44 No More

Friday March 14th, 2008 - East Peoria, IL/Petersburg, IL

Exactly forty-five years from today I’ll be 90 years old. If I’m lucky. If I’m luckier I will also have an Anna Nicole Smith type bimberino with gigantic love rockets hanging on my arm whenever I’m photographed and I’ll be photographed a lot because I’ll be the old fart with a bazillion dollars who loves to flaunt his fortune in front of all the young sex tarts.

For today I’ll have to settle for being half that age with no bimberinos hanging off me at any point of my anatomy. I’m starting another year I never really thought I’d make. 45 has a lot more in common with 60 than it does 20 and I have to accept the fact that the youth I always had in my corner has now shriveled up and blown away. I’m alone with my brain.

My life continues to be abnormal but I’m used to that by now. I’ve always been the one that’s the exception to most rules. Most people my age have kids getting ready for college and are on their second or third wife but I’m not anywhere close to that. I’m hitchhiking a ride on a desolate highway and I don’t see any cars coming any time soon to pick me up.

It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the journey though. I have seen a lot of interesting things I will cherish forever and made acquaintances with some fantastic people along the path so far. The path has been a lot different than I imagined and now I’m turning another corner.

45 isn’t old but it’s not 25 either. I’ve got a lot of valuable experience but I’ve also got a lot of baggage I’ve accumulated along the way. One thing I’m glad I haven’t acquired is a drinking or drug problem or children that hate me because I wasn’t able to be a father. It’s only now that I feel I’m anywhere close to being ready for that but I feel it’s pretty late.

I really did a lot of soul searching today as I‘ve done a lot of in my life. Am I ever going to find that stupid thing? I seem to be searching for it all the time but I’d probably have an equal chance of catching Bigfoot taking a dump at a highway rest area in Tallahassee, FL. Bigfoot has his name in the public’s eye though. I’m still an unknown after all this time.

The one good thing I’ve got going for me is that I’ve always had the cahones to let it rip and give something a chance. I’ve failed at pretty much all of it but at least I tried and I’ve sure learned a lot along the way. Plus I had a lot of fun too. That’s always been a priority.

I hope it still will be but I can feel both my strengths and my needs changing quite a bit. I’m not the exuberant young buck who will run through brick walls anymore. Now I don’t feel a need to do that anymore. I’ve been all over the place trying all kinds of things and it didn’t give me the results I thought it would. On the other hand I’ve lived the big dream.

My big dream when I started in comedy was to be a nationally touring headliner with as funny of an act as anyone out there. I wanted to be right up there with the best comedians who ever stood on a stage and in many ways I’ve accomplished exactly that. Just because I don’t have a sitcom of my own or a movie deal doesn’t mean I haven’t reached my goal. I have clawed and scratched my way from total ground zero to becoming that headliner.

I thought about all that as I drove to Petersburg, IL to visit my friend Max Bumgardner. Max is so much like me in many ways it’s scary. He’s having a lot of the same issues I do about life and radio and coming from a terrible family environment and we both get down about it from time to time. I have been wanting to see him for a while so I took this gig.

The gig is at Lenny’s Comedy Café in East Peoria and I was just there a few weeks ago. I was going to take my birthday weekend off and just catch up on stuff but Jim McHugh asked if I’d work with him because he’s trying to get another comedy group together. It’s similar to the Chicago Style Standups we were both members of but eventually both quit.

One thing after another kept popping up and I left a lot later than I wanted to and didn’t get to Max’s house until about 4:30pm. His daughter Skylar is 9 and she plays basketball in a city league in Springfield so I rode up with the family to watch the game. It was very exciting actually and Skylar’s team won in the last few seconds with a really good play.

She’s a great kid and was beside herself with excitement and it was a total blast to see it in person. Part of me winced with pain knowing I probably won’t get to see my own kids doing this but it still was fun and a great way to spend part of my birthday. It was a treat.

Max came with me as we wound through the back roads from his house to the club. We were running late and got bad directions and it got very tense very quickly. I hadn’t talked to Jim and it was just frustrating that we couldn’t find the club. High stress was all around and this is what Max and I both have nightmares from thinking back to our childhoods.

It was uncomfortable and frustrating and there was nothing we could do about it except to call for directions and keep getting turned around by some imbecile who didn’t know a left turn from a right. Eventually we got to the club but not without a stressful interlude of torture that I didn’t really need on my 45th birthday. I was glad to see the sign for the club.

Who knows why this kind of stuff happens but it sure is a pain in the ass. I feel like it’s a bad dream and I’m trying to find the door but can’t. I tried to smile and reverse the dark place I was headed to and I took all the energy I had to focus on the show we had to do.

The place was maybe two thirds full and Jim went up and started the show and brought up another comic named John Novotny I hadn’t seen in a while. Then I went up and I felt like I had Obi Wan Kanobi’s light sabre in my hand instead of a microphone. I had a new perspective of myself up there and planted my feet and went right for the crowd’s throat.

I don’t mean that in a vicious way at all. I went right for the laughs and I was not about to let anyone leave there without having fun. I dug in and hit them as hard as I could and I just felt like I really knew where I was going. I switched it around and made it fit the day.

Max noticed it immediately and we talked about it on the ride back to his house. He is a big fan and said I am on a new level performance wise that I’ve never been on before and he’s right. This was an interesting way to spend my birthday to say the least. Here we go.