"... I know assholes who deserve to be caught naked with a little boy, an AOL account and a Bible but instead they are regulars on Letterman..."
Pluck Me, July 22, 1997
My
legs ache
My heart is sore
The well is full of pennies
;
Tom Waits
The New Faces showcase at this week's Montreal Comedy Festival will include my alpha-hydroxied puss. I am, as we say in the swimming world, shaved and tapered. I've worked every week since October of last year, and I've kept a gratitude journal. I do my Artist's Way morning pages every night before I go to bed, and daily I affirm that I, Laurie, deserve to be successful. My timing is as sharp as it will ever be, and I have a brand new skirt.
Comedyland is rife with stories of discoveries that happened at Montreal. So-and-so got a huge development deal. Tom Rhodes got his (now canceled) show, Mr Rhodes, from his Montreal set, and David Feldman got a writing gig on the Dennis Miller show. I've been told that they hand out development deals to comics like candy to skinny boys on Halloween. I roll my eyes at each tale of treasure and inside I pray that it's true.
My friend Rose says I deserve success. Yeah. She's sweet, but she's got it all wrong. Deserve has nothing to do with it. I know assholes who deserve to be caught naked with a little boy, an AOL account and a Bible but instead they are regulars on Letterman. Karma doesn't matter. The bottom line is a bottom line. Can someone with some money make more of it off me? I am flying to Quebec tonight to convince them, OH YES!
Last week, my last week in comedy before I get what I deserve by the way, I worked in my favorite road town, Portland. I was on a mission for good Montreal vibes and unfortunately, I had a terrible scare. The landlord of the club's condo is also a professional palmreader. On Friday night the other comics, Dave Anderson and Ron Osbourne, and I shoved our splayed palms into Anna's face and demanded readings. Dave and Ron seemed satisfied with their fortunes, odd especially since one of them will outlive his spouse by ten years. Oh well, none of my business.
My turn at bat was not so gratifying. Anna looked hard into my hand. Tell me good woman, I murmured, what is the name of my sitcom? She hmmmed and peered harder.
"Laurie," she said, "you are going to be a great humanitarian."
Excuse me?
"Yes, one day- a great humanitarian!"
A
humanitarian ? Witch! Sorceress! Satan's Mistress! Oh, oh, woe is me. Only someone who lies, cheats and steals so he one day can be a rich, fat superstar can comprehend my despair. A humanitarian? Moi? The only humanitarian act that a misanthrope like me can strive for is suicide. And just when I am contemplating that suddenly attractive option, Anna tells me that I will live to be, "well over one hundred."
No.
I had to sit down. This was all too horrid. First off, I'm looking forward to getting cancer at around sixty. That's about all of this Earth's circus that I can take. 'Well over one hundred' equals close to eighty more years. If most of them are spent as a humanitarian, it's time to start smoking.
She's got the wrong hand. Seriously, I can't stand being nice to people. If I do it for more than three minutes in a row, my head starts throbbing and it won't stop until I go to a coffee house and write a mean joke about Mother Theresa. And now this charlatan who probably endorses homeopathy is telling me that I'll be helpful and good til I die in 2077. I'm outraged. Somebody call a doctor. Make it a Kervorkian.
I fretted for 24 hours over my dilemma. I considered pulling out of Montreal so I could beat up an old lady and reclaim my black heart. The next night Dave and I got to talking about another comic's wife, whose very guts I hate for trivial and childish reasons. Dave, after listening to twenty minutes of my bitching about the length of her stupid ugly fingernails, announced that I should stop worrying about my reading. With a chip like that on your shoulder, Laurie, he said, you'll never be anything but a snarling curmudgeon. Whew. Thank you God, and thank you Dave Anderson. I will always love you!
Back to my dreams.
What I have been laboring to explain to you, dear reader, as I sit in United's bulkhead window seat, writing a pilot and casting my deserving friends as wacky neighbors, is that I am ripe. True, I started in the San Francisco comedy scene as an unsure and gawky bud, but in the ten years since, I've been watered, fertilized and crop dusted. I'm ripe and juicy and it's harvest season in the Central Valley.
Pluck me.
I am a slutty confident apple now, and I want to be plucked. Really, I want it. Look at what I'm wearing; I'm all but asking for it. Pluck me. I am teetering on my whorish Pluck Me pumps, and I am giving you a come hither look, Montreal. Pluck me. Pluck me from behind. Pluck me doggie style, I don't care! Just pluck me. Pluck me like an animal or pluck me with a blunt object. Just do it.
Pluck me, you dumb motherplucker. I am dangling sumptuously from this tree and I'm anxious to be baked into the seams of a delicious holiday pie.
Pluck me.
