Rubber Balls and Liquor Read online

  Now whenever I tell people I’ve had two cosmetic surgeries they step back and squint, like I’m trying to put one over on them. They look me up and down and say, “Really, what did you look like before?” Then they ask me to turn and face the other way—not because they want to see if I’ve had any work done on my ass, but because they seem to prefer it when I turn and face the other way.

  Some months after my long stay in the intensive care unit, I ran into one of my doctors on the street outside the hospital. Me and my peritoneum were out for a stroll, and a gentleman approached me and said he was one of the doctors who had been in the operating room with me. When he introduced himself, I wondered what was expected of me in this interaction. I thought maybe the man wanted some sort of gratuity, or perhaps a character reference, but it turned out he just wanted to say hello, so now I had to make polite conversation with a man who had seen my insides.

  I said, “How did I look in there?”

  He said, “Let’s put it this way. You’re a very lucky man.”

  I wasn’t so sure what he meant by this, but since he put it that way, who was I to argue? Besides, I couldn’t even be certain that this man was a doctor. He wasn’t wearing a white coat or a hospital ID. He stuck his finger up my ass, but that didn’t prove anything. It’s possible he was just trying to be helpful. Nevertheless, I decided to take him at his word and consider myself lucky.

  Okay, so that was my first near-death experience. It’s not much of a story, I realize, but it was certainly gross and disgusting. This next near-death experience was a lot less gross and disgusting, which was just as well. It took place in Los Angeles, backstage at The Tonight Show. For a number of years, after Jay Leno took over from Johnny Carson, which is not to be confused with the period of time after Jay Leno took over from Conan O’Brien, I was a semi-regular on the show, but only for bits and sketches and not-so-special occasions. It was like being one of the “Mighty Carson Art Players,” only there was no Carson and we weren’t so mighty. Every so often, I’d get a call from one of the producers, asking me if I could fly out for an appearance. Sometimes, they’d want me to fly out that day. Sometimes, it would be the next day. Very often, I’d be out in Los Angeles already, taping Hollywood Squares or pursuing some other piece of show business, so I’d just wander over to the studio.

  There would always be a script waiting for me in my dressing room, but I made it a special point not to learn my lines. I believed it got in the way of my performance. Typically, the sketches were a whole lot funnier when I had no idea what I was doing. I played Queen Elizabeth. I played Yoda and Harry Potter. I even played Kim Jong-il. In fact, it was when I played the North Korean dictator that I got into some trouble with certain Asian antidefamation groups, and the funny thing was they didn’t even put me in makeup to look like him. There was enough of a resemblance already, so I just wore a general’s outfit and a big pair of glasses, but that didn’t stop all these watchdog groups from complaining to NBC executives for hiring an American actor and exaggerating his squinty eyes and big teeth. Who could have predicted when I was a nice Jewish boy living up in Brooklyn that I would one day grow up to be an offensive Asian stereotype?

  The near-death part of my Tonight Show experience happened in my dressing room. Specifically, it happened in the bathroom just off my dressing room—which looking back should not have come as such a great surprise. You see, the Tonight Show dressing rooms were old. Nothing seemed to work the way it was supposed to work—the way it might have worked in, say, 1964. This particular dressing room happened to have a sliding door to the bathroom, and I’d somehow gotten stuck inside. The door wouldn’t slide open.

  I pounded it. I pulled it. And then after a while I realized that usually, whenever I’m in the bathroom doing any kind of pounding or pulling, there’s something else going on, but this was shaping up to be a true emergency.

  Another unusual thing: whenever I was in one of those dressing rooms, there was always someone coming by with something important to discuss. A production assistant. A hair and makeup person. Someone with a question or a comment or a note on my scintillating performance. But for some reason, on this day, no one came by. I pounded and pounded, but got back nothing. I pulled and pulled. Nothing. I even started screaming, but only a little. I didn’t want anyone to think I was gay.

