitting forward nor are the waitresses listening.  They are trying to hustle drinks. The sound of which is louder than the laughter.

I close my eyes and take a breath.

It is not impossible to get a crowd back. It requires a Herculean effort.

I’ve done it before. There were many times I’ve struggled to connect with an audience and I usually get them in the end.

Before.

When I was younger. Stronger. Better.

Funnier.

Less of a mess, my mind supplies as I stare at the crowd.

Gotta be funny!

In my desperation I try some one offs about cats which fall flat. I try one last bit. It’s an old one and one of my all-time favorite jokes.

You know; I don’t mind cats- I really don’t! I just don’t understand them.  How can an animal be that arrogant and that flammable all at the same time?

That’s a risky joke.  I know that.

Any joke that has animal cruelty as its punch line is way less than fifty fifty on the funny/not funny scale.

But when it works, that bit can generate howling laughter.

Not tonight.

Silence.

Not even the groans that sometimes accompany a joke that people know they are not supposed to laugh at, but they want to anyway.

For some reason their disinterest and silence seem to block off my mind.

I honestly cannot tell you what I said for the next few minutes. I can guess that it wasn’t very funny, however.

I come back to myself and catch a view of Tom out in the wings where he is making the throat slashing gesture that marks my time.  Tom Muldoon is the manager of the club.

I walk back and forth in the glaring light and wipe some sweat off my face.  I think that’s about my time for this set, please remember to tip your waitresses and enjoy the rest of the show!

There is only polite applause from twenty or thirty people in the house.  I pass Moon on stage who says sarcastically, nice set and then grabs the mic for a quick and totally insincere, please give it up one more time for Frankie Spatz!

Way less people applaud this line than before.  My head pounds in time to my accelerated heartbeat.

As I hit backstage, I am confronted by Tom, but I don’t want to have this fight in front of the female headliner, Torry Shelneger, who is only 26 and as fresh and funny as I used to be.

Sorry, I murmur to Torry who ignores me as she should, as I pass by.

The wing and back stage area of the Boom-Boom is actually quite large. It’s one of the reasons why I like the room.  The wing is large enough for Torry, Tom, a lighting tech, and the stage manager plus me to all fit comfortably among the debris of past acts.  Ropes, mic cords, half empty water bottles, broken mic stands and even an easy chair are all jumbled behind the curtain.  All of that junk hidden from view of the public.

There aint no doubt, Tom considers me in the junk category.

‘What was that?" his voice is low to keep it from passing out to Bobby Moon who is taking five quick minutes to reestablish some rapport with the audience.  It’s what a good emcee does.  He gets the crowd back if a performer loses them.

I’m sure Torry appreciates it as I deal with Tom. I lost them, I say succinctly.

No shit!  I thought you were going to do new material? Christ! I know you’ve been drinking but if you are high, I swear to God..." Tom’s voice is whispered and strangled.

I’ve known Tom (little Tommy Muldoon) for nearly thirty-five years.  We went to school together for fuck’s sake!

Tom, I’m a little out of sorts.  I’m off the stuff, I told you.

I ease back out of the wing towards the connecting hallway and Tom follows.  I hear Moon get off a decent joke: I heard the new governor elect say he wants to trim the pork from the state budget. Who in here believes that Chris Christie is going to remove the pork from the state budget?  I mean-come on!

The laughter from the audience cuts through me.

I can’t help what happens in my brain, but I take a nano second to analyze that joke, like I always do.

That’s a good bit.  As much as I hate to admit it.  He didn’t actually call Chris Christie fat.  He danced beautifully around the edge and let the audience fill in what he meant.  I did much the same thing in my Alabama bit.  And Bobby Moon could tell that joke in here.  Think about it- the nearly four-hundred-pound politician is a Republican in a deeply democratic state.  He may have only gotten thirty percent of the vote in Trenton, but he was in the sixties everywhere else.

Moon tries to tell that joke in Lacey (a heavily Republican county) he gets booed off the stage.  But he was with a younger crowd, in a city where there were likely to be democrats and he read the room right.  It doesn’t hurt that no one likes taxes. Political humor can be tricky as shit.  50/50 on the scale.  Plus, you are going to be antagonizing half of your audience no matter which side of the fence you come down on.  But Moon did it right.  The shit head!

I see Tom watching me for signs of drugs and I shake off the brain drain. I can’t afford to go comedian on every bit I hear. 

