I STILL FEEL A BIT GUILTY, BUT A HACK IS A HACK

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

On the last episode of the Comedy Dish podcast I do on Wednesdays with Steven Alan Green in LA (and me in London, shameless plug), we initiated the first of what will be a running feature entitled You’ve Been Hacked. We discuss instances we’ve seen of either comic thievery or blatant hackery. I mentioned the acts that most often fall into the hack realm, including guitar acts like myself, but also ventriloquists, magicians, and jugglers that often were booked into comedy venues. I must admit that while I never was on the bill with another guitar act, I worked a lot with acts from the other three categories, and while there were the occasional brilliances in the mix, most of them were mediocre at best.

The act I want to talk about was a juggler, the venue a hotel in Prescott, Arizona, about 100 miles north of Phoenix, it was a Friday-Saturday gig, and the year was probably 1989. I can’t remember how I got from Phoenix airport to Prescott, but I’m pretty certain I didn’t meet the juggler until we were both at the hotel. Things started out on a downer as the reception desk clerk told us they only had one room available! This would mean that not only would I have to share a hotel room with this guy, but he had brought his girlfriend along. I was not happy, and was surprised that I was the only one upset about this arrangement. The desk clerk told us there would be additional rooms for the second night of our stay, but I was still seething at how ridiculous this was. I warned the juggler, “Two things about me that you may not like: One, I smoke, and two, I fart. Again, there seemed to be nothing that was going to upset this guy, or his girlfriend, who I remember as being gorgeous, while he was not the least bit handsome. He looked like his name should be Darrell, maybe it was!

Even so, the first night’s show went well for both of us, even though he had little going for him personality-wise on stage. It was sort of like “Now I’ll juggle fruit, now I’ll juggle balls, now I’ll juggle stuffed animals blah blah…” Didn’t even juggle knives or machetes or anything else of real consequence. He got his courtesy applause, then I went up to a very lovely crowd that for a short time made me forget the silliness of being roommates with this guy and his partner. There was surprisingly no incidents back in the room, and I managed to refrain from smoking OR farting the whole night. I would get good news the following morning that a room was available in about an hour, which was great in that I didn’t have to join them for breakfast or really see them at all except at the gig.

That night’s gig was where reality set in for our poor juggler, but better he face the reality that he wasn’t exactly charismatic and maybe use his talents, such as they are, somewhere else. On the Friday show, he had a nice, patient audience, but on Saturday, they wanted to party. Somehow juggling was not going to cut it. They didn’t out and out boo him, but they talked loudly for about the last 25 minutes of his 30-minute set. He merely went by his script, telling what he was going to juggle next, and the crowd responded with “We don’t care, just get the fuck off,” or something equivalent. He had an embarrassed grin the whole time, but you could tell by his body language that he was wishing the floor would swallow him up. When he finished his set and left the stage, he barely even got courtesy applause.

There was no emcee for this gig, only a sound man who introduced the acts from his booth. Unlike the shows I would experience in England a decade later, there was no interval. The only thing separating me and the juggler was the sound man saying, “One more time for (Darrell)! And now to close the show, let’s hear it for the Rock & Roll Comic, Rick Right!” I was due for a pleasant surprise, as I got a laugh in the first 10 seconds, and things went smoothly from there.

Of course, there was only so long I could ignore the elephant remaining in the room. I couldn’t just savour the contrast between a bad act and a good one. No, I felt giddy, and at about 30 minutes in, and at a moment where I had to hold for laughter before starting the next bit, I chose to ask the crowd, “Hey, is it OK if I JUGGLE?” I got uproarious laughter, but I personally felt terrible about it. I mean, the poor guy was vilified by this raucous audience, and I chose to compound his pain. I looked over at the sound man, but he was falling on the floor laughing too, which made me feel worse. Still, I made it through the rest of the set, and got an encore.

After the show, the poor juggler reappeared to remove his remaining props from the stage, and I felt even worse, thinking “Oh no, he probably heard what I said.” He didn’t mention it, and maybe I was lucky, for the next morning, he would be driving me to Phoenix Airport. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of it, for he never brought up what I’d said, nor did we really talk much about the disaster that was his set. He would have been totally within his rights to decide to piss off and leave me trying to figure out how to get to the airport myself. Could he have been that much of a wimp that he let the whole thing slide? I’ll never know, because we never saw each other again. I’m just glad his bomb of a set didn’t happen on the night we were sharing a room!

May 19th, 2023



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