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  The Four Seasons provided me with dates, as well. Not dates, as in the strangest, most dry, sweet, strange-textured fruit on the planet. I mean women. Sometimes, I’d drop the nuts on the table—I’m talking about the nut dish—for random female customers and we’d start talking. If the vibe was right, I’d ask, “You want to go to dinner?” Cruising at work wasn’t my MO, but if a good-looking girl and I seemed to hit it off, I definitely would not shy away from it.

  One girl, a regular, came out with me to a nice Italian place. We sat down, and I bought a couple glasses of wine out of my price range. She ordered the veal scallopini, and I got the chicken picante. It was your average first date: “Where you from?” “How many siblings do you have?” “What are your hobbies?” etc.

  After I put down my fork, she looked at my plate and asked, “You gonna finish that?”

  “Uh, nah, it’s a big portion—”

  “Oh, cool. Do you mind if I take it home for lunch tomorrow?”

  I thought, What? Is she making a profit on this?

  It was one thing to eat off someone’s plate, but this woman wanted to eat out of my doggie bag? I was taken by surprise and stammered, “Oh, yeah, sure. Go ahead.”

  I would no doubt feel hungry at lunchtime tomorrow, too. Why didn’t she think I would want my own leftovers? Did she want to order a dish to go so she would have her dinner tomorrow as well?

  Like the gentleman I am, I drove her home, the doggie bag on the backseat of my car. I dropped her off, never intending to call her again. Halfway home, my phone rang. It was her. “I left the chicken picante in the car,” she said. “Would you mind driving it back to my house?”

  Yeah, I’d mind.

  The problem with being a waiter and dating a customer: They think you live to serve.

  I said, “Oh, sure, I’ll be right there.”

  I continued straight to my house and polished off the picante before hitting the sheets. I am the type of guy who will take leftovers home, and my wife will make sure to tell me, “Don’t touch the eggplant parm! I’m having it for lunch.” And I’ll say, “What eggplant parm? Oh, I ate it at 4 a.m. on the way back from the bathroom. You better get something else for lunch.”

  On average, for a six-hour shift at the Four Seasons my first year, I made $130 a night, including tips. If I worked four nights, I’d make about $500 a week, or $32,000 a year. Factor in another hundred per week in free food, my job made me feel like I was living the high life.

  After six months in L.A., I’d met my modest goal of not going broke and crawling back to Illinois in shame. I had a job, good food, friends, a hangout, a life. And then, out of the blue, my landlord called to say an apartment had opened up on the opposite side of the building, and I could move over there if I still wanted to.

  I opened my curtains for a quick peek, and there was Paul, standing in the window with his dick pressed against the glass, waving at me.

  I said to the landlord, “I’ll take it.”

  I moved into an identical unit that faced Hollywood Boulevard. A few blocks away on that street: the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Madame Tussaud’s, and the cement footprints of legends outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. At work, I served the stars. On my own block, I could walk in their footsteps. I was right in the middle of it all. Every day, I could touch, taste, smell, and serve drinks to the life I’d dreamed about.

  In terms of getting anywhere in comedy, however, I might as well have been living on the moon. I wasn’t doing much in entertainment, but L.A. was sure as hell entertaining me.

  2

  * * *

  COOKING LESSONS

  One question that comes up a lot in comedy is, “Are people born funny?” Is a sense of humor in your DNA, like brown eyes and intelligence?

  If so, then everyone in my family was born with it, and so were all my friends. Nothing was valued higher in my crew or family than cracking each other up with a good joke, the ultimate trash talk burn (my friends and I would tear each other to pieces, laughing so hard we cried), a witty observation, or just a stupid face. I remember being really little, smiling and watching as my parents and their friends belly-laughed around our kitchen table. Making my parents laugh was, for me, like scoring the winning rim shot at the buzzer. We all crave our parents’ approval, and I got it whenever I said or did something funny. The sparkle in their eyes beamed directly on me.

