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Recipes from My Vietnamese Kitchen Authentic Food to Awaken the Senses Feed the Soul (Uyen Luu) (Z-Library).epub
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Recipes from My Vietnamese What to eat for breakfast
Breakfast provides a valuable store of energy for a hard working day. It is usually filled with heat and spice to awaken the senses. After a night’s sleep, the body and mind need to be stimulated by hot chilli, warm spices, lively curries and rich hot broth.
Phở and noodle soups such as bún bò Huế are a traditional way to fuel the day ahead with plenty of carbohydrates from the noodles. Rejuvenating ginger or lemongrass broths with zingy lime and an array of herbs fire up your motivation for the new day. And if you don’t feel like noodle soup, you can have curry or beef stew mopped up with a baguette.
Meat and pickle-filled baguettes are also eaten, spiced up to your liking, or, for those tamer days, a simple fried egg ( bánh mì trứng ốp la ) with soy sauce and a few pieces of soft French cheese “La Vache Qui Rit” to spread on a light, crunchy and fluffy baguette.
People are usually too busy to make breakfast from scratch at home, so it is the norm to eat out at various phở street stalls. The rich and poor from all walks of life gather at their favourite noisy stall or store to eat breakfast. But when the soup arrives at the table, silence falls, the ritual begins and then all you can hear is the sucking of noodles and slurping of broth.
Cold breakfasts are rare. If they are eaten, like yogurt and fruit, it is after something hot or warm.
Coffee culture is huge in Vietnam, with rows of cafés full to the brim with men reading newspapers, playing chess or watching the hurried world go by. The most popular drink, iced coffee with condensed milk ( cà phê sữa đá ), is served in a tall glass with an individual filter, or the coffee is drunk hot and neat.
Like all meals, breakfast should be filling without weighing you down.
bánh mì thịt bò nướng xả
Bánh mì is a Vietnamese baguette originally inspired by the French and now a staple in Vietnamese cuisine. It has a light, crunchy exterior and a delicately fluffy inside; some describe biting into one as biting into crispy air.
As with most Vietnamese food, the lightness of the ingredients you fill it with is vital – no one relishes being weighed down. The dough in the centre of the baguette is removed so that you bite straight through the lovely crisp crust to the filling within.
A typical bánh mì contains a flavoursome combination of ingredients, the perfect equilibrium of sweet and sour: crunchy carrot and daikon/mooli, a velvety, umami-rich smear of pâté, pieces of BBQ pork, and cooling, fresh coriander/cilantro and cucumber, all dressed with a spicy chilli sauce.
If you cannot buy an authentic Vietnamese baguette, use a regular French baguette.
Lemongrass beef or pork baguette
Lemongrass beef
100 g/3½ oz. beef, thinly sliced
1 lemongrass stalk, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 teaspoon Maggi Seasoning (or soy sauce)
1 teaspoon pork, chicken or vegetable bouillon
1 teaspoon sugar
Pickle
2 carrots, shredded
½ daikon/mooli, shredded
5 tablespoons cider vinegar
5 tablespoons sugar
To fill
1 Vietnamese baguette or freshly baked, small French baguette
butter or soft cheese
pork or chicken liver pâté
chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own)
coriander/cilantro
cucumber, cut into 10-cm/4-inch slivers
spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced lengthways
Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced
Maggi Seasoning
Sriracha chilli sauce
Serves 1
Lemongrass beef
Preheat the oven to 220˚C (425˚F) Gas 7.
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and marinate for 10 minutes. Transfer to a roasting pan and bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.
Pickle
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Drain and wring with your hands.
To fill
Slit the baguette lengthways and pull out the soft doughy inside (which can be used for breadcrumbs). Spread with butter or soft cheese and a smear of pâté. Layer the warm beef and its juices, pickle, chả chiên , coriander/cilantro, cucumber, spring onions/scallions and chillies over the top and squirt over a few drops of Maggi Seasoning and chilli sauce. Enjoy!
Omelette baguette
bánh mì trứng ốp lết
A freshly baked baguette, a tasty omelette and an abundance of coriander/cilantro are one of my simplest but greatest pleasures. I love to eat this greedily on a beautiful sunny morning, quietly and alone to absorb the utter goodness! For an extra dimension, drop the sliced chillies into a bowl of good soy sauce and bruise them with the back of a spoon – this releases the chillies’ flavour and heat. Drizzle over the baguette.
Pickle
2 carrots, shredded
½ daikon/mooli, shredded
5 tablespoons cider vinegar
5 tablespoons sugar
Omelette
2 eggs, beaten
2 spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced
½ teaspoon sugar
a pinch of salt
a pinch of black pepper
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 Asian shallots, finely chopped
To fill
2 Vietnamese baguettes or freshly baked, small French baguettes
butter
coriander/cilantro
Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced (deseeded for less heat)
Serves 2
Pickle
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Drain and wring with your hands.
Omelette
Beat the eggs in a bowl with the spring onions/scallions, sugar, salt and pepper, and soy sauce.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and briefly fry the shallots. Pour the egg mixture into the pan over the shallots and spread evenly. Cook for a couple of minutes until the underside looks golden brown (lift up one edge and check). Flip the omelette over and cook for a couple of minutes until brown. Remove from the heat and cut into strips.
To fill
Slit the baguette lengthways and pull out the soft doughy inside (which can be used for breadcrumbs). Spread with butter and insert the omelette strips, pickle, coriander/cilantro and chillies.
How to eat pho like the Vietnamese
Breathe in the beautiful scented broth and taste it, unspoiled by any condiments. Next, squeeze on some lemon or lime juice and add your favoured condiments and garnishes. Mix with chopsticks and a spoon. Pile the ingredients onto your spoon and slurp away, bringing the bowl to your mouth and drinking every last sip of broth.
You can go without most of the garnishes but using the right noodles is very important. It is essential to use bánh phở or hủ tiếu flat noodles (also called “ho fun”). There should be plenty of noodles in the bowl but these must be submerged in the broth – only the garnishes are placed on top. In Vietnam, you can order extra noodles. Don’t forget, this is a breakfast dish – its spicy contents wake you up and the carbohydrates keep you going through the day.
Garnishes of beansprouts, herbs (Thai sweet basil, coriander/cilantro and sawtooth), lime wedges and freshly cut chillies should be served on the side. Never serve the lime wedges already inside the soup. Popular condiments are hoisin sauce and Sriracha chilli sauce.
Whenever I’m in Sài Gòn, I find myself sitting at a kids’ table on a red plastic chair, slurping steaming hot beef phở . Laced with the warm fragrant spices of star anise, coriander seeds, cinnamon and cloves, with top notes of fresh herbs, onions and citrus and brimming with noodles, every mouthful feels nourishing to the body and mind.
For me, phở is about home, wherever that may be. As with most Vietnamese, I constantly crave it, especially when I’m away. Whenever I eat it, I am reminded of the love of my mother and her endless quest to make the perfect phở broth. When we first came to England in the early 1980s, it was difficult to find Vietnamese ingredients but the day she discovered where to buy coriander/cilantro, she beamed and made the best pot of phở I’ve ever had.
Beef noodle soup
phở bò
Stock and cooked meat
2 tablespoons sea salt
600 g/1 lb. 5 oz. chopped, boneless oxtail
1.5 kg/3⅓ lbs. beef shin, flank or rib
700 g/1 lb. 9 oz. beef bones/marrow bone
2 litres/8 cups chicken stock
1 large onion, peeled and both ends trimmed
200 g/7 oz. fresh ginger, peeled and halved
1 daikon/mooli, peeled
20 star anise
½ teaspoon cloves
3 cassia bark sticks
2 cinnamon sticks
1 big teaspoon coriander seeds
1 big teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 black cardamom pods
4 pieces of dried orange peel
3 teaspoons rock salt
50 g/1¾ oz. rock sugar
3 teaspoons pork bouillon
4 tablespoons fish sauce
1 phở stock cube (optional)
ground black pepper
Contents
1 red onion, thinly sliced
small handful of coriander/cilantro, finely chopped
2 spring onion/scallions, thinly sliced
4 portions of fresh ho fun noodles, separated and blanched in boiling water; or 2½ packs of flat, dried phở noodles (place in a saucepan with a lid, cover with boiling water, add a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar and apply lid. Leave for 5–10 minutes or according to package instructions. Drain in cold water and separate.)
cooked chicken, torn (optional)
beef fillet, sirloin or rump/round steak, thinly sliced (optional)
Garnishes
Thai sweet basil
coriander/cilantro
sliced Bird’s Eye chillies
lime wedges
sawtooth (optional)
beansprouts (optional)
fish sauce
hoisin sauce
Sriracha chilli sauce
chilli oil
very large lidded saucepan
muslin/cheesecloth and kitchen twine
Serves 6–8
Stock and cooked meat
Bring a stockpot of water to the boil with the sea salt. Add the meat and bones and boil until scum forms on the surface – about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and discard the water.
Wash the meat in cold water, removing any scum, and set aside. This will give you a clearer broth.
Meanwhile, wash the pot, add 3 litres/12 cups of fresh water and bring to the boil. Now add the rested meat and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim off any scum and fat from the surface with a spoon. Add the chicken stock. Now heat a stove-top griddle pan over high heat (do not add oil). Char the onion and ginger on both sides. Add to the broth with the daikon/mooli. Put all the spices and the orange peel in a piece of muslin/cheesecloth and tie with twine to seal. Add to the broth with the rock salt and sugar. Simmer for at least 2 hours with the lid on. Check it occasionally and skim off any scum and fat from the surface.
After 2 hours, remove the beef from the pot and allow it to rest slightly, then slice it thinly and store it in a sealed container until serving. Leave the bones and oxtail in the pot and simmer for at least 1 hour.
After 1 hour, add the pork bouillon, fish sauce, phở stock cube and black pepper, to taste.
Contents
Mix together the red onion, coriander/cilantro and spring onions/scallions. Place 1 portion of cooked noodles into a big, deep soup bowl with a pinch of black pepper. Place the cooked beef and chicken, if using, on top and sprinkle with the red-onion mixture. To make it special, add raw beef (it will cook perfectly with the hot broth). Bring the broth to boiling point, then pour ladles of it over the noodles to submerge them.
Garnishes
Serve the garnishes and condiments on the side and add them to your phở as desired.
Hue noodle soup with beef and pork
bún bò huế
My grandmother was a great entrepreneur; in order to support her family, she opened up her front room to sell bún bò huế , the best noodle soup I have ever eaten. It originates from Huế (the city of temples, emperor’s palaces and dynasties in central Vietnam) and is spicy, bold and invigorating.
Stock and cooked meat
2 tablespoons salt
1 kg/2¼ lbs. rib of beef
500 g/1 lb. beef shin/flank
600 g/1 lb. 5 oz. chopped, boneless oxtail
2 pig’s trotters (optional)
2 litres/8 cups chicken stock
1 large onion, peeled and both ends trimmed
6 lemongrass stalks, bashed
40 g/1½ oz. rock sugar
1 daikon/mooli, peeled
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon shrimp paste
1 tablespoon pork bouillon
1 bún bò huế stock cube (optional)
4 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons cooking oil
½ bulb of garlic, cloves separated, peeled and finely chopped
2 lemongrass stalks, finely diced
½ teaspoon chilli powder
½ tablespoon annatto powder
Contents
2 spring onion/scallions, thinly sliced
½ red onion, thinly sliced
8 sprigs of coriander/cilantro, roughly chopped (stalk on)
450 g/1 lb. thick rice vermicelli (place in a saucepan with a lid, cover with boiling water and apply lid. Leave for 20 minutes or according to package instructions. Drain and rinse with hot water.)
chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own)
leaves from 8 sprigs of hot mint (optional)
Garnishes
lime wedges
Thai sweet basil
sliced Bird’s Eye chillies
beansprouts
banana blossom (optional)
curly morning glory (optional)
cockscomb mint (optional)
shiso/perilla (optional)
very large lidded saucepan
muslin/cheesecloth and kitchen twine
Serves 6–8
Stock and cooked meat
Following the instructions on page 26 , boil all the meat together for 10 minutes, then wash it and rest it.
Wash the pot, add 3 litres/12 cups of fresh water and bring to the boil. Now add the rested meat and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim off any scum and fat from the surface with a spoon. Add the chicken stock. Now heat a stove-top griddle pan over high heat (do not add oil). Char the onion and 6 lemongrass stalks on both sides. Add to the broth with the sugar, daikon/mooli and salt. Simmer for at least 2 hours with the lid on. Check it occasionally and skim off any scum and fat from the surface.
After 2 hours, remove the beef from the pot and allow it to rest slightly, then slice it thinly and store it in a sealed container until serving. Add the shrimp paste, pork bouillon, stock cube, if using, and fish sauce to the broth. In another pan, heat the oil and fry the garlic, diced lemongrass and chilli powder. Add to the broth with the annatto powder and simmer.
