In 1989, I managed to drop my ass out of college, move to the east side of Milwaukee, got a dayjob making sandwiches, and began doing standup comedy 6 nights/week.
To say the least, these were busy times.
The first time I ever set foot onstage as a standup was at the age of 16. A friend of mine, Kevin Anderson, was interested in giving comedy a go, but he was only 15, so he asked if I'd be interested in taking the spotlight at an open mike...and give him a ride.
We sloughed off to The Comedy Cottage in Rosement, across the highway from O'Hare airport, so you know the place was pure class, and we were introduced to club owner, Big Ed Hildebrandt. Ed lived up to his monicker, in vast size and persona. To get a real picture of the man, recall Captain Lou Albano from the 80's, down to the Hawaiian shirt uncomfortably hugging his massive belly.
Kevin took the stage, in front of the 4 paying, shitfaced customers, and utterly bombed. I felt a brick drop into my guts. I was to go up next.
I remember these details: The spotlight was blinding. The club was too too too empty. I had nothing to talk about. All of the little bits I'd dreamed up, watching myself destroy the room, disappeared and were replaced by a dry mouth, shaking hands, and the desire to shriek and run out the front door. But I stayed up there, the entire, painful, 8 minutes. I think I managed to get a single laugh, but that might be my brain trying to take some of the sting out of the memory.
I was hooked.
So in '89, I began to emcee at a tiny, shithole club in the hotel bar of a Days Inn in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Uncle Eugene's (the name would change later to the uber-hilarious and easy to remember "Sir Laughs A Lot Comedy Castle"). Owned by comic Tim Kaminsky and run by a woman named Amy, the club was where I developed my chops. Week after week I'd take that tiny stage, stare at the blanket of bored faces staring back at me, and give it my balls-out-all. During the week, there were several open mikes around Milwaukee that I'd hit, the same clique of young comedians appearing at every single stop. I made some important, incredible, and somewhat insane friends during this time.
It was an amazing, innocent, exciting time in my life. It seemed that the world was mine for the taking, and in a way, it really was: I was realizing a dream. A dream that would eventually lead to me basically living out of my car all over the country for 6 years, a dream that would see my life threatened on a few occassions, a dream that taught me that you can become a bitter old man at 25 years of age. But I'll never say, "What if?".
To say the least, these were busy times.
The first time I ever set foot onstage as a standup was at the age of 16. A friend of mine, Kevin Anderson, was interested in giving comedy a go, but he was only 15, so he asked if I'd be interested in taking the spotlight at an open mike...and give him a ride.
We sloughed off to The Comedy Cottage in Rosement, across the highway from O'Hare airport, so you know the place was pure class, and we were introduced to club owner, Big Ed Hildebrandt. Ed lived up to his monicker, in vast size and persona. To get a real picture of the man, recall Captain Lou Albano from the 80's, down to the Hawaiian shirt uncomfortably hugging his massive belly.
Kevin took the stage, in front of the 4 paying, shitfaced customers, and utterly bombed. I felt a brick drop into my guts. I was to go up next.
I remember these details: The spotlight was blinding. The club was too too too empty. I had nothing to talk about. All of the little bits I'd dreamed up, watching myself destroy the room, disappeared and were replaced by a dry mouth, shaking hands, and the desire to shriek and run out the front door. But I stayed up there, the entire, painful, 8 minutes. I think I managed to get a single laugh, but that might be my brain trying to take some of the sting out of the memory.
I was hooked.
So in '89, I began to emcee at a tiny, shithole club in the hotel bar of a Days Inn in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Uncle Eugene's (the name would change later to the uber-hilarious and easy to remember "Sir Laughs A Lot Comedy Castle"). Owned by comic Tim Kaminsky and run by a woman named Amy, the club was where I developed my chops. Week after week I'd take that tiny stage, stare at the blanket of bored faces staring back at me, and give it my balls-out-all. During the week, there were several open mikes around Milwaukee that I'd hit, the same clique of young comedians appearing at every single stop. I made some important, incredible, and somewhat insane friends during this time.
It was an amazing, innocent, exciting time in my life. It seemed that the world was mine for the taking, and in a way, it really was: I was realizing a dream. A dream that would eventually lead to me basically living out of my car all over the country for 6 years, a dream that would see my life threatened on a few occassions, a dream that taught me that you can become a bitter old man at 25 years of age. But I'll never say, "What if?".
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