SHOULD HAVE BEEN A LONELY CHRISTMAS, BUT WASN’T

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

A couple Christmases ago, I pissed and moaned about the loneliest Christmas I’d ever spent, which is now exactly 50 years into my past, in Anchorage, Alaska. I talked about how it was the first time I had been away from family at Christmas, and there would not be another such Holiday season until 1999. So that is the one I choose to reminisce about four days before Christmas and 24 years after the fact.

Over the previous year, I had been enlisted to work with a comic/actor named Marc Price, who had earned his way into TV history by playing the recurring character of Skippy in the hit TV show “Family Ties,” which sent Michael J. Fox into his first phase of superstardom. Marc was also a standup, and had always respected me as both a comic and musician, so when he came to me in mid-1998 with an idea to, instead of a standard comedy show with opener, MC and headliner, do a talk show in comedy clubs with a celebrity guest that he would interview, I was quick to say yes. I would function as the warmup act as well as the house band. He managed to book a run of gigs in various venues in Canada. He also had, as his celebrity guest, former child star Emmanuel Lewis, best known for his starring role in the family sitcom “Webster.” He still looked exactly the same as he had 15-16 years earlier, which meant that pretty much everywhere we went, he was asked for autographs.

What was really great for me in these gigs was the chance to use songwriting skills. Before bringing Emmanuel Lewis up, Marc would pick some local business owner to chat with. He would find out the nature of the person’s business, and I would retire backstage. I would come back about five minutes later to perform a musical ad for the guy’s business that I had written on the spot. I pretty much kept the same tune every night, with different lyrics, but gotta say that was one of the best combined tests of my musical and comedic skills. The gigs went quite well, but it was hard to keep momentum, mostly because Emmanuel Lewis wasn’t available, and Marc couldn’t find anyone on a comparable scale to join us on any regular basis.

We did a week-long gig at the Improv in Reno, Nevada in April of 1999, and while most of the week involved persuading local comics who might have not been working one night to come in and be a guest, the star quality wasn’t quite there. He did manage to get porn star Ron Jeremy to come in one night, which was sort of nostalgic for me, as Ron had been a fan of my act from when I first started working solo at LA’s Comedy Store. He was crude but admittedly funny. Sad to see what’s happened to him.

So don’t worry I’m getting to the Christmas connection!! Marc and I managed to do the chat show bit a couple times at LA’s Laugh Factory, but I was going through some turmoil most of 1999, as my second marriage had ended right after I got back from that April trip to Reno. I had spent most of the second half of the year trying to sort out what my place in the world was going to be. I didn’t know that the answer to all my problems would come only a year later, and I’m still in awe of all the major bullets I dodged.

Marc contacted me about a return week in Reno, and it turned out to encompass Christmas. From my standpoint, I thought, what the hell, my 49th birthday in November had been lonely and boring enough, so I didn’t hesitate to book that one and explain to my family, “Keep the presents wrapped, I’ll be there on the 28th.” We would still do the same format of show, except finding guests was a near impossibility, so it was more of Marc and myself playing off each other, which astonished me how well that worked. I’m 18 years older than him, yet somehow we read each other really well.

What really astonished me about that whole week was that the people who were up in Reno for Christmas didn’t really seem to notice the calendar. They were there to gamble, ski, and drink, just as they would on almost any other week of the year. So we did two shows on Christmas Eve, two shows on Christmas day, and two shows every other night too. The shows on all nights of the 7-night run were consistently well attended. And I was still creating musical ads for whatever business was willing to give me and Mark their vital statistics. The only difference was almost every sponsor wasn’t local, but I was able to incorporate the actual location in the words of the ad.

One of the more memorable people I met was a young woman who was going to the local university, but was paying her way through school by working in the “world’s oldest profession.” She may have been totally bullshitting me about the college stuff, but it made for an interesting story, and no, I didn’t partake. I wasn’t making THAT much money!

I partied rather extensively that week in Reno, as we had unlimited bar tab, but when it came to an end, I made my way to Woodside, 30 miles south of San Francisco, on the 28th, where my brother, his family, and my parents held back on some of the festivities until I arrived. The only other thing I remember was going to bed really early that night (before midnight) and sleeping nearly ten hours completely uninterrupted. I don’t recall that ever happening since. There was also an interesting New Year’s gig a few days later that I will be talking about next week.

I won’t be alone this Christmas, thank god, once again with Maggie and family. Hope you all have people you can share the holidays with. Best wishes to all of you!!

December 21st, 2023



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