Contents
Mix the onions and coriander/cilantro. Put a serving of vermicelli in a big, deep soup bowl. Put the cooked beef on top and sprinkle with the red-onion mixture and mint, if using. Bring the broth to boiling point and pour enough over the vermicelli to submerge them.
Garnishes
Squeeze lime into the soup. Serve the other garnishes on the side and add them to your huế as desired.
Chicken curry
cà ri gà
Vietnamese curry is fragrant, light and mild, eaten with baguette to kickstart your day. It is more like a stew with chicken, carrots and potato and lots of lemongrass and coconut curry broth to dip your bread in. You can add more heat and other vegetables to your liking. When I was little, my mother so cleverly saved money and time by cooking a delicious and nutritious meal in one pot. When we couldn’t get baguette, she made white bread toast and butter for us to dip in – it’s still one of my most favourite things today.
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, finely diced
2 large chicken legs, cut into bite-size pieces, or 6 whole drumsticks, skin on
3 teaspoons curry powder
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
165 ml/⅔cup coconut milk
300 ml/1¼ cups chicken stock
2 medium potatoes, cubed
1 carrot, roughly sliced
4 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
ground black pepper
½ aubergine/eggplant, cubed (optional)
handful of okra, cut into bite-size pieces (optional)
6 Asian shallots, peeled
handful of mangetout/snow peas (optional)
warm baguette and butter, or steamed rice, to serve
Garnishes (all chopped)
Thai sweet basil
spring onion/scallion
Bird’s Eye chillies
Serves 2
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over low heat. Gently fry the red onion, ginger and lemongrass. Once the onion has softened, add the chicken legs and fry, turning often, until they’re evenly browned.
Add the curry powder, stirring well until the chicken legs are well coated. Add the garlic, coconut milk, chicken stock, potatoes and carrot and stir. Cover with a lid and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Season the curry with the fish sauce, sugar and a pinch of black pepper, then add the aubergine/eggplant, okra, shallots and mangetout/snow peas. Cook for a further 8–10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
Garnishes
Garnish with Thai sweet basil, spring onion/scallion and chillies. Serve with a fresh, warm baguette and butter, or a bowl of steamed rice.
Beef stew with star anise
bò kho
Lemongrass and star anise perfume the air when this is stewing on the stove, making any place feel like home. The ultimate comfort food, bò kho is spicy and fragrant enough to awaken the senses at the start of the day. It is a thrifty dish designed to make use of cheap cuts of beef and whichever vegetables you have that need to be used up – my mother loves the simplicity of carrot, potatoes and peas.
Stew
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon annatto seeds
1 onion, roughly chopped
450 g/1 lb. braising beef, beef tendons or rib, cubed
2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes/dried hot pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground cumin
10 star anise
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
2 lemongrass stalks (outer layer removed), finely chopped
400 ml/1⅔cups cider (or coconut water, but halve the sugar)
100 ml/⅓ cup chicken or beef stock
2 carrots, roughly sliced
2 medium potatoes, cubed
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour/cornstarch
130 g/1 cup fresh or frozen peas
ground black pepper
280 g/10 oz. thick rice vermicelli, cooked, or warm baguette and butter (buttered toast also works)
Garnishes (optional)
lime wedges
beansprouts
Thai sweet basil
garden mint
coriander/cilantro
sawtooth
Serves 4
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Fry the annatto seeds for a couple of minutes until the reddish colour is released. Pour the oil into a bowl and discard the seeds.
In the same pan over low heat, gently fry the onion until softened. Turn the heat up to high and add the beef. Fry it, turning it often, until browned all over. You may need to do this in batches – if the meat is too cramped, it will stew rather than sear properly.
Add the chilli/pepper flakes, cumin, star anise, bay leaf, paprika, cloves, garlic, ginger and lemongrass and pour in the cider, stock and reserved red annatto oil. Stir well. Cover the pan with the lid and cook for about 15 minutes.
Add the carrots and potatoes and season with the sugar and fish sauce. Reduce the heat to low–medium and cook with the lid on for a further 30 minutes.
Put the cornflour/cornstarch and a few drops of water in a small bowl and stir to mix. Add it to the stew, along with the peas, and cook for 5–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has thickened slightly. The beef should be tender, but the cooking time may vary so braise it for longer if it is still tough. Season with more fish sauce or pepper, to taste, and remove the star anise. Serve with the vermicelli.
Garnishes
Squeeze lime into the stew. Serve the other garnishes on the side.
Sticky rice with Chinese sausage
xôi lạp xưởng
My mum makes the best version of this in the world! It is great to take on journeys, as it remains moist and sticky in its box or banana leaf and can be consumed hot or cold. Whole train journeys can be spent snacking on fruit, bánh mì and sticky rice. Every Vietnamese I’ve met carries food on journeys from one region to another, to ease hunger as well as to gift to loved ones.
400 g/2¼ cups glutinous rice
about 3 tablespoons dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tablespoons dried shrimps
dash of cooking oil
3 Asian shallots, chopped
1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced
1 lạp xưởng Chinese sausage (45 g/1½ oz.), thinly sliced (if you really can’t find it, use Italian cured sausage)
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of black pepper
½ teaspoon sugar
a pinch of pork or vegetable bouillon
To serve
sliced spring onion/scallion
pickled shallots and lotus roots
chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own)
steamer
Serves 4
You will need to start soaking some of the ingredients 1 hour before you begin cooking. Put the rice in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 1 hour. Put the shiitake mushrooms in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 20–30 minutes or until soft. Put the dried shrimps in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 10 minutes. When ready, drain the rice, shiitake mushrooms and shrimps and pat them all dry.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the shallots and spring onion/scallion until softened. Add the sausage, shrimps and mushrooms and fry for 5 minutes. Add this to the rice in a large bowl with the salt, pepper, sugar and bouillon and mix.
Get the steamer ready with simmering water. Put the rice mixture in the steamer in a ring shape to allow the steam to rise through the middle. Steam for 30–40 minutes on medium heat, stirring every 10 minutes so that everything cooks evenly. Check there is enough water in the base.
Remove from the heat and allow to steam for 10 minutes.
To serve
Serve hot with spring onion/scallion, pickles and ham. You can also steam the rice in banana-leaf parcels; re-steam them to reheat, if needed.
Recipes from My Vietnamese Awaken the Senses
Breakfast
Recipes from My Vietnamese Hot and sour fish soup
canh chua cá
Canh chua is one of my favourite dinnertime soups, always best when my mother makes it and we enjoy it together with some steamed rice. It’s a sweet, sour and hot fish soup. It doesn’t take long to cook, which means the vegetables stay whole and crunchy. It always reminds me of my mum’s happy face, the sunshine and being in Vietnam, when the whole family sit together on the floor with a spread of dishes to share.
3 tablespoons cooking oil
1 whole sea bass (300 g/10½ oz.), scaled, gutted and cut in half widthways (keep the head, for flavour)
2 Asian shallots, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, quartered
120 g/4 oz. canned pineapple rings, cubed
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 spring onion/scallion, cut into 2-cm/1-inch pieces
freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime
60 g/1 cup beansprouts
1 Bird’s Eye chilli, thinly sliced on the diagonal
20-cm/8-inch stick of taro stem/elephant ear ( bạc hà ), peeled and thinly sliced (optional)
steamed rice or rice vermicelli, to serve
Chilli-fish sauce
1 Bird’s Eye chilli
3 tablespoons fish sauce
Garnishes (all chopped)
garden mint
coriander/cilantro, stalk on
sawtooth, Thai sweet basil or rice paddy herb (optional)
Serves 2
This dish is all about preparation. Make sure everything is cut and prepped beforehand because hardly any time is spent cooking.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the sea bass for 4 minutes on each side. Remove from the pan and set aside.
In the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of the oil and gently fry the shallots and garlic until soft. Set aside.
Bring 600 ml/2½ cups water to the boil in a large saucepan, then add the reserved fish head, tomatoes, pineapple, sugar, fish sauce and seared fish. Bring to the boil again and boil for 2 minutes.
Add the spring onion/scallion, lime juice, remaining oil and the shallots and garlic. Turn off the heat.
Chilli-fish sauce
Drop the whole chilli into a serving dish (large enough to hold the fish pieces) and add the fish sauce. Bruise the chilli with the back of a spoon to release the chilli’s flavour and heat. Transfer the fish pieces to this dish.
Put the beansprouts, sliced chilli and taro stem/elephant ear in a large serving bowl. Pour the soup in. Serve with the fish, and steamed rice or rice vermicelli.
Garnishes
Sprinkle the garnishes over the soup and you have a palate-cleansing sweet and sour soup with a dish of poached fish.
Mustard greens and tofu broth
canh cải bẹ xanh đậu phụ gừng
This is a great palate-cleansing soup to be had with an array of dishes at lunch or dinner with family or a few friends. The leaves can be consumed at any time and the refreshing broth can be slurped from your bowl in between rice servings. Sometimes it is great to add ramen to the broth for a midnight snack.
100 g/1 cup cubed fresh tofu
2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, julienned
1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced
1 vegetable stock cube
dash of cooking oil
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of black pepper
a pinch of sugar
300 g/10½ oz. Chinese mustard greens, chopped
Serves 2 as a main/entrée, and up to 6 as part of a meal of many sharing dishes
Bring 1 litre/4 cups water to the boil in a saucepan. Add the tofu, ginger, spring onion/scallion, stock cube, oil, salt, pepper and sugar.
When you are ready to serve the soup, add the Chinese mustard greens to the pan and bring to the boil again.
Serve hot by itself as a main meal or with an array of other dishes and rice.
Alternatively, you can add spinach, watercress, bok choy or choi sum instead of Chinese mustard greens. It is also absolutely irresistible as a noodle soup base. Just add a portion of dried ramen or fresh udon noodles and cook for 2–3 minutes.
Udon noodle soup with fishcakes
bánh canh cá thác lác thìa là
In Phan Thiết where my mother comes from, the street vendors sell this as a night meal. It is among one of my favourite noodle soups. In this recipe, the chicken-stock broth is flavoured by the fishcakes and fried shallots. Dill, mint and lime brings it together to make it the most enticing yet cleansing thing to eat when the moon shines. This is a very versatile soup, so the broth can be made from any stock, and you can use fish fillets, seafood such as prawns/shrimp, crab and squid, and meat such as chicken and pork.
Fishcakes with Dill ( page 100 ), uncooked
3 tablespoons cooking oil
2 litres/8 cups chicken, pork or vegetable stock
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon pork bouillon or 1 chicken stock cube (optional)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
800 g/1¾ lbs. fresh udon noodles
2 tablespoons cooking oil
8 Asian shallots, chopped
Garnishes
storebought deep-fried shallots (optional)
garden mint, chopped
coriander/cilantro, coarsely chopped
garlic chives, cut into 2-cm/1-inch pieces (optional)
dill, finely chopped (optional)
cockscomb mint, torn (optional)
sliced Bird’s Eye chillies
lime wedges
Serves 4
Take two-thirds of the uncooked fishcake mixture and shape into a patty. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan and fry the patty on both sides until golden. Cut it into thin slices.
Pinch off bite-size pieces from the remaining uncooked fishcake mixture and roll into rough balls. Set aside.
Put the stock, pepper, sugar, salt, pork bouillon and fish sauce in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.
Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan and fry the shallots until brown and crispy.
Bring another pan of water to the boil and blanch the noodles for 2 minutes. Drain and divide them between 4 soup bowls. Add the slices of fried fishcake and a generous pinch of the chopped herbs from the garnishes. Add more pepper, to taste.
When ready to serve, make sure the pan of broth is still boiling, then add the uncooked fish balls. After a couple of minutes when they have floated to the surface, tip in your fried shallots. Ladle the soup into the prepared soup bowls.
Garnishes
Scatter the remaining herbs, the deep-fried shallots and chillies over the soup and serve with the lime.
Duck congee
cháo vịt
Cháo is the transformation of small amounts of rice: after prolonged simmering in broth, it turns into a thick porridge soup. This is a great way to use up leftover cooked rice or when you do not have much rice going, as you can make it go a long way. However, this basic dish can be lifted into something much more luxurious by cooking the cháo with duck as a great treat for visitors. It is then served with slices of duck next to the congee and alongside a ginger-based nước chấm dipping sauce. If you prefer, you can use a whole chicken instead of duck. To make life easier, ask the butcher to joint the duck and poach it in pieces instead of whole. Or use chicken stock instead of water and poach pre-cut chicken or duck breast for 30 minutes in the congee broth.
1.5-kg/3¼-lb. whole duck
1 big tablespoon salt
200 g/1¼ cups basmati rice, rinsed
1 teaspoon sugar
1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon pork bouillon (optional)
a pinch of black pepper
Onion pickle
1 red onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon sugar
Dipping sauce
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 Bird’s Eye chillies, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons fish sauce
Garnishes (all chopped)
garden or hot mint
coriander/cilantro
Thai sweet basil
spring onions/scallions
limes
fresh ginger
Serves 6–8
Bring 2 litres/8 cups water to the boil in a very large saucepan over medium heat. Add the whole duck and the salt and bring back to the boil. Add the rice, sugar, ginger, bouillon and pepper. Cover the pan with the lid and simmer for 75–90 minutes over low heat.