The other thing that makes me hate myself is that I file that bit away for later use.  I have an almost eidetic memory when the white powder is not messing me up.  Plus, I’m not above borrowing material when in need.

Alone in the hallway except for the wait staff, moving from the kitchen area door to the side serving doors, Tom grabs me by the arm.

Frankie, I swear.  I have to leave, but if Bobby tells me you were drinking in the green room... he takes a deep breath.  Do the new material, he says exasperated.  Even if it tanks, you’ll know, right?

I have to close my eyes.  Tom has been in my corner a long time.  Common sense would have told someone else to let me drown long ago. He loves me, but he aint all heart.  You don’t get the one fifty until after the second show.

I open my eyes to see that my friend is at his last pit stop with me. That hurts almost as much as that asshole Moon getting a good laugh.

"Tom- I’m good trust me!"  I don’t believe me either.

Tom Muldoon releases my arm and walks down the hall a few steps to the door opposite the kitchen.  He says nothing else as he goes into the manager’s office.

Fuck him!

Let’s see him get up there with those lions and try to make em laugh!

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I hit the end of the darkened hallway.

No, that’s not a metaphor.  The fucking hallway is dark because you don’t want light to intrude onto the stage.

The end door is marked Green Room.

This is another reason I love the Boom-Boom.

It has a real green room area.  A spot where the comedians can go relax between sets.

Not that this green room was that nice- it wasn’t.  The room had a huge couch straight ahead, with a coffee table, two small tables holding three chairs each.  A long, well-lit counter with big mirrors was on the right side wall as you came in the door.  The counter ran for most of the wall with chairs at each makeup station.  That was what is was used for: a spot to make sure you looked nice before going on stage.  The corner housed a large armoire where you could hang up some regular clothes if you needed. It was especially nice to be able to take a quick shower which was behind the screened area to the left.  Rumor had it the shower had a hidden camera, but that could have been lore.  Who wanted video of my hairy ass showering between sets?

The bad part was tucked into the corner between the shower and the makeup counter.

Two round tables held a bounty of food and drinks.

I know you have no idea, but to a comedian those two tables and this whole setup was GOLD.

Too often in comedy clubs, the green room was a converted janitors closet where they stashed the comedian like he or she was an old mop! Or worse no room at all. You had to sit at the bar and walked onstage through the audience.

Since Tom was a frustrated comedian himself, he knew the value of a spot to take a shower, get a small meal, be able to relax and compose one’s self in between sets.

The Boom-Boom Room has a very decent kitchen that makes some good food:  Steaks, chops, Italian, soups, that kind of thing.  Most of the time the special is sitting in a serving tray with seven or eight plates, ready to go.  There are also some sodas in an ice bowl along with bottles of water.

It’s a gorgeous setup.

Not buffet at the Bellagio gorgeous, but better than a Denny’s!

The problem is on the second table.

The bar.  It’s pretty simple:  Four or five bottles of liquor. A couple of mixers along with ice, and a few cut limes and lemons to spiffy it up.  Add in some heavy highball glasses and a person could get decently drunk in there.

Very easily.

There are four people in the green room as I come in.  I ignore them and make a beeline for the corner bar table.

A quick slug of Jack Daniels makes my head stop hurting and my gut ramp up. Because I’m stupid, I mix a double Jack and coke, no ice. Because I’m smart, I take a bottle of water with me.

Silence holds while I come to the two middle tables.  Two people, a man and a woman are at one table.  Another two men are sitting on the couch.  All of them are silently watching me.

I drain off about half of the drink and I open the water bottle and set them near the middle of the occupied table.  There are about six empty and half empty glasses on the top of the table.

It is impossible to say who’s is who’s.

Bobby Moon bursts thru the door as I sit down. He eyes the table top boldly to see who is drinking what.

And he is disappointed when I take a casual swig off the water bottle.

Swallow. Hey, Bob. Nice bit about Christie.  When did you write that?  My jibe is a subtle one.  I’m implying he stole the bit.

Fuck you, Spaz!  Tommy sent me in here to make sure you weren’t boozing it up. His voice is threatening.

Spaz?  Jesus, Bobby. Seven year olds called me Spaz. Is that the best you can do? I shoot back.

But Robert Munson does not want to play the dozens with me. He don’t want to riff with me and he don’t want to throw down.

For instance; I know Bobby’s mother used to be a comedian:  Bobby, I’m not saying your mother’s a slut but she’s had so many old comedians inside her, she should be called the Friars club!

