September 11th

Tuesday September 11th, 2007 - South Bend, IN

What is there to say about 9/11 that hasn’t already been said? Today is exactly six years into an entire shift in the way life is lived on our planet. It was the most significant event of the 21st century and I hope it isn’t topped any time soon. It was all over the media today as I flipped through both TV and radio stations and after a while it just got to be too much of a sad thing. All of the interviews with victim’s families and reliving the horror was not fun.

My life sure has changed since that day. I was living in Salt Lake City and had been fired from my radio job about a week before. I was about as low as I thought I could get at that point because I had bought a house and didn’t know how I was going to pay the mortgage and then my friend Warwick called from Chicago and told me to turn on my TV. Then like the rest of America I didn’t leave my couch for three days and watched the world change.

My grandparents used to talk about the shock and horror of Pearl Harbor. Every year on December 7th they would mention it and remember where they were and how it was talked about like the world was coming to an end. Much of the news was told word of mouth but in a short time everybody knew and it was a generational event that everyone related to.

I also remember my 8th grade teacher Miss Melcher (the one who told me I wouldn’t be able to find a job being a smart ass like I was in her class) telling us about how the news of the Kennedy assassination shocked her entire class when she was in school. That was their generational event for that era. TV helped bring it a little closer but it still wasn’t like now.

9/11 was completely different. We sat and watched it unfold like a horror movie right on our TV in our own living room. Walter Cronkite was on the phone getting fed bad rumors about JFK and he stumbled awkwardly through it in 1963 but we saw 9/11 unfold blow by blow and plane by plane live and in color for us to follow like a soap opera as it unfolded.

There were replays and reverse angles and slow motion just like football highlights and it was a feeding frenzy for every member of the media who was on the air reporting it live. It was breaking totally new ground on a lot of levels and everyone alive then remembers it all like it was yesterday. Something like that is such a vivid memory it burns into our psyches.

I will never forget the weekend of shows that week. All planes were grounded and I was not working that week but I got a call to go to Elko, NV to work a weekend gig in a hotel there. It’s about six hours from Salt Lake City and whoever was booked couldn’t get any flights so I filled in. Nobody was laughing about anything in America then including any of the comedians but after a few days of watching constant 24 hour death and destruction it’s time to have a laugh to change the somber mood. But what could be funny about all this?

That drive was very long and lonely as it crossed my mind over and over that I’d have an impossible job of trying to be funny a couple of days after the biggest tragedy in American history. I knew that every other comedian had the same challenge and all we could do was go up and do our best. I had a stiff show on Friday but Saturday was a laugh explosion.

Friday’s show was like everyone was distracted. Nobody wanted to deal with what we’d just watched on TV for three days and I couldn’t get them to pop more than just a handful of polite laughs during my whole show. I tried my hardest but that just wasn’t the place or the time for laughing quite yet. I apologized to the club manager but he wasn’t angry at all because he too was stunned from all of the chaos. He shook my hand and told me it was a horrible week to try to be funny and he was absolutely right. But I still had another show.

Saturday was completely different. That was like shooting fish in a barrel. They all really wanted a show and wanted to laugh and forget about the heaviest week in history and that was one of the best shows I can ever remember doing. It just flowed from all angles and it was therapy for everyone in the place including myself. I remember ending my set with my big closer which got huge laughs and applause breaks and then I said a sincere ‘God bless AMERICA…our home sweet HOME.’ That brought down the house and I could feel the tension bubble pop and the whole room began to start the healing process at that moment.

Watching the rehashing of it on TV today wasn’t something I wanted to relive right now in my life. I have enough problems with depression without this bringing me back down. It was horrible and tragic and people lost lives and I can’t imagine how horrific it was for the families of those who died that day so randomly and unexpectedly. It’s sad beyond words.

That being said, I still can’t help but wonder what the real story was behind all of it. We will never know the full truth just like we will never know what really happened to JFK. If it does come out it will be so far in the future that everyone who was alive at that time will be dead and those alive won’t care as much as those who lived it. Those memories linger.

I remember my grandparents talking about rumors going around back then concerning a cover up about Pearl Harbor. Supposedly Roosevelt knew all about it and turned his back because we needed to be in a war because it was good for the economy back in that time.

Was it true? Who knows? What about JFK? Who really killed him? Hard to say that too. Rumors are rampant about all sorts of ways 9/11 just didn’t add up. I remember my cousin Brett calling me a few hours after the towers went down and saying ‘This doesn‘t add up.’ He is a carpenter by trade and builds things for a living. He said there’s no way both of the towers could have fallen straight down like they did by sheer chance. He suspected a plot.

Whether any of this is true or what the true story is we all watched history change in one day six years ago today. Years from now people will look back at ‘pre 9/11’ as a mythical time of Leave It To Beaver innocence where all was right with the world and everybody in America was rich and problem free. The infamous ‘New World Order’ won’t be so nice. It probably started that day and we are sure to be in store for a lot more changes coming up.

I’m sick of thinking of all that for now. I just want to get some LAUGHS in Toledo this week. That’s my own personal ‘joke jihad’. I left from Lake Villa tonight and got a hotel room in South Bend, IN to break up the drive a little. I feel a lot better if I don’t have that big drive staring me in the face on a day I have to perform. This way is a lot more relaxed.