Monday, December 24, 2007

Lucky as Hell

Lucky as Hell

When I'm performing live stand-up there is a segue where I say, "I'm a lucky man. All my life I wanted to be a stand-up comedian and it's been pretty good to me." This might be the greatest understatement I’ve ever made. The older I get the more obvious it has become to me how very good life has been to me. This is especially true regarding a career that has been so very full of people who have made me laugh.I fight the blues on a daily basis until the days become to formidable and then I join battle on an hourly basis. I’m a depressive and have been since adolescence. I’m sure it might be hard to believe that the same man wrote those two paragraphs back to back but they are both true. I suspect that many of my associates in stand-up deal with demons that are similar if not identical to mine. Of one thing I am certain. Neurotics prevail in my branch of show business and there are no shortage of them in film and television as well. I have been pursuing this career for decades and there is no end in sight. I assume I will continue to do stand-up until I can no longer make people laugh or I can no longer stand up. The same is true for acting. I have had a modest amount of success in television due in no small part to my friendship with the actor/comedian Kevin James. If the name doesn’t ring an immediate bell he is the star of the CBS sit-com “The King of Queens”. If you still don’t know who he is why is that my problem?I recently finished a short tour in the Northeast beginning at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City and finishing the following week-end at the Brokerage Pub on Long Island. While Los Angeles has been home for over ten years now I’m a native Long Islander and it is where I learned my craft. I was sharing the bill with Joe Curry and Chris Monte. As the evening wore on old friends began to drop in. One after another and over the week-end not less than a dozen friends dropped in several of which did guest sets. They talked about absurd jokes I had played on them and told stories I’d long forgotten. It was the greatest week-end I’ve ever known and I won’t soon forget it.I still scramble to make my bills and often have no idea of where my next paycheck is coming from. I never thought when I was younger that I wouldn’t have found more stability in my life by now but like George Bailey I had a time when I was the richest man in town.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You are rich in friends! Hey ol' friend.
Love ya, Annie

Anna Parker (Felix) (Alboszta) said...

It’s probably been 3-4 years ago since I wrote this long “essay” about how AMAZING I think you are. However, I didn’t save the “essay”, and it got lost somewhere in space and time.
I, too, am a “depressive”. I, too, act (and sing), but my schooling was in science. I Fight those demons Every day of my life, though.
You NEED to KNOW this much, Mookie...You Are HILARIOUS, and LOVED MORE Than You Know.
Forevermore,
Anna Felix