  Finally, I managed to slide the door open a few inches, enough to squeeze my arm through the narrow opening. There was a phone on the other side of the door that I thought I might be able to reach, so I reached. It was on a table, up against the wall next to the sliding door. A couple inches more, and I would have been able to grab it, or at least pull on the cord and drag the phone toward me. It was like a bad scene from a bad movie, the kind I might have appeared in at the height of my career, the way it was just beyond my grasp. I kept trying and trying. I repositioned myself, every which way. I even tried the other arm, thinking one arm might be longer than the other.

  If I had a pen or a pencil, I might have been able to use those extra few inches to poke at the cord or a wire and pull it closer, but of course I didn’t have a pen or a pencil. I looked around the bathroom, to see if there was anything else I might use, to help with my reaching, but there was nothing, so I continued with my pounding and pulling and yelling.

  This went on for five or ten minutes. I started to panic. Really, my situation went from funny to frustrating to frightening in no time at all. I began to sweat profusely. I couldn’t figure out why nobody had come to my dressing room to check on me, because somebody was always coming into my dressing room to check on me. I started to have all kinds of paranoid thoughts, like maybe these Tonight Show people were trying to tell me something, or that they’d lured me to the NBC Studios in Burbank, California, for the sole purpose of trapping me in a backstage bathroom and having me scare myself to death.

  A lesser man might have shit himself—even though there was a perfectly good toilet in the room.

  For a few brief, terrifying moments, this diabolical NBC plan seemed to be working, but before I slipped into a complete, blind panic I noticed a small metal trash can in the corner of the bathroom. It was too big to fit through the narrow opening I’d made in the door, but I reached for it anyway, mostly because I had run out of ideas. I picked up the trash can and started banging it against the floor, against the door, against the wall. My first thought was to make as much noise with this thing as possible. And, really, I was making quite a racket. Surely, I thought, someone will hear me. But nobody seemed to hear me, so my second thought was to use the trash can like a hammer and try to bust my way out. Surely, I thought, some NBC accountant-type would come by and admonish me for destroying company property. But there were no NBC accountant-types.

  At this point, I was pounding and banging with such reckless abandon that the paint started to chip away off the walls. Then, some bits of plaster. Once again, if this had been a bad scene in a bad movie, this would have been the part where a thin sliver of sunlight would peek through the small opening I was making with this trash can. Or maybe there’d be some hopeful music playing in the background.

  But there was no hopeful music or ray of sunshine. Just a tiny, frenzied Jew, banging away at the cheap walls of a backstage dressing room, over and over.

  Finally—thankfully!—I managed to bust through the walls in such a way that I could crawl through the small opening I’d made. There was plaster dust everywhere, and little bits of wood and plasterboard and whatever else they put in dressing room walls back in 1964. I pushed my way through like I was the Incredible Hulk, and I half-expected to be met at the other side by cheering and confetti. Certainly, it was cause for celebration, but there was no celebration. I thought it would be like one of those dramatic survival stories they show on the television news, where someone emerges from a mine or a cave or a mountain of rubble and the entire town has gathered to welcome them to safety, but nobody noticed, or cared.

  A short while later, after I’d told a few peop
le what had happened, some Tonight Show staffers came by to look at the hole I’d made in my dressing room wall. Someone even brought Jay Leno by to look at it, and he just shook his head and walked away.

  Next, a reporter from the National Enquirer came by to interview me, and ended up running a story comparing me to the Incredible Hulk, which I thought was flattering. The reporter came because I called the National Enquirer office to give them a scoop. It was the first piece of positive press I’d gotten in the Enquirer in my entire career, and for a moment I thought it might lead to some exciting new opportunities for me in the movies. Some producer would read about me breaking out of my dressing room like the Incredible Hulk and think to cast me as the lead in an action-adventure picture. It was only a matter of time. After all, I’d already cheated death—not just once, but twice. I’d survived a horrible disfigurement. I’d busted through a wall in a fit of blind rage and fury.

  Now all that was left was for me to get the girl.