Onion pickle
Combine the ingredients and leave for at least 1 hour.
Dipping sauce
Combine the garlic, ginger, chillies and vinegar and leave for about 5 minutes – the vinegar will slightly “cook” the ingredients. Add the sugar and fish sauce. Divide between individual dipping bowls and leave for at least 1 hour.
Remove the pan from the heat, take the duck out and set it aside to rest and cool slightly. Now joint the duck, slice the flesh and arrange it on a serving dish.
Divide the hot congee between 6–8 soup bowls. Serve with the duck, onion pickle and dipping sauce.
Garnishes
Serve the garnishes with the congee and duck.
Yin and yang
Since we were children, my mother has brought us up on a basic philosophy of yin and yang , a principle that shapes everything in the universe, including our health: there are two sides to everything, what goes up must come down, what goes in must come out, and therefore how and what we eat bear consequences on our bodies and minds.
The Vietnamese diet is very much based on the general rules of yin and yang. Everything has yin (cold) and yang (hot) aspects to it. Ingredients are either hot, warm, neutral or cold and thereby affect the body and soul, having the potential to make it balanced, too heated or too cool.
In a meal, different varieties of ingredients are combined to create a harmony of taste and texture as well as of yin and yang. The two elements complement each other and work in unison, with rice products playing an essential role in the neutral middle. Red meat, onion, root vegetables and exotic fruits grown and ripened in high sun are very hot for the body, as are deep-fried foods. Fish and chicken are warming. Green and leafy vegetables, melon and other fruits are cooling.
For thousands of years, this principle has been upheld and food has been treated as medicine. By paying attention to and understanding how our bodies respond to food, the right choices can be made for health, wellbeing and longevity.
Naturally “hot” people tend to have restless nights, be thirsty, have headaches, nose bleeds, be irritated, impatient and so on and therefore have to eat more cooling foods, like leafy vegetables.
“Cool” people tend to be tired, low in spirits, with a slow metabolism and therefore should eat beef dishes and root vegetables.
Understanding how food affects and heals us is a lesson passed down from generation to generation.
Crab, tomato and omelette soup
bún riêu cua
This quick, light, refreshing, sweet and tangy soup can be eaten day or night. The base is simple enough to embrace any herbs and extras such as fried tofu, fishcakes, ham and blood cakes. My mother often made it when we were growing up; she said it reminded her of her home town by the seaside and her brothers and sisters. As a young mother with two children to raise, this was a delicious budget meal as it works well with canned crabmeat.
4 tablespoons dried shrimps
2 litres/8 cups chicken, vegetable or pork stock
4 tomatoes, quartered
freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon or lime
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
240 g/8½ oz. canned (lump) crabmeat, squeezed of excess moisture
4 eggs
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of black pepper
a pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon cooking oil
2 Asian shallots, thinly sliced
cooked rice vermicelli, to serve
Optional fillings
1 quantity Fishcakes with Dill ( page 100 ), sliced
chả chiên Vietnamese ham, thinly sliced (see page 104 to make your own)
Garnishes (optional)
lime wedges
sliced Bird’s Eye chillies
garden mint
hot mint
cockscomb mint
shiso/perilla leaves
Thai sweet basil
coriander/cilantro
banana blossom
curly morning glory
beansprouts
Serves 4
Put the dried shrimps in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 10 minutes. Drain and pat dry.
Put the stock, shrimps and tomatoes in a large saucepan over high heat and bring to the boil. Season with the lemon or lime juice, sugar, fish sauce and shrimp paste, then reduce to a medium heat.
Put the crabmeat, eggs, salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl and beat with a fork until well mixed.
Bring the broth back to a gentle boil. Create a whirlpool in the broth by stirring it around quickly, then pour the egg mixture into the middle. Stop stirring once all the mixture is in. It will rise to the top and form a floating omelette.
Meanwhile, put the oil in a frying pan and fry the shallots until golden.
When ready to serve, make sure the pan of broth is still boiling, then break up any large pieces of omelette and add the browned shallots.
Optional fillings
Put the fishcake slices, ham and cooked rice vermicelli in 4 bowls and pour the broth over the top.
Garnishes
Serve the garnishes on the side.
Fish congee with ginger
cháo cá gừng
This quicker and easier version of cháo is ideal when you are feeling under the clouds. It is light, cleansing and easily digestible. My mother usually makes me eat this if I am suffering from a cold. When you are ill, she says, your body has to do a lot to heal; it shouldn’t have to work hard to digest. This cháo helps to heat up the body with the goodness of ginger and fish and fades away easily with its lightness.
100 g/1 cup cooked basmati rice
1 whole sea bass, seabream, salmon or trout (250 g/9 oz.), scaled, gutted and filleted (keep the carcass)
1 tablespoon cooking oil a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of black pepper
a pinch of sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 thumb’s worth of fresh ginger, finely chopped
Garnishes
sliced spring onion/scallion
coriander/cilantro
sliced Bird’s Eye chilli
lime wedges
Serves 2
Put 750 ml/3 cups water and the cooked rice in a large saucepan over medium heat and bring to the boil. Add the reserved fish carcass and boil for 20 minutes. Skim off any scum from the surface with a spoon.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a frying pan over high heat and fry the fish fillets, skin side down, for a couple of minutes to brown and cook through. Set aside.
Remove the carcass from the broth. Season with the salt, pepper, sugar and fish sauce and add the ginger. Cook for 5 minutes.
Divide the broth and fish between 2 soup bowls.
Garnishes
Serve with the garnishes on the side.
Recipes from My Vietnamese Feed the Soul
Soups
Recipes from My Vietnamese Puff pastry chicken pies
bánh patê sô gà nấm và đậu hòa lan
The French made a distinctive mark on Vietnamese cuisine and this light puffy snack is one streetfood example. My mother has been making them since she discovered ready-made puff pastry at the supermarket and I sometimes fill them with chicken curry or beef stew! The Vietnamese enjoy pastry snacks like these often.
100 g/3½ oz. skinless chicken breast
1 teaspoon cooking oil
2 tablespoons butter
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped
50 g/⅓ cup garden peas
1 teaspoon pork bouillon
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
320 g/11 oz. ready-rolled puff pastry dough, thawed if frozen
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
Sriracha chilli sauce, to serve
6-cm/2½-inch round cookie cutter or glass
baking sheet, greased
Makes 6
Chop the chicken into 1-cm/½-inch cubes or quickly pulse into pieces in a food processor.
Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat, then add the chicken, butter, garlic, mushrooms, peas, pork bouillon, sugar and pepper. Fry until the chicken is golden.
Put the tapioca starch and 5 tablespoons water in a bowl and stir together. Pour into the pan and stir well. This will thicken and bind everything together. Cook for 1 minute, then remove from the heat and allow to rest while you prepare the pastry.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C (350˚F) Gas 4.
Unroll the puff pastry dough on a lightly floured surface. Use the cookie cutter or upturned glass to stamp out 12 rounds from the dough. Brush egg yolk over all the rounds with a pastry brush. Put each pastry round on your hand and put a generous tablespoon of fried and cooled filling in the centre. Place on the prepared baking sheet, top with the remaining rounds and press the tines of a fork all around the edges to seal the 2 pastry rounds together.
Bake the pies in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes or until golden. Serve immediately, with chilli sauce.
Spring rolls
chả giò
When we first came to London, this was the easiest thing for my mother to make, as most of the ingredients were available from Chinatown. She got everyone she came across, from teachers and neighbours to priests, to fall in love with our family thanks to her spring rolls. They are traditionally eaten hot with herbs wrapped around them and dipped into nước chấm sauce.
about 24 fresh square spring roll pastry wrappers, about 14 cm/5½ inches, thawed if frozen
up to 3 litres/3 quarts sunflower or vegetable oil
Filling
3 tablespoons dried shredded wood ear mushrooms
50 g/1¾ oz. glass (cellophane) noodles
250 g/9 oz. minced/ground chicken or pork
175 g/6 oz. king prawns/jumbo shrimp, shelled, deveined and coarsely chopped
120 g/4 oz. canned (lump) crabmeat, squeezed of excess moisture
250 g/9 oz. white yam, peeled and julienned
2 carrots, shredded
120 g/2 cups beansprouts
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon pork bouillon
a pinch of coarse black pepper
a pinch of sea salt
2 spring onions/scallions, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Dipping sauce and garnishes
2 Bird’s Eye chillies, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
lettuce leaves
Thai sweet basil
coriander/cilantro
hot mint
deep fat fryer (optional)
Makes about 24
Filling
Put the wood ear mushrooms in a bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for at least 30 minutes. When ready, drain the mushrooms and pat them dry.
Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the package. Drain, pat dry and cut into short lengths.
When you are ready to assemble the rolls, make sure all the filling ingredients are prepared, dry and mixed together. Start to heat up your deep fat fryer, or a large, deep pan half-filled with oil over medium heat. Heat the oil to 140˚C/285˚F or until a cube of bread dropped in sizzles and browns in 1 minute.
Place a pastry wrapper diagonally in front of you. Spoon 1 tablespoon of the filling towards the lower corner. Fold the 2 side corners inward over the filling, as if making an envelope, then fold the bottom corner over. Roll up the package tightly, tucking in the filling in a neat cylinder as you roll it towards the far corner. Seal the flap with a touch of oil. Deep fry the roll for 4–5 minutes until golden. Remove and drain on a kitchen paper/paper towel, taste, then adjust the seasoning of the remaining filling if needed. Now assemble and deep fry the remaining rolls in batches.
Dipping sauce and garnishes
Mix together the garlic, chillies and vinegar in a bowl. Set aside for 2 minutes. This “cooks” the garlic. Now add the fish sauce, sugar and 400 ml/1½ cups water.
Wrap each roll in a lettuce leaf with herbs and serve with the dipping sauce in individual bowls.
Sai Gon fresh summer rolls
gỏi cuốn sai gon
This traditional recipe is from Sài Gòn but every region has its own take on fresh summer rolls. Although they are great for special occasions, they are tasty and healthy enough to take to work for lunch – you’ll be enjoying a good herb and prawn salad inside rice paper.
6 rice paper sheets, about 22 cm/9 inches
Filling
150 g/5½ oz. pork belly
18 king prawns/jumbo shrimp, shelled and deveined
30 g/1 oz. rice vermicelli
6 lettuce leaves
12 coriander/cilantro sprigs, stalk on, chopped
18 garden or hot mint leaves, chopped
3 cockscomb mint sprigs
18 shiso/perilla leaves
6 garlic chives, halved and head removed
Dipping sauce
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
½ tablespoon white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
½ tablespoon Sriracha chilli sauce
2 tablespoons roasted salted peanuts, crushed
Makes 6
Filling
Bring a saucepan of water and a few pinches of salt to the boil. Add the pork, cover with a lid and cook for 15 minutes or until the juices run clear when you prick it with a knife. Allow to cool, then cut off the skin and very thinly slice the meat.
Put the prawns/shrimp and a pinch of salt in a saucepan of boiling water and poach for 2 minutes, or until opaque. Drain and allow to cool.
Put the rice vermicelli, a pinch of salt and a dash of vinegar in a bowl or pan of boiling water, cover and allow to cook for 5–10 minutes or until soft. Drain and rinse with hot water.
Once the pork, prawns/shrimp and vermicelli are ready, put them and the remaining filling ingredients in their own individual bowls in front of you. Pour some warm water into a tray deep and large enough to submerge the rice paper sheets. Use a plastic board as a base on which to make the rolls.
Dip a sheet of rice paper into the water and take it out as soon as it is moist all over – do not let it sit in the water. Lay the sheet on the plastic board. Imagine the sheet is a face and now place the filling where the mouth should be: line up a couple of pork slices, 3 prawns/shrimp, 1 lettuce leaf, and one-sixth of the vermicelli and herbs. Fold the 2 sides inward over the filling, as if you were making an envelope. Now fold the bottom corner over the filling. Put 3–4 pieces of garlic chives along the roll with the tips sticking out of one end of the roll. Start to roll up the package tightly, pushing it forward and tucking in the filling in a neat cylinder as you roll it towards the far side of the sheet. Keep in an airtight container or wrap in clingfilm/plastic wrap while you assemble the remaining summer rolls.
Dipping sauce
Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Fry the garlic until it browns slightly. Add the hoisin sauce, vinegar, sugar, chilli sauce and 1 tablespoon water and bring to a gentle boil. Pour into dipping bowls and sprinkle the peanuts on top. Serve with the rolls for dipping.
Chicken salad with hot mint
gà xé phay và rau răm
My mother never follows recipes; she throws in a bit of this and that and relies on her taste buds to get the right balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot. Every time she makes this, my brother and I eat every last grain and morsel.