  It sounds corny, but my family was my first audience, the kitchen was my first stage. I felt the most comfortable there, acting out stories, doing impersonations. An impression that always killed at the table was Christopher Lloyd’s Reverend Jim Ignatowski from Taxi. I would go into “Ohhhkey dokey” in the way he would say it, and it was a sure home run. These were the early stages of my being a performer. When someone got out of their chair to demonstrate a story, (a) it better be funny, and (b) it better be quick. I would share stories about school and my friends. Dad would share stories about his clients and work. My mom would add the witty commentary and always laugh at both of us. My sister didn’t participate in those nights until she was older. As we helped ourselves to multiple servings of whatever was for dinner, we would talk into the wee hours of the night like it was Thanksgiving.

  When we went over to my grandparents’ house, my goal was to make them laugh, too. Problem was, they didn’t speak English, and I know, it’s a cardinal sin that I never learned Italian. We were too busy correcting my father’s English to learn another language. This communication barrier with my grandparents forced me to develop a way to make them laugh through facial expressions and physical movements.

  Meanwhile, in elementary school, I turned the dial way down. If at home my volume went to eleven, at school I held it down to a two, max. Class clown? Not me. I flew so far below the radar, I don’t think the teachers even knew I was in the classroom. I was the quiet kid in the back, sitting stiffly, taking it all in, observing the world around me. And then when I got home, I’d wrap my observations into stories and jokes, and present them to my parents like gifts.

  The first time I called attention to myself in a big way at school was in the fourth grade, when I had to present an oral book report to the whole class. I was a wreck about it. Get up there, in front of everyone, and talk nonstop for five whole minutes? I had my first case of stage fright, which on top of my being an anxious kid in general was frankly terrifying. I would watch everyone else get up there and say, “Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the You-Ny-Ted States. He wore a tall hat and had a fucked-up beard,” or whatever they would say. We all got up at 6 a.m. to catch the bus in a snowstorm to come to school and this is the performance you’re giving? I looked at everything as a performance, and I could never handle sitting through something boring. You have to give people something worth the price of admission. If I had been casting a show called Life, none of them would have gotten the part. They were dying up there.

  I couldn’t get up there and continue to put the audience to sleep. I had to show them how it was done, or not do it at all. My teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald, said if I didn’t do the report, he’d have to call my parents in for a conference to talk about it. My dad would be pissed to have to leave work. Mom would fret. Whenever my parents were brought in for a conference, my mom didn’t care so much about my grades. All she would ask was “But is he popular?” She was bullied as a kid, and she hoped her kids would not have to go through what she did.

  I hated the idea of stressing her out or, of course, embarrassing her (as in, “My son flunked fourth grade!”). The only thing that scared me more than doing five minutes in front of a tough crowd of fourth graders was upsetting my parents. I wanted to make them proud.

  My father was a great music lover, especially R&B. While my friends’ parents listened to the Beatles and Elvis Presley, my father blasted Grover Washington, Ramsey Lewis, Lionel Richie, the Four Tops, the Temptations, and Miles Davis. He would pay the bills listening to jazz sax only. My mother danced to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” while
scrubbing dried lasagna off the dishes.

  I felt like I lived in a black house with nothing but black music. When my friends got into bands like Mötley Crüe, I would say, “What the hell is that?” To me, metal wasn’t music. It was noise. On TV, they watched Tom and Jerry, while I was obsessed with Soul Train. I recorded and studied it every week to learn new moves. I would go to school, and the smartest kid, Eddie Lobenhoffer, brought in an active volcano he made over the weekend. I’d think, Very impressive, Eddie. But can you do the Running Man? Eddie would pop his arm up to answer one science and history question after the next. I’d think, Good for you, kid, but do you have any idea who Don Cornelius is, or his enormous impact on society?

  The legendary Soul Train line dance was way more interesting than a science fair project to me. Don Cornelius, the show’s host and creator, with his ’fro and soothing voice, gave the black community a place to boogie, and taught this Italian-American eight-year-old how to groove. All of my idols were black: Michael Jackson, New Edition, Bell Biv DeVoe, Boyz II Men, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Michael Jordan. Murphy always seemed animated, free, physical, and real, and I gravitated toward that.

