Tag Archives: Chicago

I slept on Bob Odenkirk’s floor

Posted on February 8, 2015 | 1 comment

Image stolen from http://www.nerdist.com/tag/bob-odenkirk

Most of us have occasional brushes with fame. I’ve blogged about a couple (like the time I got to hang out with Emo Philips), but forgot about this one until I saw Bob Odenkirk on The Daily Show last week, promoting his new show–Breaking Bad‘s spinoff Better Call Saul. Seeing him brought back a memory of the time (cue flashback/harp music) I slept on his living room floor, in Chicago, in the late 1980s.

I was just starting my comedy career, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I had done enough open mic nights to feel like I was ready to start looking for minor league paying gigs.

Fort Wayne is only a three and a half hour drive from Chicago, a comedy mecca at the time. A friend, Chicago comic Jimmy Wiggins, told me that when I was ready he would find a place for me to crash for a night or two and set me up with some local open mics.

Jimmy lived on Lincoln Avenue, across the street from the famous Biograph Theater, where John Dillinger was shot. Jimmy had a girlfriend who, while friendly enough, didn’t cotton to the idea of a strange young woman crashing on his couch, so he set me up a couple doors down at an apartment shared by a few other comics–one of whom was Bob Odenkirk.

I’m sure Bob has no memory of this at all. I remember him, however, because he was about to start writing for Saturday Night Live, and other newbie comics talked about him with respect and awe.

Bob was friendly enough. He was on his way out for the night when I arrived. He told me to make myself at home and have a good show that evening.

If memory serves, the apartment was above a famous Lincoln Park club called Lounge Ax. If not directly above, it was very close by. My night on his floor was barely memorable. It was hard wood. I think I had a sleeping bag. I don’t remember if there was a couch and, if so, why I didn’t sleep on that instead of the floor.

In the morning, I got up and headed back to Fort Wayne, after Bob gave me directions to a convenient place down the block to grab some orange juice and a donut for the road.

And that is pretty much the entire story.

Hey, I never promised it would be interesting, did I?

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Better Call Saul, Biograph Theater, Bob Odenkirk, Breaking Bad, Chicago, Comedy, Fort Wayne, Jimmy Wiggins, John Dillinger, Lincoln Park, standup

Emo Philips, comedy genius

Posted on September 20, 2012 | 3 comments

The first time I met Emo, I was still waitressing/bartending at Snickerz Comedy Bar in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He was a huge name in comedy at the time–he was on all the TV shows and cable channels, and he had even released a record (that’s a large, round, flat piece of vinyl, similar to a CD, that we used to play on something called a “record player”). The club was sold out for all the shows, SRO (standing room only). Like most big name acts, Emo kept to himself and the staff didn’t see him much. My most intimate interaction with him, that time, was when he signed an 8×10 glossy photo for me, “Dear Lisa, Thank you for the hamsters. Love, Emo”

Pardon me while I have a Strange Interlude: That Saturday night, on my way to work at Snickerz for Emo week, I totaled my car and smashed my face up a bit. My nose was broken, and my uniform and face were both drenched with blood. I knew that if I went straight to the hospital and called in “sick” from the ER, Kevin (my boss) wouldn’t believe how serious it was, because NO ONE called in sick during one of these SRO events without losing their job. The fact that I was in shock (and a bit of a drama queen) helped me to do this — I drove to the club and parked my crumpled car in front. I made my way through the crowd that was waiting to get in, up to the front to where Kevin was seating people. One look told him that I wasn’t faking just to get the night off. He sent me off to the ER, tout de suite.

Anyhoo, my real Emo story is much more fun.

Years later, after I had moved to Chicago and had been performing comedy for a few years, a good friend of mine was working at Catch A Rising Star. His name was Gary Kern and he was a “comic’s comic.” This means that he was so funny that he could crack up even the most jaded comedian, and sometimes the crowds just didn’t get how really brilliant he was. Gary had a lot of friends and several comics came to see him that night. We were sitting at a table, chatting, when Emo (who was also a fan of Gary’s) came into the room and sat next to me, the only open seat at the table.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit how cool it was that I was at a point in my career where I was hanging out with the caliber of performer that I was with — that Emo Philips would just stroll into the room and sit next to me as though I were his peer. But I digress.