For instance, I know Bobby is fat because I can see him: Bobby, I heard you are going through a divorce. It says a lot that your wife would rather take half your money now rather than wait for all of it in three months.

And finally I know that Bobby is insecure; Bobby, people keep waiting for me to put you in your place.  Problem is you have no place in Comedy!

I’ve got all those bits locked and loaded, waiting for the dummy to say something. 

Moon looks for a second like he wants to take a swing at me.

Even that avenue is closed off because while he might weigh the same as me at 160 pounds- mine is spread over six feet two while he is holding at five feet five.

Fuck you.  I’ll wait for the coke to do its job. Moon spins around and exits the room.

I can feel the sets of eyes on me as I take the last half of my alcoholic drink and drain it.

That fucker aint too far off the mark.

The girl at my table gets down off her chair and makes me a quick chicken plate from the special tray.  Chicken in some kind of brown gravy.

Thanks Lizzy. I cut and chew methodically for a second.

I can feel the tension start to drain out of the room.

‘What happened Frank?" one of the men on the couch asks.

David Anglers who is near my age of 44 and near my experience in the business.  He is as close to a peer as I have in this room, so he gets the right to interrogate.

Material was too old, I say succinctly.

David nods.  He has a stake in this:  Torry isn’t sticking to headline the late show, David is headlining the ten pm show. He needs me to be better.

Lizzy Talbers, a divorced mother of one who opened the eight o’clock show and will do the same at ten, gives me a side long look.  You’re going to do the new stuff at ten, right Frankie?

I scowl.  Of course I am.  I buttressed it with older stuff and it got out of hand. One second I’m running through my Alabama material and the next Tom is pulling me off stage!

Boy, that sounded whiny and defensive and...

That cat joke didn’t help.

The other guy on the couch is the wild card in the room and he makes this pronouncement. Edgar Bennington.  29 and an Englishman.  The guy is smart, quick, witty and cultured.  Not to mention funny. He’s in town to do a full weekend of shows, not just the Thursday night ladies night special like we are doing.

Edgar is going to do the full monty this weekend:  Friday two shows, Saturday two extended shows (1 full hour versus the 45 minute normal) and the Sunday evening dinner show.  In addition to that Tom has him booked on Friday morning WKXW New Jersey’s 101.5 FM!  A former comedian DJ named Bill Spaeder is going to give Edgar 20 minutes in the very early morning to make his listeners laugh and to promote the shows.

It’s a huge responsibility.  It also means that Edgar may be receiving a cut of the door and not the 75 per slot like I’m doing tonight.

It marks the sign of an up and comer in the game.  A guy (or woman) who may be appearing on a late night television set real soon.

A guy who used to be me eighteen years ago.

Hey- I’ve heard Frank kill with that cat joke and only a few months ago!  My defender is Rajesh (I cannot for the life of me remember his last name!) and he is next to me at the table.  Raj is here to gobble up a 1:30 drunk time slot.

Club owners and managers will let new comedians take up the time between the headliner and the closing bell with a new talent.  Sometime they even pay the guy! 

Most of the time the slot is hell-  imagine trying to make exhausted drunk people laugh?

But Edgar is right and he knows it.  Maybe, mate, he says to the Indian American man. But that jokes a capper.  The one you tell when you have them eating out of the palm of your hand.  Right when you want to give em a taste of the old razzle dazzle!

My stomach gives a huge lurch.

The dude is one hundred percent right.

Lizzy and Raj, who kind of look up to me- start to defend me.

But...

He had to tell...

More lurching from the chicken.

I get up and everyone looks at me.

Nope. Fucking wise words asshole, I think to myself. But I have nothing much more to say.

I stagger off to the bathroom to get sick.

CHAPTER TWO- Trenton

After cleaning myself up for a good ten minutes I think I can face reality again.  When I get out of the bathroom/shower area, Edgar is gone and Moon has corralled Raj, I’m told, to do a quick ten minutes to get the new audience settled, when they come in. The green room has a TV monitor angle mounted on the ceiling to allow the other comics to gauge where the audiences are, what’s working and more importantly, what’s not.

We watch the last five or six minutes of Torry’s act as she sets em’ up and knocks em down.  She is a standup comedian.  Setup- punch line, setup- punch line like she is delivering shots to Mike Tyson.

And she is funny!

She needs more over aching themes to her writing, but she knows words and which of them to put together to make people laugh.

I know that I’ve slept with Torry Shelneger, but I can’t quite remember when. I hope to God it was five years ago and not seven. I know it