Onion pickle
1 red onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch of black pepper
Salad
3 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in
1 chicken stock cube
200 g/1¼ cups basmati rice
1 knob of butter
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
10 hot mint sprigs (or Thai sweet basil), chopped
a small handful of coriander/cilantro, stalk on, chopped
a pinch of black pepper
Dipping sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
2-cm/1-inch piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 Bird’s Eye chilli, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
Serves 2–3
Onion pickle
Set aside about one-fifth of the onion slices. Combine the remainder with the other ingredients and leave for at least 1 hour.
Salad
Put 1.2 litres/5 cups cold water and the chicken thighs in a saucepan over medium heat and cover with a lid. Bring to the boil, then skim off the scum from the surface with a spoon. Add the stock cube and cook for 25–30 minutes (but you will need to extract some of the stock 20 minutes into cooking – see below).
Wash and drain the rice. Finely chop the reserved portion of red onion. Melt the butter in a non-stick saucepan over low heat and fry the onion and garlic. Add the rice and stir it to coat it in the flavours. Once the chicken has been poaching in the other pan for 20 minutes, take out 350 ml/1½ cups of the poaching stock and pour it into the pan of rice with a pinch of salt. Cover with a lid and raise the heat to medium; this technique will cook the rice beautifully by steaming it. When the liquid comes to the boil, turn the heat back down to low and continue to cook for 15–20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Dipping sauce
Mix the ingredients together in a bowl with 2 tablespoons of the leftover chicken poaching stock.
When the chicken has finished poaching, remove it from the pan and allow it to rest for 10 minutes while the rice is still cooking. Reserve the leftover stock for another time – allow it to cool completely, then refrigerate or freeze it.
Tear the meat from the chicken bones using your fingers or 2 forks. Discard the skin. Mix the chicken with the onion pickle (discarding the pickling juices), mint, coriander/cilantro and pepper.
Serve the salad at room temperature with the rice and dipping sauce.
Streetfood
In Vietnam, the best food comes from the street, where you can buy bánh mì (meat- and herb-filled baguettes), chè (all kinds of desserts), bánh (sweet and savoury cakes/buns), fried bananas and soups – almost anything you would want to eat.
The food is homemade, generally by the vendor who usually specializes in the one thing he or she is selling. And he does it well, because the Saigonese are fussy and want everything fresh, done in a certain way.
People use the street to sell food in carts, baskets, markets – even living rooms can be opened up to the street to be turned into eateries. Teenagers walk around drumming beats with a spoon on an icebreaker to announce home deliveries. There is an allotted time for street snacks: crêpes in the evening, banana fritters in the afternoon and so on, with seasonal fruits available at all times. The smell of baked coconut custard buns and barbecued meat is enough to entice any hungry passer-by.
For city dwellers, life resides on sidewalks. People love to open their entire living rooms to the street and invite friends and neighbours to squat and chat over a refreshing drink or snack, and to play with children, if only to get a breeze from the heat and humidity that lives through the seasons. The front door is an unfenced window, exposed to the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, where there is always hunger or the anticipation of hunger.
Today, many people can live without ever needing to cook at home, as what they buy on the street from a favourite vendor is generally cooked at home. Many dishes can be time consuming and expensive to make on a small scale, so it can be easier to buy it ready made and it will always come with all the right garnishes and dipping sauces.
Raw fish and chips
cá ngừ sống và khoai tây chiên
This is my take on my favourite British dish, fish and chips. It got everyone in London talking about my supper club. You can use salmon, too.
Fish
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1-cm/½-inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
4 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
1 spring onion/scallion, thinly sliced
200 g/7-oz. line-caught, sashimi-grade tuna
Chips
1–2 litres/4–8 cups vegetable oil
400 g/14 oz. Maris Piper/russet potatoes, cut into fat matchsticks
sea salt
Wasabi mayo
7 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
deep fat fryer (optional)
Serves 2
Fish
Combine the soy sauce, ginger, orange juice and wasabi in a bowl. With a sharp knife, cut the tuna against the grain into tidy 2-cm/1-inch cubes. Marinate in the bowl for 15 minutes.
Chips
Heat up your deep fat fryer, or a large, deep pan half-filled with oil over medium heat. Heat the oil to 140˚C/285˚F or until a cube of bread dropped in sizzles and browns in 1 minute.
Deep fry the chips for 3 minutes. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and set on a board. Stab them several times with a fork to create crispy bits. Return them to the oil and fry again for 2 minutes or until golden. Remove and drain on a kitchen paper/paper towel. Season with salt.
Wasabi mayo
Combine the mayonnaise and wasabi paste.
Scatter the spring onions/scallions over the marinated tuna and serve with the chips and wasabi mayo.
Deep-fried frogs’ legs
ếch chiên nước mắm
The Vietnamese love frogs’ legs. This recipe is based on my love of fried chicken wings, which are similar to frogs’ legs. I found inspiration for this during my travels to the American Deep South.
Frogs’ legs
up to 2 litres/8 cups sunflower or vegetable oil
400 g/14 oz. frogs’ legs or chicken wings
100 g/¾ cup plain/all-purpose flour or tapioca starch
1 teaspoon chilli powder
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons pork bouillon
1 teaspoon sea salt
200 ml/¾ cup buttermilk or double/heavy cream
Sweet chilli dipping sauce
2 Bird’s Eye chillies, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons fish sauce
Garnishes
sliced spring onions/scallions
sliced Bi
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Funny on Purpose The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy Standup + Improv + Sketch + TV + Writing +... (Joe Randazzo, John Hodgman) (Z-Library).epub
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Funny On Purpose
Part 1
WRITING COMEDY
the foundation for the basis of the structure in the center of the comedy
At the heart of all great comedy, no matter the language or style, is one core element: a big tubby fatso falling out of his teeny chair face-first into a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
But there is often a second thing, and that thing, which is also important, is writing. Almost all comedy starts with writing, and scripts provide the blueprint for everything from a one-minute sketch to a feature-length film. The best sitcoms are built in the writers’ room, where ideas are hatched and honed and turned into twenty-three minutes of comedy. The monologues delivered by our late-night talk show hosts are weaned from dozens or hundreds of one-liners churned out by a team of joke writers and contributors. Awards shows, speeches, cartoons, even Geico commercials: All require writers. Writing is where so many Comedy People start out—and where many happily stay—partly because there are more jobs in writing than in being a movie star, and partly because comedy writing is a real craft.
Opportunities abound to write comedy outside of film and TV, too. There’s the whole entire Internet, for example, about 98 percent of which is made up of things designed to make people laugh. You can write jokes for other comedians or you can punch up copy for a local furniture commercial. There’s books and magazines and, to an increasingly anemic degree, newspapers as well.
Comedy writing is everywhere—but it’s not easy. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it, and our economy would collapse. It’s hard not only because of its technical complexity, but also because of the toll it takes on the writer. It can be dreadfully lonely and frustrating, but if you’re good and dedicated and willing to work like a dog, you can do it. And if you’re not that good at first, don’t worry: that will usually catch up with the second two traits.
Funny On Purpose Chapter 22
DEVELOPMENT
Development is the process of bringing an idea from concept to production. Sometimes that means working with the creators to refine their concept into a script; sometimes it means reworking what’s already there to make it something that will please investors and audiences. Development people come in all varieties, and their jobs totally depend on their personality, what their bosses want from them, and the project.
Whether it’s TV or film—the two kinds of development we are discussing in this chapter—only a small proportion—perhaps 10 percent—of the projects in development ever make it to market. Projects can get killed for any number of reasons, be they creative, financial, or something completely irrational, like an executive’s opinion. Sometimes talent drops out or sometimes a similar project gets greenlit first. But unless you’re making something completely independently, if there’s any money involved at all, you’ll probably work with someone to develop your project.
How Development Works
Development varies greatly depending on the situation, but it always refers to making changes to a project before it’s been greenlit for production. Sometimes development amounts to little more than pairing the right producer with the right talent. Other times, development is a horrifying series of inane notes seemingly designed to suck all of the life out of a perfectly good script. Generally speaker, however, development is undertaken by two types of entities: production companies and studios or networks.
DEVELOPMENT BY A PRODUCTION COMPANY
Production companies want to find and develop talent and ideas that they can sell to studios, networks, and distributors. Since profit margins at production companies are so much smaller, their development departments are usually slimmer. More often than not, the people who run the production company are also the development department. However, production companies of any size are always looking for new projects to take on, and they will take the time to develop work if they think you or your idea could fit their particular specialty or concentration.
PRO TERM! FOUR QUADRANTS
The ultimate prize in movie parlance is a film that appeals to audiences from all four demographic “quadrants”: men, women, and those under twenty-five and over twenty-five. Typically, studios executives and their development counterparts want movies to appeal to at least two, and preferably more, of these quadrants. Movies that involve humor, action, romance, and star power have the best chance to become that elusive four-quadrant comedy. Some examples: The Princess Bride, Ghostbusters, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and The Hangover.
For instance, you bring a pilot script to Producer X, who has a development deal with Fox. (This might mean Fox gets a first look at any new projects, or that they are obligated to buy a certain number of pilots each year. It depends on the deal.) The producer will give notes on the script itself and help shape your future episode ideas to be more in line with the kind of shows Fox likes to air. You’ll go back and forth on this for a while until the producer is ready to take the more fully formed project to the development people at Fox.
DEVELOPMENT BY A NETWORK OR STUDIO
Studios have more money than production companies, and they spend more money on development. Most TV networks and movie studios have a development staff dedicated to working on new projects. Their job is to keep an eye out for new talent and work with them to make something that their bosses are likely to purchase. They tend to be creative people who love the medium they work in, but they can also speak the language of the business people who buy and sell these things.
For example, the development executives at Fox might look at the pilot you put together with Producer X and decide that it would fill a hole in their fall programming if the lead character were about ten years younger, and if there was some way to work in a boyfriend character for an actor whom they really want to work with. After those concerns are addressed, they run it up the flag pole hoping their higher-ups will like it enough to order a pilot. Once the script is bought, money is involved, and a whole new development process begins, with notes and concerns and ideas from other executives, too.
DEVELOPMENT JOBS
Nearly any entity that produces, buys, and distributes content will have jobs in development. Some people come to development from production, some come to it from sales, and some come to it from a different profession altogether. At the entry level, most people start out as assistants and interns and work their way up from the inside. As in many professions, developing good relationships with the people you work with is the best way to earn responsibility and develop a specialty in a given genre. Likewise, keeping a broad range of contacts within the comedy and production worlds is a valuable asset. Another route into development is through the digital world—it’s a much more free-ranging landscape than film or TV, with smaller budgets and less oversight.
Tips for Surviving Notes
After you’ve sold your script or concept to a massive studio or network and provided their accounting department with your routing number for easy direct deposit, your job may be done. Or, you might be a producer on the show or perhaps your contract specifies that you’ll be involved with rewrites. Whatever the case may be, you are sure to get plenty of notes. Here are a few things you ought to keep in mind during that process.
ASSUME GOOD WILL AND LISTEN To writers, the development team can sometimes seem like the “enemy,” but most of the time they are talented, experienced people who really care about the final product and want it to be the best it can be: for the creator, for the studio, and for the audience. Most development executives have been down almost any road you can think of. They know what works in their genre and, more importantly, their company. Their ideas can help unlock a character, reshape a narrative, or turn a decent idea into something that people will actually pay to watch. They want your show or movie to succeed.
That said, sometimes (often) their job means representing their boss and trying to predict what their boss will want or like. Those predictions can be wrong or lead to creative conflicts. In the most dangerous scenario, you’ll come across a development executive whose only job is to justify their job, leading them to make arbitrary changes and suggestions merely to leave their mark on a project. This may not happen as often as rumor would suggest, but it does happen. If (when) it happens to you, will need an advocate.
IDENTIFY AN ADVOCATE You should always have someone who has your back, be it an agent, a manager, a mentor, or a sympathetic executive—someone you can ask to speak on your behalf and advocate for your point of view. Don’t lean on this person all the time—you should be your own best advocate—but an outside opinion can be helpful for both sides. Ideally, of course, you will charm and win over the development department, who will become your advocates, as you work together.
PREPARE FOR THE WORST All of the most horrible things you’ve heard about development are true. The process can be an absolute nightmare with backstabbings, lies, deceit, careless decisions, idiotic notes, and general creative murder. All of those things can really happen. So be prepared for the fact that your project might not wind up being what you started out with at all. If you can approach the process with that in mind, it will be such a pleasant surprise when things don’t go nearly as badly.
PREPARE FOR THE LONG HAUL The development process can go through countless unforeseen twists and turns. It can go on, literally, for years. In fact, a project may be shelved—and still technically be in development—and never get made at all.
DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY The decision to move forward with something or not is made for a million reasons in a million different moments. Most often, decisions have more to do with the people making them, internal studio politics, or a simple matter of mathematics than it does with you or your project. That’s the business part, and it’s just business. A network may decide that they have enough family comedies already, or that they’d rather work with David Alan Grier. It can be anything, or it can be nothing. Try not to let it destroy you.
An Interview with Kate Adler
“In the most simple terms, you need sustained conflict.”
Kate Adler is the executive vice president of comedy development for CBS Television Studios—the creative arm of the CBS network that produces and develops properties to sell to the corporate side. As a development exec and producer, she’s worked on such shows as The Millers, Ed, Survivor, Late Night with David Letterman, and Ellen.
On What She Looks For
What delights us in a pitch is novelty, something that feels somehow fresh or free of cliché, or uses a cliché in a good way. Something that feels genuine, that comes from a real place of having something to say about the world. There should be an agenda, as opposed to just saying, “Well, my agent wanted me to come up with a few ideas.”
You have no idea how often we get pitched “Somebody leaves something to someone and they’re stuck with it.” If your uncle left you a casino in Vegas, and you didn’t want to go run a casino in Vegas, you would hire a lawyer to sell it for you. It’s the ultimate shortcut for a writer that you don’t even have to explain anything. We get so many of those.
We avoid anything too on-the-nose. Like a show about the host of a children’s show who hates children. Or a life coach who’s completely lost. Or a dating expert who is perpetually single and lonely. Those kinds of reversals are too black and white for most of us. What’s interesting is the gray area.
On Characters and Conflict
Any good show usually starts from character. We’ll get a lot of phone calls where people say, “Would you be interested in developing a show at a car dealership or an all-girls’ school?” And for us that’s just a setting. What makes it interesting is: Who are our characters? What are they trying to say? And what are the obstacles in their way? What is compelling? Developing TV is very different from developing a feature because we need to develop something that’s going to be compelling to people for years and years and years. So when we hear a pitch, the most important thing we think about is, is this going to be something that’s sustainable as a story engine over a long period of time?
In the most simple terms, you need sustained conflict. If it’s a very surmountable problem—oh, she can just move out! Or she can just get a divorce—then it’s going to be very hard sustaining it. If what a character wants is very clear, and the obstacle is also very clear, then that seems to be the best way to sustain conflict and create story.
On Disappointment
Unlike a writer who is going through this for the first time, we go through this many times a season, and we’ve been doing this for a long time, so we’re aware going in of what the chances of survival are. That each network, out of sixty comedy scripts, is going to order this many pilots, and of those pilots, this small percentage will make it to air. It’s a little bit like buying a lottery ticket.
On Starting Out
I worked at a boutique production company that was represented by CAA, so I got to know some agents at CAA and realized that being an assistant there would be like going to graduate school in television development, which was where I felt like I fit in. I knew I didn’t want to write, but I wanted to be as close to writers as possible. So I worked at CAA for a year and a half, and then my boss bought me a nice suit, which at the time meant shoulder pads. It was a navy Donna Karan suit that she bought at Barney’s, and they set me up with some interviews, and I wound up in my first job at Disney in comedy development.
On Diversity
I’m happy to say that I work in a very diverse environment, and I’d even venture to say that it’s female-dominated. CBS has four comedy development executives, and all four are women. The president of CBS is a woman. Development in general, drama and comedy, is heavy on women. Don’t get me wrong: there’s tons of sexism out there, but at least compared to other industries, in this industry, I feel like I’m in a very protected place.
Funny On Purpose
Part 5
THE BUSINESS OF COMEDY
No jokes here, all business.
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to observe a focus group watching videos we’d made for a comedy website called Thing X. The entire situation called to mind a sci-fi medical procedure: we sat in a small observation area, looking through a one-way mirror, surrounded by screens and computer modules. One by one, the group of carefully selected demographic representatives walked in, all of the same approximate age, income level, and sex, and timidly took their places at a round table. They placed the headphones over their ears, as instructed, and began consuming the media.
Then they were asked what they thought.
And they thought it was terrible. They all thought it was really, really terrible.
They tore apart every detail, from the site design to the quality of the comedy. Our stuff was too long, they said. The jokes were unclear. Our subject matter wasn’t relatable. Once they got the punch line, they didn’t need anything else.
Hearing that, and reflecting on it ad nauseam over the next couple of days, had a profound impact on me. I realized something more concretely than I had at any point in my career, and that something is this:
Comedy is a product.
Yes, comedy can be art, and yes, it can be thought-provoking and profound— and it should be —but it’s important for anyone wishing to make a career in comedy to realize that comedy is also a product. It’s like a refrigerator: it needs to function well. It needs to look good. There are customers who know what they like, and they expect it to be packaged and delivered to them in a form they find satisfactory in relation to the time or money they’ve given in exchange for it. Comedy has value, and it is your job to provide that value.
When considering the business of comedy, these are the core questions:
• What are you selling?
• Who will buy it?
• What do they want from it?
• How does it compare to everything else in the marketplace?
These questions are worth asking yourself about everything you do if you wish to function in the professional realm. But you don’t have to ask them alone. There are people whose job it is to think about this stuff, to help the left brain meet the right brain, to make deals, develop ideas, and manage finances. They’re the businesspeople.
Funny On Purpose Chapter 16
ILLUSTRATION & COMICS
For a time, the most powerful form of political commentary was the editorial cartoon. It could shift public opinion or make politicians into household names. They were wildly popular and the art was often incredible: vibrant, emotional, and sharp. They could communicate complicated ideas in a single panel drawing (though many are also famously obtuse and convoluted). Nowadays, political cartoons are less influential, as they have to compete with programs like The Daily Show and the seven million GIFs and memes that explode out of the Internet each day.
Gone, too, are the days of glorious, full-color illustrations that once graced the covers of glossy magazines. The New Yorker is one of the only major periodicals that still commissions such work, and across the board, publications are doing it less and not paying as much for the work they do hire.
Yet there is hope! Those who specialize in static drawn images will always find avenues and venues through which to be seen. Each web page is a visual canvas longing for expression, and niche publishing of books and comics allows artists to reach audiences and put out work that would have been impossible in the past.
Illustration
Most illustrators make their living doing commercial or editorial work—that is, the little doodles, magazine covers, album art, and advertisements that you see nearly everywhere you turn. Few are able to support themselves solely by their personal art, so most turn to commercial assignments. It’s not all bad to work for someone else to pay the bills while putting out your own work on your own terms and with less pressure.
GETTING STARTED IN ILLUSTRATION
Some who are active on the opinion-sharing sectors of the Internet believe that the freelance illustration industry is dead. Clients are no longer willing to pay a living wage, and less-experienced illustrators can do less-sophisticated work more quickly, which is sometimes all that matters. Others say there’s more work than ever before—you just have to be more clever and responsive. Either way, the landscape is constantly changing, and if you want to work in this field, and you have the talent, you can. Here are a few things that can help.
DEVELOP A UNIQUE STYLE Even if you are capable in multiple styles, try to hone one that you can use for commercial work. It not only makes you easier to identify and reference, but it can help get you work if you are in the same basic genre of a better known, and more expensive, illustrator or artist. Cynical but practical!
DO COVERS AND POSTERS Illustrate book covers, album covers, and posters as much as possible. This helps you gain experience and possibly some exposure. You can also offer your services to local newspapers or organizations that otherwise don’t have the budgets to commission work as good as yours.
BUILD A PORTFOLIO Accumulate all of your best work in the style that you’ve chosen to focus on, and put it in one place for prospective clients to see. If you don’t have any actual commercial work yet, do your own. Scour your favorite magazines and redo the illustrations in your own style. It’s usually recommended that a portfolio include about twenty-four images, with the strongest material at the beginning and the end.
MAINTAIN A WEBSITE Even people with no talent, skills, or products/services to offer have their own websites, so you should certainly have one, too. Make your website simple, easy to navigate, and reflective of who you are.
WORK ON STUFF YOU HATE Since you will often be paid to illustrate subjects you have no interest in, get some practice by doing it of your own volition. Do illustrations for Asian commodities markets and country music awards. If you can make a study on the efficacy of new pituitary gland medications look whimsical, you can make almost anything look whimsical.
BE MULTIDISCIPLINARY Back in my day, kids could play stick-ball in the streets and never have to worry about getting hit by a car. These days it’s all Adobe Illustrator and Cintiq 24HD monitors. Cartooning and illustrating will always boil down to the basic pen-to-paper dynamic, but being able to work in various formats with multiple applications is a must.
BE GOOD TO WORK WITH Be nice. Be courteous. Be prompt, thorough, and professional. No matter how good your stuff is, if you’re difficult to work with, people will eventually stop working with you.
SELL YOUR WORK
One advantage illustrators have is that they can sell actual physical things. They can adapt their art into greeting cards, mugs, vibrators, pillow cases, or those weird plastic sheets that you put on cars and buses to advertise energy drinks or whatever.
ONLINE STORE Your website should have a merch section where you can offer LIMITED EDITION prints or made-to-order objects.
THIRD-PARTY SELLERS Having someone else sell for you has advantages: they reach a wider audience and they’ll handle fulfillment, shipping, and processing—but they will also take a percentage of your sales. The major options include Etsy, Fab, eBay, Amazon, and Art.com , though others are always coming and going online.
TRADE SHOWS As an artist, fairs, trade shows, conventions, and festivals are a great way to connect with fans and expose your work to consumers. Flea markets and craft fairs are always interesting because you never know who will walk up, and it’s fun to reach customers who weren’t necessarily seeking comic or illustrator art.
An Interview with Lisa Hanawalt
“There’s a lot of dumb advice floating around out there so: be cautious!”
Lisa Hanawalt is one of the funniest, most interesting illustrators in the world, she created the visuals and character designs for the Netflix animated series Bojack Horseman , and her book My Dirty Dumb Eyes is a visual revelation. She mixes the personal and the surreal and is fearless in her willingness to expose her own fears to the reader in a sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking way.
How did you get started?
I just kinda did it! I’ve always drawn. I never thought, “I am starting to be an artist . . . NOW!”
Who were your favorite cartoonists growing up?
I was raised loving the Sunday funny pages: Gary Larson, Bill Watterson, and, not going to lie, I was really into Garfield , too. Steve Martin and Weird Al Yankovic were the funniest people in the world to me. Ren & Stimpy .
How does one make money in your field?
Here’s what I did last year: I wrote and illustrated articles, designed book covers, sold comic books and zines/prints/T-shirts, made a web comic, sold original art, designed the characters and backgrounds for a TV show pilot, then that sold and I got hired as an art director.
What’s the hardest part about breaking in as an illustrator today?
There’s so much fresh talent coming out constantly, it’s easy to feel lost! I think a lot of illustrators also struggle to find a unique style. Finding creatively fulfilling jobs that also pay well and aren’t soul crushing is tricky.
What advice would you have for someone starting out?
Try to actually finish things. Feel comforted that there isn’t one path to “success.” Try to create something new-ish, instead of just doing the same things the same old way that everyone else is doing them.
What’s your favorite publication to work for, and why?
Lucky Peach magazine, because they send me fun places and feed me great foods.
How did the deal for My Dirty Dumb Eyes come about?
Drawn and Quarterly asked me if I wanted to make a book and I said yes. It was just like a high school prom should be.
How important is merch to the overall Hanawalt brand?
It’s fun having a few Hanawallets and Hanawal-T-shirts out there in the world, but I’m not incredibly invested in merch. It feels like a nice bonus to the job, not an end goal.
That said, I’d love to work more with textiles. Underwear with my patterns on them?
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever gotten?
I can’t think of anything specific, but there’s a lot of dumb advice floating around out there so: be cautious!
Comics
Today, the term comics covers a broad spectrum of styles and types, from the mainstream syndicated daily and weekly cartoons in newspapers to one-off book ideas to indie and web comics, where just about anything goes. All in all, though, the number of jobs available in comics is, as you might imagine, extremely finite.
SYNDICATED CARTOONS
For traditional, one- or four-panel cartoonists, the good news is that a very specific set of steps exists for getting comics syndicated. The vast majority of such comics are distributed by King Features, which describes its role this way on its website: “A syndicate decides which comic strips it thinks it can sell best. Then it signs a contract with the cartoonist to create the strips on a regular basis. But most of all, the syndicate edits, packages, promotes, prints, sells and distributes the comic strip to newspapers and other publications around the world.” To be considered for syndication, here’s what your submission package to a place like King Features should typically include:
• A one-page cover letter describing your strip with your contact info.
• Twenty-four daily comic strips on eight-by-eleven paper.
• A character sheet with a one-paragraph description of your major characters.
Expect eight to twelve weeks for a response and check the website for the most recent submissions requirements.
BOOKS
The best-selling original books tend to be compilations of work by widely syndicated cartoonists, but there are still a lot of original titles that do well. Chronicle Books, who published this book, has published the cartoon volumes All My Friends Are Dead, Zombies Hate Stuff, and Darth Vader and Son. While not strictly “comics,” per se, they are humorous, drawn, and follow a story or character. Other publishers also produce comic-based books. For advice on finding a publisher, see chapter 7 .
