Giraldo's tape

 I owe him.  His death forced me back to that tape that I've had buried for years.  Every once in a while I would hand it to a new comic for them to see what they were like back then.  Or take an older comic down memory lane. I handed to Rick at The Comedy Studio to look at...one of the few humans in Boston who knows what the fuck I referring to from this time period...and he transferred it to disc from VHS for me. I got the tape back...I always get the tape back because I am scared that it will end up on the internet...but didn't get the disc. Until now.  I knew as soon as I heard Greg was dead that I wanted to see it again so drove down to the Studio and got it.  To see if we were real.

I never thought that he would be the one who twisted into this kind of drug addicted tortured soul. He wasn't the one I would have called to end like this. There were plenty of others early on whom I questioned their longevity on this planet.  But Greg was the guy who the day job who trudged away at comedy like a miner in a big funny tunnel.  He was  a very nice hard working man.  A wildly smart very nice hard working man.

From what I had heard, he had been abusing himself pretty badly the last couple of years.  But he also had a couple of kids that my friend Anna had just seen on the subway with him.  He introduced them to her.  This was a guy who may have been fucked up but ran on a code of ethics.  Abuse himself? Fair game.  Abuse his kids by leaving them without a father?  I don't know about that. Folks are already buzzing about suicide.  Either way, he is still gone.  Which may not surprising for recent Greg but was really a shot out of left field for old Greg.

So I thought to myself, did I imagine this?  How much in my past is mixed up with emotional attachment.  Was it really like it was in my very damaged memory?  I have had a life that is littered with wikipedia name entries.  Especially with comedy.  Sometimes it doesn't seem real.  It is like a dream that I had after watching too many Youtube comedy uploads. I am not a famous person.  I shouldn't know the comic who died this tragically young.  The next Bill Hicks.  My memory was lacking but I had that tape. One hour and four minutes of confirmed past.

The tape started because I wanted to do a documentary on the comedy scene in New York. I was well liked enough to get people to interview. I had good questions because I knew my subject.  And I had a really shitty camera with no experience shooting it.  To be fair to my boyfriend at the time who lent it to me, it was a pretty good one at the time for regular stuff in daylight 1992. At night. I hauled it around to clubs with me.  There is a Christmas tree on one stage. Winter coats.   Right before January.  The light has a yellow tinge to it. Some reds.  Probably because the lighting was always lower in the bar areas. There seems to be more people in a small spaces than it does now in the places that still exist.  Like all of the comics were piling on each other.  Lots of loud noises.  Lots of laughter.  These places seem so quiet and sterile to me now when I go back.  Back then there was so much affection.  I guess it is there now.  I just don't know the people anymore.  I don't hear the noise.

I take it to The Comic Strip on the Upper East Side.  It had booths back then.  We would pop back and forth between them.  Talk to the audience and other comics filing out of the show room enroute to the front door.  It starts almost in the dark with a string of dick jokes.  Debbie Perlman's voice.  Jim Mendrinos's voice.  I interview Jim, Theresa Molillo, Walli Collins.  Why do you do comedy?  What happens to you when you are scared?  Is comedy dying?  Give me your best hell gig.  Chris Kies does his Clinton impersonation.  Warren Hutchenson walks through.  I yell at Joey Vega.  The comics onstage are Danny Devito (later Vermont) and Jim.  At the end there is a short passing of the mic between Anna Miller, hosting, and Debbie.  My two best girl comic friends at that time. 

Then we are all at The Olive Tree over The Comedy Cellar.  We are at the series of tables together. I am shooting Dennis Regan who wants me to get him drinking water on tape while Theresa, Anna, Laura Brossard and Todd Barry watch. Raphy, the son of the owner of the Village Gate pops his head into the frame.

Then we go to Mineola on Long Island.   We are at Chuckles, Anna Debbie and I .  We didn't go out there that much but when we did, good things happened.  It was such a great room.  It had audience that didn't have to be coerced.  Jim Gaffigan was already out there.  Greg probably drives us home to New York later. I know we had done that in that time period with him and it would make sense in the winter.  He was like that.  He would have made sure that we got home all right in the cold.

John Truesome is managing the club.  I interview him.  I have footage of Gaffigan and Truesome and Mike Grief onstage.  Jim waiting at the side to go on, still so young with longer hair than I remember, thinner than I remember.  Mike and Truesome sing a funny song.  The room is huge compared to a lot of clubs now.  I shoot the kitchen.  I don't know why.  And I shoot Greg.  Out there on stage with body language that should not be that relaxed two years into his career.  He worked the audience with his ridiculously fast mind pumping out jokes.  His stuff was tighter, shorter bits than it was later.  Topics were a little safer.  But he slips in an IRA reference. I realize now that I won't ever post any of  those stand up sets that I taped out of respect to the comics.  Jim never gave me permission and neither did Greg although they were probably aware I was doing it. The camera was the size of a small room. But that material is something that they may want to control the output to the public.   It isn't my place to put out their early pieces.  I would be pissed if someone did it to me.

