HOW TO GET TIRED OF YOUR ACT IN A SINGLE DAY

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

Doing the same 20 minutes eight times in one day is one way. And somewhere around this day 30 years ago, that is what I had to do. The gig was in downtown San Diego, and was a fairly large indoor venue overlooking a street fair. I don’t remember if it was an annual event, but it was pretty well attended, and during my half-hour breaks between performances, I got to wander around and see such acts as Eric Burdon, Johnny Rivers, and The Staple Singers performing on the fair’s main stage.

How I got the gig I also don’t remember, and as far as I know, I was the only comedy act in the entire fair that day. I do remember that the guy who booked me ran a fairly large comedy venue in the city of Oceanside, about 30 miles north of San Diego that I had worked many times. Sad I can’t remember the name of that club, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the word Comedy was in its name somewhere. I also know the venue was closed after the owner was sued for sexual harassment by several former employees. That came down within a year or so after I’d done this gig.

The format for my gig was simple: Perform for @20 minutes every hour on the hour with a one-hour dinner break from 7:00 to 8:00, rinse and repeat starting at 3:00, and finishing at 11:30-ish. I would have to be done before the half-hour so they could have time to move everyone out, clean up and move the next crowd in. As far as I can remember, the whole thing stayed pretty much on schedule, but in order to keep things on schedule, the bookers were pretty insistent that I do the same 20 minutes or so in each set. That was a disappointment for me, since a good portion of my act involved taking requests from the audience, and sometimes that section could go easily 30 minutes if I was having fun with it.

Even though I was stuck with the same 20 minutes, I had more empathy for the female comic that was also hired to MC each show. Her “MCing” duty involved walking up to the microphone, and saying “Hello and welcome to the comedy show. Please welcome your comedian for today, Rick Right!” Then when I was done, she had to come back up and say “One more time for Rick Right, ladies and gentlemen!” She was also bound by restrictions to do no comedy before bringing me up or after I was done. It seemed rather silly to hire someone to just say those few words when someone offstage in the sound booth could have done the same thing. I asked her later in the day how she felt about doing a minute or two before bringing me up, and she was totally cool with getting paid for what little she was being asked to do, very professional of her. Ultimately this woman was a very good comedienne who has since gone much further in her career than I ever did in mine.

When I finally finished that San Diego gig at 11:30 that night, I packed up and walked back to my car, which I had parked that afternoon near a train station in a not so nice part of town. As I got to my car, I looked up and could see maybe 25 or 30 homeless people camping in their sleeping bags in the entryway to the train station. I reminded myself that as bad as things seem, at least I live somewhere. It was a case of the things we do for love, but in my case, it was a gig I needed to do, a gig that was a salvation of sorts. It was a badly needed thousand dollars that I was getting for that long day, as 1993 would turn out to be the last year until 2001, when I started working full time in UK, that I made my entire living from standup.

Those remaining seven years I was in LA, I pieced things together with a combination of stand-up, working freelance as a stage manager at the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, working in the daytime selling my dad’s newspaper feature to papers across the country, and working nights as a janitor in a yoga studio in Santa Monica. All that would keep the wolf from my door, but to say I wasn’t happy was an understatement. It was such a blessing in autumn of 2000, after I had made my first trip to UK, that I was able to give notice to all my part-time employers. I don’t know if it’s faith or self-confidence, but I’ve now made it to age 73 with my health and most of my brain cells intact. I may have never gotten rich in my pursuits, but I’ve certainly had some fun and frolic along the way.

November 19th, 2023



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