At one point, Emo turned to me and said in his lilting, sing-song voice, “I have a joke I’d like to tell you. Let me know what you think.”

It went something like this (you have to read this in Emo’s voice):

“I went to the doctor and said, ‘Doctor, it hurts after I pee.’ The doctor said, (*dramatic sigh*) ‘Emo, Emo, Emo … When you’re done, don’t wring it out.’” With this, Emo made a tight, wringing gesture, as though he was squeezing water out of a drenched towel.

Not only was it a funny joke, it was the fact that Emo Philips — one of the cleverest, cleanest acts in comedy — was telling me a dick joke. I laughed long and hard.

The best part was his reaction to my laughter. He was so happy that I laughed, I mean genuinely happy — his face lit up with absolute pure delight, like a child about to blow out birthday candles — so very happy that he hugged me tight and exclaimed, “You liked my joke!”

It was one of the sweetest moments of my life, witnessing such innocent happiness and being the cause of it. It still makes me smile, to this day.

I’ll close this blog with a prayer by Emo Philips: “Dear Lord, Please break the laws of the Universe for my convenience.”

Here’s you an emo dog:

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Posted in Humor, Life is Fun!

Tagged Arts, Chicago, Comedy, Emo, Emo Philips, humor, Performing Arts, Subcultures

Find your comfort where you can

Posted on February 13, 2011 | 1 comment

I’ve been cleaning the house today, a much hated task that I can only get through if I’ve got my tunes playing. I’ve got a pretty good playlist going on Playlist.com and one of the songs is Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians‘ What I Am. Hearing it again brought up an old memory of one of the ways I managed to get through life back in the days when the song was getting heavy airplay (1988ish).

This was back when I lived in Chicago with my two small girls. I was a single mom and aspiring standup comic. I was terrified most of the time because I was doing a lot of things for which I was ill equipped but, nonetheless, felt urged to do. I was subject to massive anxiety attacks that would sometimes force me to pull off the highway while on my way to an out-of-town gig to wait until it passed. I had to keep plugging away and moving forward because I really didn’t have much choice.

Back then, I didn’t know much about meditation or any of my other, current coping tools, so I was pretty much on my own to figure out how to not flip out on a regular basis. Here is one of the things I did (with a little preliminary background first):

We lived in a really shitty little apartment, a third-floor walkup, which was all I could afford. I did what I could to fix it up, like painting a faux-diner menu (I called it Mom’s Eats) on the kitchen wall and an eyeball peeking through a crack in the wall directly across from the toilet (this helped me to poke fun at my paranoid fear of being watched by some sort of booger man).

One of the things that brought me the occasional moment of Zen, oddly enough, was taking a shower at a specific time of day when the sun was shining. The water pressure in the shower (back in the days before “water saving” shower heads) was strong, heavy and satisfying. The sun would shine through the window, at that specific time of day, and it would cause prisms in the falling water, creating sparkling liquid diamonds and rainbows–my own virtual laser show.

Right around that time, my favorite tape (yes, this was pre-CDs) was Shooting Rubber Bands at the Sky by Edie Brickell, et al. I always played the tape, while showering, on my daughter’s portable dual-cassette player which was precariously balanced on the edge of the bathroom sink.

One of the first songs on that album was What I Am, so I almost always heard that song while I was being enchanted by the shiny objects splashing onto me. It was easy for me, with my tendency to drift easily into sci-fi scenarios, to imagine that each rainbow diamond was a power-up drop. It may not seem like much, but when you have very little in life to make you smile, you find comfort where you can.

Hearing that song today brought back the memory of those precious moments. “Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box. Religion is the smile on a dog. I’m not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean. Do ya?” 😀

Here’s you some smiling dogs:

see more dog and puppy pictures