  12

  Just Tugging Along

  I made a big splash at the 1991 Emmy Awards. This might come as a surprise to careful readers, who will be quick to point out that I have never done anything in my career to deserve an award of any kind, even one that’s voted on by my degenerate peers. It’s also surprising because as far as most people know they don’t have a swimming pool at the Emmys.

  But here’s an interesting loophole: you don’t have to win anything to go to the Emmys. You don’t have to be nominated. You can simply appear on the awards broadcast as a presenter, which means your agent is able to get you a fifteen-second walk-on role, in exchange for naming rights to his or her firstborn son. Also, a lifetime supply of microwave popcorn. Apparently, there’s a lot of backstage horse-trading going on at these awards shows that has nothing to do with actually winning an award or earning the respect of your peers. It doesn’t even have anything to do with horses.

  So there I was, undeserving as usual, showing up at the theater in a handsome tuxedo, ready to make what would turn out to be one of the more memorable appearances of my forgettable career, although to judge from how the night started out it might have passed unnoticed. You see, there was no side entrance into the theater, which meant the only way in was to walk down the red carpet, which in turn offered a small humiliation for someone like me. It wasn’t a big humiliation, mind you, but if you’re like me you’ll agree that indignity is a dish best served with a side of ice cream.

  (I don’t actually know what that last line means, but it sounds like something Bogie might have said in one of his lesser films.)

  On either side of the red carpet there were dozens and dozens of reporters and photographers. The press was everywhere, only they weren’t so interested in me. This alone wasn’t so unusual, except their disinterest had never been so plain. I was like Kryptonite, to these hardworking people and the tools of their trade. When I arrived on the carpet, there were all these cameras going off, and microphones being shoved into the aisle, and flashbulbs popping, but as soon as I stepped on that damn rug everything just stopped. It’s like the bottoms of my shoes had some anticelebrity remote control sensors, and as soon as they touched the carpet all the mechanisms of fame magically shut down.

  I pretended not to notice, and I strode purposefully down that carpet as if my career depended on it. Meanwhile, the press pretended not to notice, too—as if their careers depended on it. In fact, some of them even held up signs saying, “Pay no attention to that impish Jew, strolling the carpet in his handsome tuxedo! He’s not worthy of our attention! He’s merely a presenter!”

  At first, I thought all of this raging disinterest had to do with my lowly presenter status, but then I realized it was just me. There were other presenters walking that red carpet, stopping to pose for pictures or talk to reporters, but if it looked to a member of the press like I might stop or even slow down he or she would make a motion to suggest that I keep moving.

  One of the other presenters that night was Sam Kinison, but for some reason everyone was paying attention to him. Nothing against Sam, who was of course a brilliant comedian. This was before he died. After he died, he was too busy to be a mere presenter at the Emmy Awards. Also, he was no longer such a brilliant comedian. His timing was off, if you want to know the truth. On this night, though, his pending appearance was the talk of the production meetings. He was just a presenter, like me, but he was still the center of attention, even though his tuxedo was not nearly as handsome as mine. Everyone was worried he would say or do something to disrupt the show, but it wasn’t Sam they had to worry about. It was me, the impish Jew.

  The awards show people, the network, the producers … everyone was so worried about crazy Sam Kinison, but I was stealth. That is how I roll, apparently. (Mind you, this was news to me, but I was happily surprised.) Under the radar, that’s where you’ll find me, I’ve learned, and if you can’t find me there be sure to check under the kitchen table, or perhaps the bed. These nervous entertainment executives didn’t see me coming, which is usually how I like it when I come (note, please, the family-friendly spelling), and there had been a few things on my mind that I wanted to get off my chest.

  What was troubling me was this: Pee-wee Herman. Specifically, I was troubled about Pee-wee’s troubles with the law. Remember, this was around the time he’d been arrested at a porn theater in Florida, for the simple crime of doing what people are supposed to be doing at porn theaters in Florida. It’s part of our unwritten social contract, that we confine our semipublic acts of masturbation and self-flagellation to the semidarkness of our local porn theater, where that type of behavior belongs. (If it works out that you’re able to confine your alleged misconduct to a strip mall in Florida, so much the better.)