INDIE COMICS
Indie comics have always formed the backbone of alternative comedy in any genre. They’ve given us Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar, Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Kate Beaton, and Chris Ware. Many of the best original indie comics were self-published, on the cheap and uncompromising in every way. Indie comics are as close as dorks can get to punk rock, and it’s getting me all worked up just thinking about it. Because indie publishers don’t have to worry about reaching a wide, or tasteful, audience, they can afford to be much more daring—though smaller runs and audiences mean smaller paychecks for artists. The two top indie publishers for comics artists are Fantagraphics Books and Drawn and Quarterly.
WEB COMICS
As soon as people started putting things online, web comics started appearing. Artists immediately found the lack of oversight, the freedom from conventional forms, and the general sense of being able to do whatever the hell they wanted to be exhilarating. Today there are thousands of web comics spanning every imaginable genre, form, and level of quality, though only a small percentage of them are commercially viable. The reason has to do with supply and demand: that same lack of restriction also ensures proliferation. But the creative rewards have been high, with wholly new styles and genres making use of clip art, animated GIFs, and pixel art. This has helped usher in the age of Nerd Culture. A lot of the most popular web comics have historically catered to that very Internet-y series of interests and obsessions—from tech specs to Star Trek —that the mainstream used to consider uncool.
WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL WEB COMIC
Drawings. You can make these by hand, on the computer, with Photoshop—whatever the heck you want! Just make them! They’re really important.
A scanner. Most paper sizes won’t fit into your computer. Use a scanner.
Quality. The purest way to stand out is to have a really good web comic. There are other ways to generate website traffic (e.g., “search engine optimization,” or SEO), but the main way is to offer a product that people want to read and look at, that they find entertaining and funny and different. But don’t worry if your web comic is not amazing at first. Quality will come in time.
Regularity. Your comic needs to be published consistently and on time. You’ve got to build good habits in yourself before you can expect them in your audience, and once you start gaining an audience, they will want more. That’s why it’s called an “audience,” from the Greek words audi, meaning “to really, really want,” and ence , meaning “more web comics.” This will give you an advantage over artists whose quality might be higher but who lack discipline.
Community. Web comic artists are a specific breed, to be sure, and the community is passionate. As in any group, there is pettiness and judgment, but there’s support and inspiration, too. Connect with your fellow artists. Talk with them and read their stuff. In the end you can choose to support the community as little or as much as you want, but eschew it at your own peril.
Expression. Please, at the very least, do something you want to do. Be daring. Fuck something up. Be weird. Create something you’ve never seen.
An Interview with Michael Kupperman
“A career is the belief that you have a career.”
Michael Kupperman is the probably least-known best-known comic artist in the world. His work, including Tales Designed to Thrizzle and Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010, is widely beloved in the comedy community, and he counts Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel among his biggest fans. But he doesn’t enjoy wide popularity, partly because his work is so specifically, brilliantly insane, but also because he has consciously decided to work outside the corporate system. This creates a natural tension for the modern merchant-artist—especially one who’s already prone to tension, like Kupperman—but in so doing, he’s been able to create a vast, intricate nebula of work, totally unencumbered by any outside oversight.
I learned to draw in a very academic, fine art-y way at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and then I felt like I had to sort of go back and deconstruct that. Part of it was going back into drawing as an adventure: you’re going into the page and you could be surprised by what happens. Which is part of the reason why, unlike a lot of other cartoonists, I don’t have a style, really. It’s more like a shifting dialogue with drawing.
My early inspiration was from underground comics and Raw —a book-slash-magazine that Art Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, created. That was where he showcased Maus. It was the greatest marriage of comics, art, and design, probably, ever. Then underground comics such as Zap also inspired me. Robert Crumb, Robert Williams. All of these had profane subject matter, so they were freeing on the artistic front, and the humor front, and my mind was blown, so to speak. Art and humor are at their best for me when they’re about freedom: freedom of surprise. Freedom of release from expectations.
I was very poorly prepared for life and had no idea how to ask questions such as, “What is my motivation in life?” I didn’t even know. I’d been drawing since I was a small child, so it was a language that I was familiar with. It was not hard to learn how to draw; the hard part is putting yourself inside the drawing, to where it’s an actual expression of yourself, rather than a mechanical action.
The great cartoonists of the 1950s had careers at a time when they were supported, when people would give them the opportunities and give them the proper environment for them to really develop as artists, and have a satisfying career. We don’t have that now. It’s a wasteland. It’s postapocalyptic, as far as what I do! It’s really about what you believe you can make happen, as much as anything. Getting commercial approval is sort of an all-at-once deal: you get that one thing that gets you that notice, and then you don’t have to worry about it that much anymore.
If there’s any worth to my work, it’s that it’s not the same shit. And part of the thing about my humor is that the ball bounces in a different direction than you expect it to. And you either enjoy that or you don’t.
Funny On Purpose Afterword
HOW ALL OF THIS RELATES TO YOUR INEVITABLE DEMISE
In short: Before too very long, we’ll all be dead. That’s okay. Everyone who came before us has done it, and they’re all fine, so far as we know. We’ll survive death. But until that time, we are here, doing this thing. Sometimes it feels wonderful and full of possibility. But it often seems unbearable, hard, and meaningless, too. At its worst, perhaps, life is just boring and dumb. So what are we supposed to do with that? What are we to do in those times when it feels like none of this is worth it? Like life is stupid?
We should think about death.
Most of us do it without much trouble anyway. There’s a proud tradition of death-obsessed comedy, from Groucho Marx to George Carlin, from Oscar Wilde to Tig Notaro. For a people who have a tendency toward anxiety, few things inspire more anxiety than inevitable oblivion. But I think some of us are missing the point. Death is not a thing to be avoided: it’s the thing that gives us shape. It gives us meaning. It gives us a deadline.
In a job and way of life that is designed in many ways to destroy us, perspective is the most important skill we can possess. Having the ability to see that everything changes, that everything passes, that one job or one standup set are not the end of the world, is sometimes all that can keep us sane. I do a little thing when I get frustrated about work: I imagine myself on my deathbed, surrounded by loved ones. I try to really be there, to feel the moment, and I ask myself if my current petty annoyance will even register as anything worth remembering as I draw my last breaths.
That usually shuts me up.
By the same token, the knowledge that your body is going to rot someday should provide some impetus for Doing Good Work. You now have a standard for yourself, and that is, what will your name mean when you’re not around anymore? Will you be satisfied to have just gotten by? To have never quite given it your all because, what if you fail? What does one failure have to do with eternal darkness, I ask you! Take yourself to your deathbed once in a while, and imagine looking back on the work you created. Does it make you proud? Now, not everybody can be Mark Twain but, then again, fuck that—why can’t they? If Mark Twain hadn’t tried to be Mark Twain, then we never would have had Mark Twain. As Mr. T used to say, “Be somebody,” and be guided by the knowledge that you don’t have forever to accomplish that.
Lastly, while we’re lying here together looking back on it all, there’s one other thing worth considering, and that’s all the human beings in our lives. We may have written books and shot TV pilots and drawn wonderful drawings, but without other people, all of those things would literally—not figuratively, literally —be useless. In fact, if it weren’t for other human beings, we wouldn’t even exist at all. The work we do will stand on its own for as long as it does, but tastes and sensibilities change. Digital formats change. The thing that will outlast all of that is how we’ve acted. How we’ve been, as human beings, in the world.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition and ego. It is a big part of why you’re reading this and why I wrote it. But cemeteries are filled with ambitious, prolific, talented, groundbreaking people. What is truly remarkable is to be remembered not just for how prolific or talented or groundbreaking you were, but to have been all those things while still making space in your life for other people’s well-being.
This way, too, if it turns out that we’re not that funny after all, at least they can still say something nice about us.
Funny On Purpose Chapter 5
WRITING SKETCH COMEDY
Sketch may well be the purest form of comedy, but like that game Othello and probably a bunch of other stuff, it can take a lifetime to master. Sketches are short, tight, packed full of jokes (or one incredibly well-earned joke), and often grouped together as part of a larger show. Some sketches are absurd, some are parodies, and some are musical, but all sketches are essentially one premise, explored and stretched and taken to the farthest degree possible—in the shortest possible time.
In the great arc of human history, there’s only been a handful of successful sketch comedy shows: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The State, The Kids in the Hall, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Mr. Show with Bob and David, Saturday Night Live, Chappelle’s Show, Key & Peele, The Tracey Ullman Show . Sketch comedy is a noble pursuit but very difficult to pull off with any regularity. Even the cast and writers of Saturday Night Live only have to do it twenty times a year, and it’s hard for them to maintain a decent batting average. Each sketch needs to exist as a complete piece all on its own, and it has to do so in three to five minutes, and in such a way that it is unlike any other sketch in that particular show. Moreover, in the case of SNL , most of the sketches need to be accessible to a national audience, incorporating recognizable personages, events, and trends—and all of it should be, you know, funny.
Where to Write Sketch Comedy
There are very few jobs dedicated to writing sketch comedy, but most comedy writers have written sketches at some point or another, usually while in college or as part of a sketch team at a local comedy theater. It’s a great way to start out, since it teaches you about economy and structure, and it offers opportunities to explore many different genres, from fake commercials to period pieces. Naturally, most of the sketch comedy writing that happens on college campuses and in local comedy theaters is unpaid.
TELEVISION
The best way—although not the easiest way—to get work on a TV sketch show is to write and produce your own sketch show. The Kids in the Hall were discovered by Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels this way, and The State was picked up by MTV based on their live performances. The Whitest Kids U’ Know sold their show to Fuse after winning awards at a comedy festival. The few sketch shows that do exist will accept submissions in the same way as any other show (see chapter 6 ). Usually you need an agent, though it never hurts to contact a producer (just watch the credits!) and inquire about the show’s policy.
RADIO
England has a legacy of radio sketch comedy that doesn’t exist to the same degree in America (at least not since the 1970s). In Britain, the League of Gentlemen got their start on radio, as did Peter Serafinowicz (see page 58) and Robert Popper of Look Around You fame. Plus, the BCC’s Radio 4 continues to produce sketch comedy shows. In America, there’s not much more than a handful of NPR programs. Sketch comedy podcasts, however, are a growing genre, where you have creative freedom and a forum for attracting attention. For instance, Comedy Bang! Bang! started as a podcast before it was developed into a TV show on IFC.
LIVE
Surprisingly, you can make money performing live sketch comedy! Some clubs feature sketch nights, and there are paying gigs if you wind up on a sketch team at Second City or another prominent theater’s touring company. Likewise, successful local sketch shows are not unheard of: the group Kasper Hauser has been doing shows for years in the San Francisco area, and The Thrilling Adventure Hour —a monthly staged reading in the style of an old-timey radio play—has consistently sold out in Los Angeles.
An Interview with Seth Reiss
“I hate laziness, and I hate when people lack passion.”
Seth Reiss has written for The Onion, Comedy Bang! Bang! , and Late Night with Seth Meyers . He was also a member of the New York–based sketch group Pangea 3000, and he is one of the most focused and intense people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He’s a lunatic, honestly, but a funny one.
A good sketch needs a good, solid, interesting concept. A great idea. And the sketch executes that idea perfectly. That’s not to say the idea can’t be simple. Even better when it’s interesting and simple.
I really dislike when one person is acting crazy and the joke is other people commenting on how crazy that person is acting. People acting weird is great, but not when everyone else is completely sane. Then I wonder why the weird person isn’t in a mental institution or why the sane people don’t just say, “Yeah, I gotta go,” when the weird person comes onstage.
I don’t like when jokes come from conflict or arguing. I like when everyone is on the same page, carrying out the concept of the sketch together. Conflict-free sketch comedy.
I also don’t like anything that feels like this: “An intervention, but instead of alcohol, it’s for . . .” Shit like that is the worst. Any writer who comes up with that idea needs to say, “No, this is not funny or original. It mathematically works as a sketch, but it’s not worth my time.”
I hate laziness, and I hate when people lack passion. It translates when the group is onstage. The performance lacks energy. And, by the way, passion comes in all forms. Some people are quietly passionate, and that’s equally as effective, if not more so, than being loudly passionate. I also always think I am an inch away from being the laziest person in the world.
Questions to Ask About Your Sketch
WHAT’S FUNNY ABOUT IT? You should be able to describe in one sentence what it is that you— you —find funny about your sketch, and then strive never to veer too far from that. Your sketch needs a strong central premise, but to me, that is secondary to the thing about it that makes you laugh. The premise may be that there’s a scientist who doesn’t know math, but what you may find funny is the way in which the scientist overcompensates by loudly identifying math whenever he sees it.
IS IT GROUNDED IN REALITY? Most great sketches, no matter how bizarre, have at least some connection to a relatable situation. It can be a small detail (an alien bounty hunter who needs coffee in the morning) or the framing context (a wedding for dolphins), but without something to relate to, the audience has no subvertable expectations. There’s no real reason for anything to happen, which creates a general lack of reality. The sketch may be funny, but it will leave everyone feeling a little cold.