Everything on the stage is too white.  Everything up till then off stage had been too dark.  But Greg was just right.  44 minutes into the tape and he is the only thing that is well lit on the whole damn reel. We are sitting at a table across from the very loud bar with a Jet's game playing that he keeps trying to catch out of the corner of his eye.  He is a little heavier than he has been in recent years.  His hair is still dark, not speckled with gray yet.  His eyes are deep brown and there is a twinkle in them every time he answers a question and something teasing comes out.  Which is just about every time I ask him something.  He laughs.  He makes fun of Gaffigan. He defends himself off from discomfort by making jokes before he answers questions straight.  God bless him, he tolerates this project of mine with kind humor despite the fact that I am using shitty equipment with little professionalism.  He is there the way I remember him.  Smart.  Handsome.  Sweet.  Funny.  Flippant. He was really that great. Our lives were really that great.  And I can show people that Greg Giraldo arrived in this package, only getting more skilled until he became the sad brilliant comic that people loved.

Chuckles is gone.  The Comic Strip booths that we would crawl all over each other on are gone.  Greg, unbelievably, is gone now now too.  But we know what it was like, our tribe of comics and we remember each other for who were going to be as much as what we became.

Television set wisdom

I've been logging a lot of time on a television set lately.  A sound stage,  not a boxy thing with shows emitting from it. And we get to talking, the other folks I work with and I.  Or miming at each other.  For long period of time.  Sometimes I learn something.  About music.  Relationships.  Industry gossip.  Books.  How pot works. Lots of things.

Today I garnered this piece of wisdom (amongst other things I will reiterate some time down the line). If a woman is heavily tattooed, she is very like to flash chest parts if you seem interested enough in her body art.  And ladies, don't let them fool you when they are ooh and ah-ing over the body art on your torso.  No matter how good the work is, they are still thinking, "Look. Boobies."

I sleep better knowing that I am well informed.

There's Canceled And Then There's Canceled.

Fucking Red Sox.  An entire city run by a baseball team.  I could have told them that this gig was going to bite the dust without even leaving the house if I bothered to look at the playing schedule.

But I don't mind it being canceled.  I mind it being canceled for baseball sucking away all of the people.  I would have liked to perform.  I keep blowing out my voice running through this bits with characters attached to them and I need the people to play them off of effectively.  They are at the stage when I need to see how to play it out. But oh well.  I am not up to par anyway.  Can't figure out if I'm sick or just worn out.  Adrenaline is a real interesting thing.  It probably would have knocked me back up to par but the drop back down would more than likely made me a total zombie afterwards.

I did get to speak to Jon about opening at Funny Bones in Hartford and doing the show with Carole again.  Two big things that I would have gotten my ass down to the club for whether I was working or not.

And now I am in my bed.  Not driving.  Tired as hell. So it worked out.  Got my work duties done.  Now I can pass out on my face.

The Curse Of The Good Audition

So now I am its bitch.  Waiting until the window of opportunity rots away into nothing.  Or not.  Till the phone actually rings and the casting director with the kind voice gets to tell me that she has good news, waiting for me to thank her effusively. Which I usually deliver with gusto since I'm the same person who screams, "I LOVE YOU!" when they give me extra work with a 1pm call time.

Sigh.

It's a great feeling, having industry kiss your ass a little. Keeps you going after using your head for a battering ram a substantial part of your career.  We are the abused wives of show business.

I nailed the little fucker to the wall.  The reading.  Not the casting director.  That would be unethical and kind of gross. There is one thing that I do exceptionally well that a lot of other people in the local business have a hard time matching up to me (that and exhibit extreme modesty)(that's a joke, imaginary person reading this).  I can hit broad comedy on a small screen hard.  There's this tiny piece of moment that I can orchestrate into funny that takes a built in instinct to grab and twist into something different.  In a broad sense, it would fall under comedic timing.  But in reality it is knowing when its okay to let your sense of absurdity out of the gate.  Which I attribute to relying on character choices completely.  And trusting that even though you may offend or make an ass out of yourself, there is no wrong as long it is natural for them to do whatever works. It makes me high.  I get an endorphin rush.  The casting director and her assistant are entertained.  I hear the words, "I love you. I wish I had bigger roles for you to read."  Over 20 years all affirmed in one shot. It's like crystal meth that you only get a couple of times a year if you are lucky.

And you wait for the phone to ring. Or not.  Because they may not want your physical type.  They may want someone who contrasts with the lead more.  They may want something else that you cannot be. And then you wait for another time to get the high of playing with a part that is so rare. So funny.  So easy to hear how to play when you are allowed into the room.

Cocaine was an easier drug.

I hate shoes

Sometimes I get really pissed off because I have to wear shoes.  In fact, I spend a fair deal of not cold part of the year dreading when my feet will be held hostage by socks. So, really, I hate both shoes and socks.  They represent cold and they represent places that require footwear. If God meant for us to be running around with leather or cloth surrounding our feet, he wouldn't give us toes to grip things.

See, its this kind of logic that keeps me from thinking of things that I should be genuinely frightened of in my life.  Like potential drinking water contamination at home in the Catskill via natural gas fracking and not going to the dentist for 9 years.   I almost see worrying about shoes as a form of freedom that I am blessed to experience.  Along with worrying about audits, body hair and who isn't booking me. After all, I used to have my entire life run by neurologists and my neurosurgeon.  And taking pills, some times a  pile of them at once.  Things can certainly be worth worrying about more seriously.

I still hate you, shoes.  Cold weather is coming and I will stretch out my time left with flipflops for as long as my pain threshold can take it.  Or at work where they make me because fake medical examiner lab technicians would be busted by OSHA if they weren't wearing any and dead people leave gross puddles. Or possibly on stage.  On second thought, fuck it.  Why do I care if I have shoes on on stage?  The audience can handle it.