The Todd Glass Situation by Todd Glass Read Free Book Online Page B

showtime . . .”
    I laughed at that goddamn announcement for a month.
    But that was just the beginning. The owner of the club, a guy named Steve Young, kicked off what was for me about tobecome a familiar routine. He introduced the master of ceremonies—the emcee—usually a local comic just starting to work the clubs. The emcee did a few minutes of comedy before introducing the middle act, who tonight was the Legendary Wid, famous for using 250 props during his show. It was total mayhem—by the end of his act there were piles of one-off props everywhere. It was too huge a mess to clean up right away, so management threw a couple of blankets over the props so the headliner could begin—a rising twenty-year-old named Tom Wilson, who a few years later would play “Biff” in Back to the Future.
    To say that the night left an impression on me would be an understatement. I felt so exhilarated I couldn’t contain it. I went back the following Friday. This time, Gilbert Gottfried was the headliner. His act was kind of a riff on comedic conventions, making fun of the generic routines that some stand-ups do. I felt like most of the audience didn’t get it, but I did. I laughed so hard I almost hyperventilated.
    I wasn’t just hooked—I became obsessed with Comedy Works. I’d start talking about it every Monday morning at school: “Who wants to go to the Comedy Works? Who wants to go to the Comedy Works?”
    Keep in mind that this was 1981. Comedy clubs were something that happened in New York or L.A. I couldn’t believe that a place like this existed in Philadelphia. For five dollars, I got to see young, relatively unknown comics like Eddie Murphy, Steven Wright, Richard Lewis, Roseanne Barr, and Tim Allen, not to mention up-and-coming stars like Jay Leno, Paul Reiser, and Jerry Seinfeld.
    I wanted to be in the front row at the first show every Friday night. After school I’d grab any friends I could find andbarrel eighty miles an hour down the Schuylkill Expressway to beat the traffic. If, after the first show ended, I happened to run into some more friends who were on line for the late show, I would shell out another five dollars to join them. One night, Steve Young pulled me aside—he’d noticed me moving back in line for a second show and let me in for free. I couldn’t believe that the club’s owner knew who I was. I was so happy that I nearly had a nervous breakdown.
    At almost every show, Steve would make an announcement: “Hey, if you think you’re funny, Wednesday night is our open mike night. Why not try your hand at comedy?” After about five months of weekly visits to the club, I decided I was ready. I dragged all my friends to the show . . .
    Â . . . and chickened out.
    A week later, I got up the nerve to try again. This time I made it onto the stage. “I hate how they put the car horn so close to the windshield wipers,” I said. “You go to honk at someone and you end up washing your windshield. It would be scarier to throw yarn out your window.”
    I may have been a sixteen-year-old spraying whipped cream at my brothers in the crowd and telling jokes about The Brady Bunch , but on that night, I killed.
    Flush with success I decided to go back for more a week later. This time I invited everyone I could—and I bombed. I’ve talked to plenty of other comedians who have had the same experience, acing their first time onstage and flailing the next. I don’t know why it happens—maybe your first time out, you have a certain sense of vulnerability that the audience can sense. Succeed, and some of that vulnerability is gone, making the laughs harder to come by.
    But if you’re meant to do comedy nothing will stop you. Comedy is like sex: treacherous. You have to hang out with people you normally wouldn’t, doing things that take you out of your comfort zone hoping to impress