DOES IT HAVE A BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END? Who cares? A sketch doesn’t need to follow traditional storytelling structures. All it needs to do is get something funny across in a surprising, committed way. The more it breaks structural conventions and lives in a territory just beyond description, the more memorable it will be.
CAN IT BE SHORTER? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French aristocrat, writer, and founding member of the sketch comedy troupe the Horny Rhinos, wrote that perfection is only achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. It has never been said that a comedy sketch was too short. As you write, strip away anything that is not in the immediate service of the main joke or that does not propel us toward the end. Anything that you can do in four pages is twice as funny in two pages. That’s just good math!
HOW DOES IT SOUND OUT LOUD? Read your sketches out loud, preferably as you write them, to experience them as your future audience will. Untold oodles of comedy are discovered through the rhythm and pace of the spoken word, and lots of jokes that sound funny and natural inside your head do not translate outside of it.
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST JOKE? This may not be the biggest laugh. The biggest joke is the moment the whole sketch builds toward. Locate that joke and you’ve found your ending. At that point, it doesn’t matter how you get out, just do it fast. Your audience will appreciate an abrupt but perfectly timed ending more than a logical one that stretches the sketch beyond its big joke.
IS YOUR SKETCH A SKETCH? Sometimes what you’re creating is better served by another format. If you’ve written seven pages and could keep going, you might actually be writing a screenplay. Or you might find that you don’t know how the main character should act. This one might be a one-panel comic. Sometimes, that great idea might actually just not be very good. Let it slip into a coma in your notebook, and when you are famous, you can publish all that shit and sell it to the fans who have come to love and admire you for work that was good enough to finish.
An Interview with Neal Brennan
“Look at how crazy the world is if you’re not white.”
The cocreator and cowriter of Chappelle’s Show , Neal Brennan is a director, voice artist, and standup comedian. Neal met Dave Chappelle while working at a comedy club, where he’d offer Chappelle and other comedians ideas for taglines to use in their acts. He talked about that and having a moral compass in sketch comedy.
On Influences
I started arguing with adults when I was six, and they weren’t pulling punches. They were like, “You’re a faggot! You’re an idiot!” You know? There were no holds barred. It was full-contact, Irish, angry-male adult standard. I’m argumentative as hell as a result. People say, “Stop yelling!” And I go, “I’m not even yelling at all. What are you talking about? That’s just my tone.”
Being raised Catholic and going to Catholic school is a real primer for hypocrisy. It’s like, “Oh, this is just constant bullshit—you’re all full of shit! You’re a molester. You’re going to church, but meanwhile you’re a horrible person.” So I feel like I strive for social justice, and that was the special sauce of Chappelle’s Show . It was this deep sense of, hey, look at the world from someone else’s point of view for once. Dave Chappelle just happens to be one of the smartest dudes on earth who also happens to be black, but still, just look at how crazy the world is if you’re not white.
On Chappelle’s Show
It was the first personal sketch show. That was the magic of Chappelle’s Show. There was Tracey Ullman’s show, but Tracey Ullman was never actually Tracey Ullman. Chappelle’s Show was sketches from the point of view of one person. I mean, there were two of us, and sometimes we’d take outside ideas, but the filter was one guy. It wasn’t a troupe.
We talked about “real” a lot. The difference between what’s advertised versus what real life is really like. A lot of our formula was, “We’re gonna do the real version of (blank).” The real movies. Like, Pretty Woman for real. It’s taking the bullshit and going, “No, no, no. You’re glossing over something here. Like, really, are all gangs interracial, moviemakers? Is there always a shifty-eyed white guy in a ski hat? Stop insulting our intelligence.”
There’s a sketch where Dave is playing George Bush, and he doesn’t do anything different. I fought him on this, saying, “You’re not doing an impression of anything. It’s like a school play.” And he was like, “It’ll be funny.” So he was just him. And it was like, you think George Bush looks crazy? Imagine how he would look if you were black looking at him. Here’s how it would look, white people, if someone who wasn’t white said, in the middle of the Gulf War, that we need to go to Mars. It’s insane.
On Collaborating
I like writing with people. It’s the difference between fishing alone or fishing with somebody. It can be really fucking lonely fishing by yourself. I like it because it’s social. I’m a talker. I think that there’s a big element of feeding off each other.
Dave once described he and me as thrill-killers. Where he’d stab somebody, and I’d be like, “Chop his fucking head off, Dave!” Then he’d be like, “You think so? You think I should chop his fucking head off?” And then he’d chop his head off, and he’d be like, “You should eat his fucking head!” And I’d be like, “Yeah, I should eat his head!” He’d write, and I’d write, and we’d turn to each other and try to entertain or impress the other person. That’s part of writing with somebody: you don’t have to imagine an audience. They’re just right there.
On Dave Chappelle
It was one of those freaky things where Dave and I just have similar aesthetics. Even cinematically, it’s like—the Rick James character is an Errol Morris movie. No one knows that, but that’s what it is. Chappelle can do all of [former Defense Secretary] Bob McNamara’s monologues from The Fog of War because he’s just watched it over and over again. He can do a really good Bob McNamara, too. It’s weird.
Dave was a guy who grew up around white people and black people. His dad was the first black student at Brown University. That’s fairly significant. So when you look at that, it starts to make sense. All these guys, Kevin Hart, Kanye, Dave: their parents were all academics. There’s something to that. I don’t know what. They were coming out of the 1970s black power movement and civil rights; these guys are all an extension of that. So
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God, If Youre Not Up There, Im Fucked Tales of stand-up, Saturday Night Live, and other mind-altering mayhem (Darrell Hammond) (Z-Library).epub
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God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked
Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live , and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
Darrell Hammond
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
Dedication
To the boys from Hell’s Kitchen:
Marty Hennessy, Bobby Spillane,
and Big Mike Canosa
And to Myrtise
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Author's Note
Prologue
Chapter One
The Hall
Chapter Two
The Golden Years
Chapter Three
There’s Something Wrong Here
Chapter Four
From Hell to Hell’s Kitchen
Chapter Five
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times
Chapter Six
God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked
Chapter Seven
Blood on the Floor
Chapter Eight
What You Didn’t See
Chapter Nine
You Want Me To Go Where ?
Chapter Ten
I’ll Show You Multiple Personality Disorder, Pal
Chapter Eleven
I Saw What You Did, and I Know Who You Are
Chapter Twelve
A Host of Hosts
Chapter Thirteen
Politics for Dummies
Chapter Fourteen
My Welcome Outstayed Me
Chapter Fifteen
The Golden Years Redux
The Last Chapter
I Mean It This Time
The Real Last Chapter
Honest
Acknowledgments
Photographic Insert
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
Prologue
Westchester County, New York
November 2010
Y ou know what’s worse than being in rehab? Being in rehab over the holidays. You know what’s worse than that? Being in a rehab that doesn’t allow smoking. I mean, what the fuck? Addicts smoke. If we can’t drink, we can’t shoot up, and we can’t ride the lightning bolt, at least we can smoke.
I was sent to the Sanctuary, a few miles north of New York City, via ambulance in the fall of 2010 after getting drunk and trying to cut my arm off with a large kitchen knife. It is one of the best psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities in the country. I was put in the “celebrity ward,” which drew its share of boldfaced names—award-winning actors, sports stars, European royalty—but there are also wards for specific mental illnesses—depression, schizophrenia, eating disorders—and a criminal unit filled with dealers, streetwalkers, thieves, and assorted other miscreants who were there by order of the court.
Deprived of my freedom, separated from my family, I was one of the lucky ones being given yet another chance. It sucked.
I’ve been hospitalized or shipped off to rehab so many times that I’ve honestly lost count. But each one had its own particular brand of hell. The program at the Sanctuary proudly boasted of its success in bringing addicts back to health while generously providing all the butter-laden cookies and cream-filled pastries we could cram into our alcohol-starved, sugar-craving mouths. Hell, I put on twelve pounds in the first three weeks trying to get “healthy.”
Meanwhile, the ferret-faced floor wardens were always looking to bust us for any infraction. There was one nurse there, an attractive, muscular woman in her forties who we called Strap-On because she was constantly reaming someone for some petty crime. She and one of the “tough love” counselors busted us for smoking numerous times. Each room had its own bathroom, and when she caught me hanging out the window of mine with a lit cigarette, she announced it loudly to all within earshot, “He’s smoking in the bathroom!” as though she’d discovered Satan carving his initials in a church pew.
So to avoid her wrath, and if it wasn’t too cold or snowing, the smokers would wander out of the building, down a flagstone path that wound across the finely manicured grounds, to The Tree, the worst-kept secret in the place. An ancient cedar encircled by a layer of dead butts like some weird white-and-tan mulch, it was wide enough and tall enough and just far away enough to hide a grown man getting his nicotine on.
By Thanksgiving Day, I’d been in this rehab for three weeks, and I’d run out of cigarettes. My family wasn’t speaking to me, and my friends were all doing their own thing for the holiday, so no pumpkin pie and stuffing for me. Some of the other patients were spending time with their loved ones in the glassed-in sunroom, awkwardly trying to act “normal.” I figured I’d take a stroll by The Tree to see if any of the other smoker derelicts were there, so I tiptoed past and out the door.
Bingo. Annabelle, a stunning mocha-skinned hooker from Philly, was sucking on a Marlboro Red. Annabelle’s lawyer had convinced a judge when she got done for possession that she needed a doctor more than a jail, so she wound up here instead of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, where such lovelies as Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita who shot her lover Joey Buttafuoco’s wife in the face, have done hard time. Annabelle had been at the Sanctuary about a week.
“Hey, Joe.” Everybody knew me as Joe. I hadn’t been on TV in a while—my last appearance on Saturday Night Live , a cameo as Arnold Schwarzenegger on “Weekend Update,” was a year earlier—but I wasn’t in the mood to be recognized while I got myself sorted out, so I checked in under a false name. Unlike certain celebrities who like to share their meltdowns with Matt Lauer or TMZ, I prefer to bring the heavens crashing down around me in private.
“Hi there,” I said. Gorgeous as she was, I couldn’t take my eyes off her cigarette.
Annabelle caught me looking. “You want a drag?”
I took the butt from her extended hand. The cherry red lipstick on the filter was definitely not my color, but I didn’t care. Those two puffs were about the best I ever had.
“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you.” I noticed her hand was trembling when she took the cigarette back from me. From the cold or withdrawal, I couldn’t tell which.
“No problem, Joe,” she said. Then, smiling, “Now say it like Bill Clinton.”
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
CHAPTER ONE
The Hall
Studio 8H, 30 Rockefeller Center
New York City
1995
T o say it’s intimidating to walk into 30 Rockefeller Center to audition for Saturday Night Live is one of the century’s greatest understatements. The building itself, once known as the RCA Building until GE bought the company and NBC along with it, is one of the city’s great landmarks, built during the Depression in classic Art Deco style. You could get dizzy looking up at the Josep Maria Sert mural Time on the ceiling above the main entrance. Thank God it was summer, because if the enormous Christmas tree had been up out front, I’d probably have passed out.
Trying to ignore the hordes of tourists lined up to take the NBC tour, I checked in at the security desk— Yes, Mr. Hammond, here’s your pass, go on up, they’re expecting you —and stepped into the same elevator that for two decades had ferried a seemingly endless cavalcade of comedians to stardom.
I got out on the eighth floor and was escorted to makeup, where a lovely young lady dabbed me with powder to douse the shine of nervous sweat on my forehead. At least I had a few months of sobriety under my belt, so I didn’t have withdrawal shakes. Although I could have killed for a slug of gin right about then.
When I’d been sufficiently fluffed and primped, I was led into the theater that I’d fantasized about forever, Studio 8H, or the Hall, as I call it, where legends like George Carlin, Buck Henry, and Andy Kaufman had performed, a few feet from where the Rolling Stones and David Bowie have played, and where Lorne Michaels, who hatched this comedy phenomenon a generation earlier to replace weekend reruns of The Tonight Show , was sitting on a chair in front of me.
I almost said, “You know what? I’m thirty-nine years old. I’m on lithium. Do you know what lithium is for? If I may quote the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health:
Lithium is used to treat and prevent episodes of mania (frenzied, abnormally excited mood) in people with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder; a disease that causes episodes of depression, episodes of mania, and other abnormal moods). Lithium is in a class of medications called antimanic agents. It works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain.
“So yeah, it’s too late, and I’m too fucking scared, and apparently I have abnormal activity in my brain. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Lorne looked at me and said, “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I lied.
Then he smiled at me. Fuck it, now I have to go through with it. I had been asked to do ten minutes, which is an eternity. I proceeded to peel off every impression, like Phil Donahue speaking Spanish, that I could pull together in the short amount of time that I’d been given to prepare. But really, I’d been preparing for the previous twelve years for a moment like this.
