Almost Interesting by David Spade Read Free Book Online

well in that, except I couldn’t picture any future employers getting excited over that class. “I read here on your résumé that you get your first serves in a lot . . . you’re hired!” None of my high school friends were around anymore, and this was a real wake-up call for me. You get spoiled in high school because there are always ten people around to meet up with or have lunch with or hang out with. Suddenly it’s just crickets, because everyone I knew who was with me at this crappy community college was not someone I wanted to hang out with, and I’m sure they were thinking the same thing about me. (It was like the old Woody Allen joke, “I’d never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”)
    Early on in my first semester, I made a small blunder. (Not to be confused with the old robot sitcom Small Wonder. ) I’d head back over to high school and sit on the wall by the cafeteria after my classes ended for the day. It didn’t occur to me how desperate that was, until one day a few of the seniors came over and started chatting me up. “Hey, dude, what’s going on? Don’t you have class to go to? In college?” “Dude!” I replied. “I picked my own skedj, and I made sure I was tapped out by eleven thirty A . M . It’s perfect because I can make it over here for lunch.” The guy was like, “Remember how Perkins and Stiller used to come back and sit on the wall after they graduated and we thought it was kind of a loser move?” I would chuckle, “Yeah. A bunch of those losers did that. Get a grip, guys, move on, high school’s over.” And then I just stared at the parking lot oblivious to the fact that they were trying to tell me something.
    One night I was randomly looking through the local newspaper and I saw an ad for a comedy night. I thought it might be cool to go watch. Then I noticed that they also hosted an amateur night. I sort of missed the old Extravaganza days, so I thought maybe I could write up a little comedy act and give it a whirl. So I went down and watched the amateurs a few days later, and they were horrible. I had the confidence that I could be just as horrible. So the next week, I got some balls and went down and tried five minutes. I was eighteen and terrified. I had only seen comedians perform on Johnny Carson’s show or cable specials, never in person. I didn’t really know what “club” comics actually did. At first I figured I could go out onstage and just repeat jokes I had seen Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal do, because I memorized their HBO specials. It never crossed my mind that that would be considered stealing. To me it was just like being in a cover band singing the hits of Journey or the Rolling Stones. I was simply paying homage. But I decided against this approach. I went down to that club with my crummy scribblings.
    I was the youngest guy who hit the stage that night. I looked about eleven. Some of my killer jokes included, “You know when you walk barefoot over someone’s yard and it is made up of gravel and rocks?” (Believe me, in Arizona this is a real thing. There is very little grass around. It is all just cactus and small rocks.) “Well, here’s my impression of someone walking across that yard.” And then I’d walk daintily, lifting my hands in pain and say, “Ow! Fuck! Shit!” (Cue silence.) Later I changed the joke to, “You know when you get a small rock in your shoe and every time you take a step, it moves to a different part of your foot so that the people see you walking going . . . ‘Ow! Fuck! Shit!’ ” (Sort of the same joke, but better premise.) “You know when you squirt mustard in your liverwurst sandwich and the first four gallons are yellow water? I’m like gross! Where’s the mustard? Good night, folks!”
    It’s a shame I wasn’t discovered that night, with such solid material. The club manager came up to me at the end of the night and said, “Your material was shitty, but what you said in between