  The book I chose for my report was a biography of Stevie Wonder. Why him? He was one of Dad’s favorites, and according to the biography, Stevie led an incredible life, giving me plenty of material to draw from. But I wasn’t going to tell his story. Every kid did his report that way and they were so boring. I had to make mine entertaining for the class to watch and for me to perform. I’d made my parents and friends laugh doing impressions, and I’d seen Eddie Murphy’s Stevie Wonder on Saturday Night Live. I decided, with the confidence and balls of a much older kid (like twelve), that I’d do my report as Stevie.

  I practiced for days in front of the mirror in my room. In the school library, I scrolled through microfiche photos of Stevie. I got my hands on a VHS tape of Eddie Murphy’s impression and studied that. I couldn’t have been better prepared, but I was still anxious. With sweaty armpits, I waited for my turn to do my report, and when Mr. Fitzgerald called my name, I sprang up. I ran out of the classroom and returned a moment later wearing the dark sunglasses and hat I’d seen Stevie wear on TV. For some reason, my father had bought the perfect pair of sunglasses on Taylor Street, a place that saw white customers about once a year (probably my father). He thought black people were snazzy dressers and he always wanted to have clothes that nobody else had. He didn’t buy the hat, or glasses, specifically for my report, but some things are just meant to be.

  (Quick story about me wearing Dad’s Taylor Street finds: One night in high school, I went out to meet my friends in my father’s red leather lace-up shoes. If you came out in new shoes or a new shirt or hairstyle, anything different, my friends would rip you to shreds. That night, I remember getting “Circus in town?” and “Are you one of the Super Mario Bros.?” While I was trying to pick up a girl, they started humming the Super Mario Bros. theme song. The unspoken rule was and still is: You have to be able to dish it out and take it. If you showed any sign of weakness, it would be an invitation for them to rip on you even more.)

  In my Stevie Wonder costume, I made my big entrance, stage left, my heart jackrabbiting in my chest. As I crossed to front and center of the room, my head aimed up at the ceiling, my neck swiveling, a Stevie grin pasted on my face, I could feel the entire class wake up and then they started clapping. I waited for the sudden (and surprising) applause to die down. Instead of a dry start like “Stevie Wonder was born May 13, 1950,” I did an impression of my subject’s high voice, and said, “Hi, I’m Stevie Wonder. I was born on May 13, 1950. I must’ve looked like a girl because when I was born, my mother said . . . [singing] Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she won-der-ful? Isn’t she precious? Less than one minute old . . .”

  The class went nuts. I played it up—swaying, pretending to flip my dreadlocks—and kept going with my report. From my opener to my closer, the other kids never once stopped laughing. I got some major howls, some nervous giggles. Kids looked from me to Mr. Fitzgerald, dumbfounded, like, Can he do this? Is this allowed? Is he gonna get in trouble?

  Look, fourth graders will, generally speaking, roll on the floor laughing over a fart. But, just maybe, the class laughed because my impression and jokes were premium-quality comedy. This prepubescent audience was stunned. This wasn’t The Jetsons or The Flinstones, this was highly developed SNL-type humor. I got my first taste of what it felt like to perform in front of people outside my dinner table circle.

  I’d told my second-grade teacher that I wanted to be a standup comedian. Who knew my first set would come just two years later?

  After that breakthrough report (got an A; thanks, Mr. Fitz!), I wasn’t quite as shy anymore. The kids expected me to be funny now, and I liked the attention. I’d developed this ability at the kitchen table, in ripping sessions with my friends, studying comedians on TV and at the movies, and perfecting my impressions in my bedroom mirror (I had a killer Michael Jackson, too). I developed my sense of humor like the basketball players practiced on the court. But I also had the awareness that if funniness hadn’t already been in my blood to begin with, it wouldn’t have mattered how much I worked on it.

  So to answer the question “Is being funny something you’re born with?” my answer would have to be yes. I was funny at home before I took my show on the road to school. With the positive response, I let my humor show, and it came out more and more. I worked at it, but I didn’t have to try too hard to be funny, I just was. Like my parents. Like my friends. I was always around funny people, and that raised the game for all of us. Funny was like food. It was on the table, the source of connection and attention. Funny was how I related to people and, after age nine, to myself.