  Our pal Pee-wee was only doing his part, showing a childlike curiosity in sexual matters, and what happened? Well, no sooner than you can say, “Gee, that guy on the screen must shave his balls,” Pee-wee was getting arrested for playing with his pee-wee.

  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

  (But then, neither could Pee-wee.)

  Predictably, this was front-page news. Every news and entertainment program led with a mug shot of Paul Reubens, looking solemn and unrecognizable and abashed, which is not a description you often see in this context but now that I’m a writer I figured it’s okay to branch out.

  (Gotta love that guy who invented the thesaurus … he’s got a different word for everything.)

  The arrest photo ran in every major newspaper in the country. It even made People magazine. It wasn’t the most flattering picture—a potential career ender, if you asked me, and I happen to be something of an authority on career-ending moves. With his long hair and beard, Pee Wee looked a little like Christ, if Christ had been arrested in Florida for jerking off in a local porn theater, although now that I think of it I can’t imagine Mr. Christ ever found himself in such a circumstance. I’ll have to ask Mel Gibson. I understand he knows about such things.

  To make matters worse, Pee-wee tried to talk his way out of it. He said to the arresting officer, “But I’m Pee-wee Herman,” thinking maybe this might get him off.

  (I know, I know … I’ve backed right into an obvious joke, something along the lines of Yeah, as opposed to the other thought he’d just had that was supposed to get him off, but it’s not like me to stoop or pander, at least not without proper lubrication.)

  That was just about the worst thing he could have said. The absolute worst thing he could have said would have been, “But I’m Gilbert Gottfried.”

  Which would of course have begged the natural follow-up question, from the entire vice squad, delivered in unison: “Who?”

  Back to the Emmys. Before the show, I did a mike check, but Mike wasn’t there.

  (Again, sorry. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.)

  The sound check went fine. A few earnest-seeming young people told me where I was meant to stand, when I was scheduled to appear in the program, who would be introducing me. Beyond
that, nothing was prepared for me. Sometimes, you go to these shows, one of the writers has prepared a bit or a line that may or may not have anything to do with the category of award you’re supposed to present. And it may or may not have anything to do with contemporary American humor. It’s just a bit or a line, something to say. Here, though, I appeared to be on my own. There was a list of the nominees’ names, and an envelope I was meant to open, and that was it. Another young someone wearing a headset who appeared to be in a position of authority said, “Just have fun, Gilbert.”

  So I took him at his word.

  I’m told that people are still talking about what I said that night, in my first and only appearance as an Emmy presenter. I hardly believe this is true, but it’s nice to hear, and I certainly don’t mind reporting it here as unsubstantiated fact.

  What I said, to the best of my recollection, went a little something like this:

  “I can sleep a lot better, knowing Pee-wee Herman has been arrested.

  “If masturbation is a crime, then I should be on Death Row. To think that by the age of twelve, I was already Al Capone.

  “Right now, my right hand is as strong as Superman’s right hand. I can hold a piece of coal and squeeze it into a diamond.

  “If the cops tried to arrest me, they’d be yelling, ‘Stay away from his right hand! He can kill you with it!’

  “How do the police even prove you were masturbating? Do they dust you for prints?”

  Oh, I had a million of ’em, as we human animal comedians like to say. And I was determined to tell every last one of ’em, to the great discomfort of the show’s producers and a wide swath of Middle America. What the hell did I care? And the audience at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium didn’t seem to care either. In fact, they seemed to rather enjoy it. (Not just merely enjoy it, but rather enjoy it, which is a whole lot better.) They were rolling in the aisles, laughing their heads off. Frequently, this is just a meaningless expression, meant to indicate that people appreciated a performance, but in this case it’s an accurate description. Betty White was one of the nominees that year, for her outstanding work on that dried-up-prune show she did with Bea Arthur, and she was rolling in the aisle in such an uncontrollable fit that someone thought to call a medic. And one of the actors from Twin Peaks really did laugh his head off, although in retrospect I suppose it could have been a special effect.