FRIday, JUNE 1, 2001

Nothing better than getting laughs

 

I remember reading once that the single most common phobia people have is speaking before a crowd.

It even ranks above fear of dying, which I suppose means if you're going to be taking part in a funeral, you're better off being the dearly departed than the person who delivers the eulogy.

(pause for rim shot)

I know folks who agonize over public speaking, which always leaves me feeling a little bemused. You see, I've never been particularly frightened of speaking in public -- at least not before last Sunday night.

That was when I made my debut as a standup comic in an "amateur night" show at the Upland Alehouse in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles.

If there's one thing I always have admired, it's people who have the ability to make people laugh. In fact, if I could have had any career I wanted, it wouldn't have been as a U.S. senator, a major-league ballplayer or even a billionaire industrialist.

Given my druthers, I would have been a comedian.

If there's a more wonderful feeling in this world than standing in front of an audience and hearing people laugh uproariously, I don't know what it is.

A beautiful woman comes up to a comedian in a bar and says she heard his show and thought he was so funny that she just had to take him back to her place for a night of wild sex.

His response: "Did you hear the 8 o'clock show or the 10 o'clock show?"

Better than sex? I don't know, but then again, until last Sunday night, I had only experienced one of the two.

I always wanted to try comedy. In the 1970s, I took a correspondence course from the Hollywood School of Comedy Writing. I learned 24 different ways to write punch lines for "It was so hot yesterday that ..."

If I had wanted to work the Borscht Belt in the 1950s, it might have been useful. In 1977, it was just corny.

My comedy career was on hold after that -- for about 20 years. When I started writing my Inland Valley Daily Bulletin column in 1996, I tried to write humor on Sundays. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn't, but I always wanted to be on a stage in front of an audience telling jokes.

I just couldn't see putting in the time at comedy clubs, going on stage at 2 a.m. on an open-mike night and trying to make hostile drunks laugh. For one thing, I had a day job, a wife and kids.

If there's one thing I've learned, though, it's that you shouldn't ignore your dreams. I know I'm never going to be a U.S. senator or a professional athlete, and the odds that I'll ever be a billionaire are up there with Rosie O'Donnell winning the Miss America pageant.

But I could at least try comedy.

Last year, I took my wife and son to a Hollywood restaurant to watch a newspaper colleague of mine perform. Gina Tenorio works the minor-league comedy circuit of restaurants and clubs, honing her material and working on her delivery.

I told her after the show that I had enjoyed it, and that what she was doing had always been a dream of mine.

"Why don't you try it?" she asked me.

I shook my head. "I'm too old."

Of course I was only too old if I thought I was too old. Gina told me recently that she was sponsoring an amateur night for wannabe comics and asked me if I wanted to do five minutes of standup.

This time I didn't flinch. "You bet."

That's what got me to Upland on a Sunday night, as tense as a one-legged man getting ready to take part in a butt-kicking contest.

Editor's note: Is that a sample of your material?

Note to editor: What, you don't think that's funny? Tennessee Ernie Ford killed with that joke.

Editor's note: Sure, in 1954.

Actually, my material was better than that -- and more contemporary. I had some funny stuff about college, screenwriting and zoos, and I had people laughing -- not just my friends, but people who didn't even know me -- for six minutes and 40 seconds.

I was concerned that I had exceeded the five-minute limit -- until one of the guys after me performed (to use the term loosely) for 23 minutes that had most of the audience squirming in their seats. Believe me, you haven't lived until you've heard this guy imitate a retarded kid in a karaoke contest singing "I Believe I Can Fly."

And once you have, you don't want to live anymore.

I got a good enough response that I'll certainly try it again. I need some new material; I don't think I'd want to do that same 6:40 over and over again. And I definitely need to work on my delivery. Folks commented on how calm and collected I was, but to me my energy level seemed low.

I know it's a question of practice making perfect, that the more I perform, the better I'll get. I can't sing or dance, and whenever I try to do impressions, they all come out sounding like a bad Howard Cosell.

It was so much fun, though.

There really isn't anything better than being in front of an audience and hearing people laugh at your jokes.

No, not even that.

Of course, there's always the chance I've been doing it wrong.