  THE NEXT QUESTION that comes up at lot is, “Can a person learn to be funny?”

  If you weren’t born with it, but really, really want to be funny, can you take a class or something? Can comedy be taught?

  Comedy can absolutely be taught, just like acting, dancing, and writing. It is being taught all over the place. Type into Google “standup comedy class” plus your zip code, and I bet you can find a class for this weekend within driving distance.

  Whether comedy is successfully taught, however, is debatable.

  Let me back that up. I happen to know for a fact that any person, born funny or unfunny, who takes a course of eight Saturday seminars with a professional comedian at a reputable club, who does the homework and puts in the effort, will be able to pull together a ten-minute standup act. It will not utterly humiliate that person if it’s performed in front of a live audience of his or her best friends and beloved family members. But should that person devote his or her life to comedy?

  Talent is a determining factor in all success stories. You cannot be talented at everything. I learned this firsthand when I played basketball in high school. I was on the freshman B team. My position was at the end of the bench. And in case you’re wondering, no, I did not sit there the entire season. They put me in when our team was up by thirty points or more, when there was no risk of my inability to bounce the ball with one hand turning the game around.

  My game was soccer. My mullet didn’t really look the part of a basketball player, anyway. It was more of a “Bon Jovi meets soccer” look. Hey, my dad was a hairstylist. Instead of trying out styles on some creepy mannequin head, I let him try them out on me. The mullet was permed. I was the only guy with this look, and I think it was my secret weapon to running a successful fast break. I exchanged tips with the cheerleaders about how to minimize the frizz, get more volume, and whatnot.

  No matter how many drills I did, how bad I wanted it, what hairstyle I was trying out, or how hard I practiced, I would never be the next Michael Jordan. He was born with a gift. So was I, but it wasn’t for basketball.

  LIVING IN L.A., I realized something. Apart from one disastrous gig in my college years, I hadn’t ever stood alone on a stage, in a single tight spotlight, a mic stand in front of me a
nd a brick wall behind me. I needed experience, and the only place I imagined getting it was at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip.

  The Comedy Store was the very place almost every major comedian got started or cut his or her teeth. It still is the place for that. Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Roseanne Barr, David Letterman—I wanted my name on that list, but how? You don’t just walk in there and introduce yourself to Mitzi Shore, the legendary proprietor who has spotted and nurtured comedic genius for nearly fifty years. She had no idea who the hell I was (despite the fact that she had been sent my two head shot mailings . . .). She had total control over the lineups—who got to perform at the club, and when. If you didn’t get Mitzi’s stamp of approval, you would never step one foot onto any stage of hers.

  I’d already sussed out that up-and-comers needed an introduction to Mitzi by someone she knew and trusted. But how was I going to arrange that? I didn’t know anyone or anything in or about the comedy world in L.A. No one. Nothing. According to what I’d heard, it could take years of showcases and open mics at lesser clubs, tons of networking and schmoozing, before you could finagle an introduction to Mitzi. Even then, she might reject you flat out, or give you a five-minute set on a Tuesday at 7 p.m. when not a soul was there.

  After six months in L.A., I was settled in at my job at the Four Seasons and had a stable living situation. So I could finally exhale, relax a bit, and turn my attention to the reason I moved West in the first place: doing comedy, ideally at the Comedy Store. There had to be a way to speed up the approval process. I thought I’d found it when I learned that Sandi Shore, daughter of Mitzi and sister of Pauly, taught a class every weekend in the Belly Room at the Comedy Store. The Belly Room was the smallest of the club’s three stages (the other two were the classic standup space the Original Room and a Vegas-style showroom for headliners called the Main Room). The Belly Room was smaller, darker, initially created in the seventies by Mitzi as a female-comedians-only stage (Sandra Bernhard got her start there). In the late nineties when I arrived on the scene, it was open to all-gender performances at night. On Sundays, it doubled as a classroom.