Death by Stand-Up

PART I

The Gulfport-Biloxi airport is the farthest I’ve chased him. Assuming it’s a, him. Who else would be going around killing stand-up comics? Not the megastars like Russell Peters or Sebastian Maniscalco. Not Whitney Cummings or Aisha Tyler. I’m talking open micers. The ones still waiting tables and performing at bringer shows.  

Bringer shows are the step up from open mics. It’s a booked show. Comics must promise to bring five guests. The show’s producer gets a cut of the door. The comic, well, they get paid with mic time. Fail to bring your guests and you won’t get booked for the next show. 

It’s all about mic time. Stage time. Reps like an athlete or musician. The more you’re getting up in front of that crowd, behind the mic, the better you get. In theory, of course. 

Not that I ever had the balls. 

The six-hour flight time had me craving a smoke. Thankfully, there was a one-beer layover in Houston. Grabbed a Shiner Bock from one kiosk in the Delta terminal and kept on walking to my gate.  

Crazy. There’s a bar every ten feet, but I have to go outside for a drag. Pick your poison. I’m not ready for my next drink yet. Gotta pick up the rental, a sixer of anything local, and make the hour drive down to New Orleans. 

The Zippo in my pocket weighed heavily and bounced off my thigh. I pulled it out. The New York inscription reminded me of my dad.  

Not now.

I rolled back the wheel and sparked it to flame.  

Yes, now. 

Ahh. Nicotine. No bullshit. 

Truth is, I have done comedy. 

Quit once these killings started. Pussed out and took to the shadows. Hoped they’d stop, and I’d come back. Slink my way in like vermin from the woodpile. I was working the road up and down California from San Diego to Ventura. Mix in the occasional San Francisco run out in the Sunset with the fog, and I was a working comic. Didn’t film a special or go viral, but I wasn’t trying to. Knew I wasn’t good enough, so why bother? 

Then I worked a show in The Belly Room at The Comedy Store. A fun room in the back. Up the stairs and intimate. Away from the Original Room window that looks out onto the Sunset Strip. That was for the regulars and the heavy hitters. The pop-ins, like Chris Rock working on jokes for the Oscars. But that night. The one in The Belly Room. That’s when it started. 

Crazy Cindee’s bringer show. I had five servers from Wood Ranch in attendance. Met my quota, so I got seven minutes instead of five. Plus, got to go up in the first hour. That’s the sweet spot for open mics and bringer shows, hour number one. After that, the crowd thins like male pattern baldness, and you end up performing for empty chairs and tired comics. 

My Wood Ranch crew had split, and I stuck around to watch some guy who was claiming to be the son of Eddie Murphy. There was a resemblance, but by looks only. After his crowd work, he couldn’t tell a knock-knock joke. He wouldn’t make another appearance. 

Rumor had it he overdosed on some nasty blow. Easy narrative to believe if you know anything about the history of The Comedy Store. There’s a mirrored coffee table behind the stage of the Main Room that’s in the shape of a mini piano. A decade of decadence is the only reason for such an accessory to the decor. Comics of the eighties must have been geeked out of their minds on any substance they could get their noses on. 

Many in the business glorify that lifestyle and romanticize it now. Thinking they’re the new breed of rockstar comics. Made me sick. Tell jokes. Write. Rewrite. Tell jokes. The notion that it was party time when you’re stumbling over a five-minute set always drove me insane. I wish I had a tenth of that confidence. 

My pack of Benson and Hedges was empty by the time I pulled the rental van into the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Guess I needed that nicotine after all. I checked into my room on the second floor and took a shower. The hot water and steam revitalized my skin from the plane travel. Gave my hair a second wash to get the smoke out. Nasty habit.  

After brushing my teeth and scrubbing my tongue until it was raw, I got dressed in black jeans and a white button-down with pearl snaps. As long as no drunks on Bourbon Street puked their Hand Grenade cocktail on me, I enjoyed the clean look of a white shirt. Classic aesthetic for going on stage to tell jokes at a new venue. Didn’t matter to me; it was an Irish pub named after a kick-ass cult movie. 

Boondock Saint was a building off Bourbon Street on Saint Peter. Having Cornet as a buffer shielded the Boondock from the sloppiness of the high traffic, but it was no stranger to its misadventures. Not a proprietor in New Orleans was free from that.  

My face cooled from the hot shower during my walk among the pedestrians. Depraved souls ingesting magical elixir, placing their insides somewhere between tingling feels and an utter lack of bodily fluids. When the clock strikes midnight, things happen in reverse. The frog turns into a prince. The wench into a princess. Particularly if you’ve landed at any of the number of the historic bars along the route. Good luck feeling your legs after a few laps of absinthe libations at Jean Lafitte’s Old Absinthe House. That history wasn’t in my cards this early in the night. Not until after the show. I’d walk down and scope the scene. 

First, I sat at the corner of the Boondock bar with a club soda and a lime. Two hours until showtime. Two hours until I found out if the rust was going to handcuff me like a violent felon. Choking the words in my throat as I gripped the mic, and the sweat dam in my pits broke. White shirt, dim bar lights, nobody would notice. I’d feel the drips down the sides of my chest, though. Would that throw me off? Worrying about the wrong things. Tell the jokes, hit the beats, remember the tags. That was the hardest part, remembering the tags. 

Set up into the punchline are the simple parts. Jokes are best when they’re meat and heart, aka tags. Subtle jokes to keep the audience hooked. Drag them along bit by bit until you drop with a haymaker over the top. Right on the chin like a prizefighter of humor. 

Four club sodas had my bladder pushing limits I didn’t know were possible. I didn’t want to give up my seat and miss who was coming and going. Reading the audience was my secret edge. Another hour until the show started. My nerves were rising.  

The bathroom was on the other side of the room. Why is the bathroom always the farthest from the bar? Where patrons drink the most and are more likely to hit the head? Digital jukebox had jazz playing out of the speakers. Didn’t matter; this was an Irish pub, we were in New Orleans. Jazz was king. 

I crossed in front of the mirror and thought I glimpsed the man I was looking for. The one spring loading comics into the afterlife. Nobody was in there but me. Alone with my thoughts. It differed from being surrounded by debauchery and being alone. An isolated, empty bathroom greeted me. Haunting. The stories on the walls of a building from a bygone era weren’t for the faint of heart. Death, crooked deals, deception.  

The door creaked open as I washed my hands, and a man entered. He wore horned rim glasses, a Jimi Hendrix tee shirt, and jeans so frayed and ripped that it must have taken him half an hour to weave his legs in without his toes getting stuck. His boots were heavy on the ground like they were soled with bricks, and his ankles had no flex in them. My guess was, if he hunched below the waist at any point, the final desperate threads of denim would rupture. He couldn’t be the killer comic. Needed more flexibility. More freedom to strike hard. If this guy had a hot baggy of death in his pocket, his unsuspecting victim would be uninterested by the time he retrieved the poison powder. Nope, this man was just another wannabe who didn’t know one lyric from Purple Haze. 

A microphone stand and one speaker were being set up on a small stage at the end of the bar. I introduced myself to the woman. 

“Hi. I’m Damien Chase. You can call me DC.” I stuck out my hand, and she accepted it. 

“Alice McKay. Thanks for doing the show.” 

Her hand was warm and dry, like a towel fresh out of the dryer. I wanted her to place both hands on my cheeks and heat my clean skin. Not the type of request you make upon initial introductions. 

“I’m excited to be here. Only ever performed in California. Love me a good bar show.” 

“It’s a bar show. Good will be another challenge.” She smiled, tucking a strand of curly brown hair behind her ear. “You mind standing in the back while I test the mic?” 

Her natural calmness eased me, and I accepted. “I’m on it.”  

There weren’t many bodies in the pub being over-served, so even a living room karaoke speaker would have reached the back of the pub. No feedback and intelligible sound. I gave her a double thumbs-up. Done and done. 

Two more comics were up on the stage, talking with Alice. One was the guy in the shredded jeans from the bathroom. I hoped he bombed. 

The other was a woman in a brown leather jacket, olive pants, and matching Air Jordan sneakers. It was hard to tell if it was effortless or if she was trying too hard. Her material would be the difference maker. My bet was on the former. Her hair was up in a bun, exposing high cheekbones and a crooked smile. She wasn’t trying to conceal or hide anything like horned-rim Jimi. 

Frauds killed me. Whether they were trying to be the next rock and roll comic or too cool and hip for their good, energy sucked the soul dry when I knew they would go home at the end of the night and shed their layers like a snake.  

We shook hands and made polite introductions. Now, who was the fraud? 

Several more arrived, and I made peace. The guys that sat quietly with their ear buds in going over notes, had my respect. My disdain continued to grow for horn-rimmed Hendrix. Were any of these people the killer? The one going around the LA comedy scene, removing competition, one grungy show after the next. Only the hours passing into the darkest parts of the night will tell me. I had to get in closer. Creep my way into the inner circle.  

In this stage of the comedy game, everybody is the same. Nobody stands out. Just a blur of familiar faces striving for the same goal. The majority will cut bait when they realize raising a family on a couple of Bud Lights and a half dozen chicken wings from a show at the All-Star Bowling Alley in Eagle Rock isn’t going to cut it. A few will go on to travel the road and carve out a reasonable living. That’s all I wanted. See the country telling jokes. Somewhere between those two is this new threat. Death by stand-up. 

To be continued in PART II...