When I left, I thought, If my life ends right now, it’s okay. I was in that theater. Lorne Michaels was there. And I performed well, despite my terror. Whether I was any good or not was immaterial. I knew I wasn’t going to get called back.
And yet I was. Lorne wanted to see if I had any more impressions, so I came up with Ted Koppel in German and another ten or so and did it all over again a week later.
I guess I did okay, because then Lorne wanted to see me move on my feet. He took me to the Comic Strip. Fuck, that place? Really ? I’d been dismissed by a lot of New York clubs, but the Comic Strip held a special place in my pantheon of rejection.
When I auditioned there in 1990, I had as great a set as I’d had up to that point. I totally killed. Afterward, Lucien Hold, the manager of the club, who was renowned for having discovered comic greats like Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler, sat me down in a booth up front.
“How old are you?” he asked.
I told him I was thirty-four. He didn’t flinch.
He pointed to pictures on the wall of comedians who had worked there. “Look at these faces. They’re stars. That’s what we’re about here. Stars.”
Lucien was smiling at me.
“They have it .”
Could my luck be changing?
“And I don’t think you have it ,” he said.
Apparently my luck wasn’t changing in any way whatsoever.
“I don’t see any reason why you should come back here or call here again.” He stood up and walked away without so much as a “Good-bye, thanks for coming.”
I went home with absolutely no reason to believe that I was ever going to make it. I had only enough money for a subway token. It was one of those horribly cold February New York nights, and I took the train back to my hovel in Brooklyn. I even slipped on the ice on the sidewalk outside my apartment. It was perfect, going home without hope. I sat in the dark, smoking cigarettes. If I’d had any money, I’d have gotten drunk.
It was kismet that, five years later, Lorne would have me go there for part of my audition, unwittingly giving me a dose of cosmic payback. With Lorne watching and Lucien Hold hovering nearby, I got onstage and, once again, I killed, although with so many performances and impressions since then, I no longer remember exactly what I did. As much as I would have liked to tell Lucien what I thought of him, I figured that performance for Lorne was as much of a fuck-you as I needed.
The next challenge was dinner with Lorne and his producer, Marci Klein, Calvin Klein’s daughter, who to this day works as a producer on Saturday Night Live as well as with Tina Fey on 30 Rock . Marci had chosen a restaurant over on the West Side near Broadway. It was a casual evening, and we just swapped stories. The problem is, the highlight of one of my stories might be, “And then when we got to the store, they didn’t have any long-handled spoons!” and Lorne’s would be something like, “When I was sitting on the Berlin Wall with Paul McCartney . . .” I was never going to be able to compete with his material, but somehow I made it through the evening without humiliating myself.
A few weeks later, I was lying on my futon on the uneven floor of my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, where the night before a small furry creature had run up the side of my head, stomped on my face, and then run back down the other side. My wife was with me when the phone rang. I don’t know why, but we looked at each in that meaningful way they do in the movies. It was my manager, Barry Katz, and my agent, Ruth Ann Secunda, calling at the same time, which never happened.
I got the job.
Holy shit.
My wife and I decided to celebrate by opening a bottle of champagne and dancing in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel.
Okay, no, we didn’t. What we really did was run like crazy from my apartment on Forty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue down to Forty-fifth Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway to the Imperial Theatre, where Les Miz was playing. I loved that show. I’d seen it about ten times. I couldn’t get enough of it; we bought the most expensive tickets they had left. I reckoned that play is my life story—unjustly treated by life, resolutely angry, but things kind of work out, and along the way there’s a little bit of love and light and, not for nothing, a couple of bucks in it too. That’s my Tenth Avenue synopsis of one of the great literary works of all time.
A few days later, I was having dinner at Umberto’s Clam House down in Little Italy, and I ran into Colin Quinn, whom I’d met years earlier when I’d been hired, then fired, as his warm-up guy on the MTV game show Remote Control , which he hosted in the late 1980s.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“I just got Saturday Night Live !”
“Me too!”
O n Monday, September 25, 1995, I reported to work for the twenty-first season of Saturday Night Live .
As I walked through those halls and saw those photos on the wall of the greats who had worked there—the late John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Chris Farley; Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Molly Shannon—I couldn’t wrap my lithium-quenched mind around the fact that this was really happening. Two decades of comic genius and me ? It was tremendous validation, and yet I was certain it was a cosmic joke of some kind. Maybe the antidepressants were making me hallucinate?
I was assigned an office on the seventeenth floor with, who else, Colin Quinn, who had been hired that year as a writer and featured player. We hung out there until an intern knocked on the door and yelled, “Pitch!”
The pitch meeting in Lorne’s office down the hall is a little bit tradition and a little bit meet-and-greet, where whichever legend of stage or screen or music or sports or politics is hosting that week is welcomed by the writers and the cast. Lorne sits behind his desk, the host sits in a chair by the desk, and everyone else sits wherever they can squeeze in, including the floor. Lorne’s office was plenty big, but it’s a shitload of people who crammed in there.
Lorne’s right-hand men in these festivities, alongside Marci Klein, were SNL producers Mike Shoemaker and Steve Higgins. These guys had, and still have, to be able to do all the jobs on the show—like a restaurant manager who can cook, wait tables, and make a nice Caesar dressing. They had to know how to write a joke, manage people, craft a sketch, and above all they had to be fucking funny. Higgins is great with impressions and helped me build almost every impression I would do on the show.
Mariel Hemingway was the host of my first show. I remember thinking at the time, She’s had a conversation with Woody Allen, hell, she’s kissed Woody Allen, and I’m sitting just a few feet from her. And she’s more beautiful than anyone has ever been in the history of people.
Do my socks match?
Fuck.
Even major stars are often a little intimidated when they walk into those offices, but Lorne makes sure the SNL crew around them is very hands-on in the most unintrusive way possible. Everybody is extremely welcoming, and any thought the host might have, the slightest grievance, the slightest knitted brow, is addressed clearly and immediately. And the host has tremendous say in what the show will be that week.
During the pitch meeting, everybody throws out ideas to the host about what they might like to do for that week’s show. If you don’t have an idea, it’s entirely okay to make up something, even if it’s hideous. The staff laughs, but often the poor host sits there thinking, What? Grecian Formula 44 on toast? What?
I tossed out a crazy idea for a cold open—that’s the sketch at the start of the show that always ends with, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night !” The show had been receiving a lot of criticism for not being as funny in recent seasons as the nation thought it should be, and Lorne was being battered a little bit in the press for the way the show had gone downhill. So I had this crazy idea of doing a Wizard of Oz sketch in which the bad press was just a dream. It was completely ridiculous, although everyone was very kind about it.
I t was the first of nearly three hundred weeks I would spend at SNL , and lithium isn’t exactly Ginkgo biloba when it comes to memory, so I’m going to admit the details of that first week are a bit murky all these years later, but here goes.
After the pitch meeting the cast and writers, per custom, spent some time with Mariel, chatting, swapping compliments, and drinking coffee. Some writers started to work on the sketches that got the nod during the pitch meeting, and the rest of us went home.
On Tuesday, people started coming in around noon. Tradition dictates that the host visit with the writers in their offices to talk about proposed sketches. A lot of the writers are Emmy winners, and it’s really an honor for the host as much as anything. Meanwhile, the writing began in earnest, so a lot of people would end up staying all night working, including Lorne. The cast members conferred with the writers, and each one participated in putting together anywhere from five to ten sketches.
My role on the show was a little different from the rest of the cast’s. I wasn’t very good at coming up with sketch ideas, but that’s not why I was there. I was a field-goal kicker. You need a voice? I was the guy who could kick that football. I didn’t know how to punt, pass, or tackle, but I could kick. So I came in on Wednesday mornings around 10:00 a.m. Sometimes I’d have gotten a call Tuesday night that would be a tip-off: “Can you do this guy?” But lots of times they would simply assign a role to me, and I would walk in having never heard the voice. That first week they gave me Ted Koppel in a Nightline sketch in which Koppel interviews Republican presidential candidates Colin Powell (Tim Meadows) and Bob Dole (Norm Macdonald). I usually had four or five hours to study videotapes I got from the research department and cobble together some semblance of a voice before read-through with all the cast and crew, which happened Wednesday afternoon.
You know how they open the gate at a rodeo and the bull comes out seething with energy and fury? That’s the kind of mindset you have to have at read-through, because that’s how hard it was. But it was all part of it, and as a performer you wouldn’t have it any other way. A tennis player expects Wimbledon to be tough, and it is. Anywhere from thirty-five to fifty sketches were presented, which is three or four times what we’d end up with. It took a few hours to get through them all.
After read-through, Mariel complimented me on my Koppel impression. I thought, This is all pixie dust.
Right after the meeting, Lorne and the head writer and the producers met with Mariel to make the first cut, based chiefly on how many people laughed at each sketch during read-through. Lorne and the host had the last word on what stayed in and what got tossed.
Between read-through and picks, you might find yourself loitering around with hosts like: Robert De Niro, Senator John McCain, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Sir Ian McKellen, Snoop Dogg, and Derek Jeter. For starters.
Later that night, an intern came by all the offices and yelled, “Picks!” That’s when we found out which ten or twelve sketches had survived. It was always a drastic cut that day, and, per usual, a few people took a hit to the solar plexus, but there was no time to nurse hurt feelings. Costume and makeup started getting designed Wednesday night after picks. On Thursday, the writers revised or reworked the sketches that needed it. “Weekend Update” started to get pulled together based on what was in the news that week. On Thursday and Friday we blocked the show—that’s figuring out the physical part of the performance, where everybody stands and how they move—while the writers oversaw the costuming and set design of their sketches. The writers also worked on Mariel’s monologue.
Saturday afternoon we did a run-through for Lorne, during which the writers made notes for further changes—to dialogue, costume, blocking, and set design. The cast was usually in at least partial costume—wigs and costume, if not full makeup. In the two or three hours between the end of the run-through and the dress rehearsal at 8:00 p.m. (which is done in front of a live studio audience, although not the same one that will be seated for the live show at 11:30), the sketches were tweaked yet again, and new scripts distributed; each version of a script was a different color so everyone knew which was the most current. Sometimes the order of sketches was changed; often, sketches were cut. I went back to my dressing room to refine my Koppel impression and grab some dinner and a nap.
For dress, the cast got into full costume and makeup. The writers paid a lot of attention to how the audience reacted. The show was running at two hours, so when dress was over at ten o’clock, everybody headed up to Lorne’s office on the ninth floor and waited for “Meeting!” to be called. This was when Lorne and the writers made the final cuts to get the material down to ninety minutes, as well further tweaks to the surviving sketches.
When the meeting ended, it was nearly eleven o’clock, so the cast hustled back downstairs to get back into hair and makeup (to make sure we didn’t ruin the costumes or the handmade hairpieces, we would take them off between performances throughout the day). The writers got to work on making the changes. A posse of interns hits the bank of copy machines to churn out the revised scripts.
It’s incredibly confusing, and the frenzy continues all the way until 1:00 a.m. If the show is running long, further sketches might be cut while we’re on air. And adding to the stress, for me at least, was the constant presence of seriously famous people who came by to say hello to Lorne and watch the goings-on from a discreet spot on the floor. Over the years, a who’s who of boldfaced names stopped by, but the audience can’t see that Paul McCartney is standing right in front of you, watching you do your sketch, or that Yankees All-Star A-Rod is there with Kate Hudson, looking at you with an expression that says, Be spectacular. Be like us. The audience also doesn’t know that you may not have seen the script before now, that it might have been rewritten on the way downstairs from the ninth-floor meeting to the eighth-floor studio.
Not everyone can take it, but Lorne picks people who can operate in this biosphere. He doesn’t just hire talented people, he hires fast people. Some really fabulous players were on for only one year, and some fabulous people didn’t make it even that far. The late Bernie Brillstein, who was my manager as well as Lorne’s, once told me that Lorne has the greatest mind in comedy. And the truth is, at the heart of the show’s greatness is a mystery that really only Lorne understands.
Intimidated as I was, I was deliriously happy to be along for the ride.
D uring Mariel Hemingway’s monologue, she wandered backstage to introduce both new and returning cast members. I was one of several new people that year, along with Jim Breuer, Will Ferrell, David Koechner, Cheri Oteri, and Nancy Walls, plus returning players Norm Macdonald, Mark McKinney, Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon, and David Spade. Mariel had recently had a guest-starring role as a lesbian on The Roseanne Show , so in this bit she breezed by all the men and kissed all the women full on the mouth, even the show’s new director, Beth McCarthy. It was pretty hot.
Right after the monologue, there was a pretaped gag commercial for A.M. Ale that had me sucking down a 40 with my breakfast. How fitting for my first day on national television.
Later in the show I debuted my Ted Koppel, which, regardless of Mariel’s lovely words after read-through, didn’t get a single laugh on air. I got his voice dead right, but it turned out that was exactly the problem: I did it as a straight impression. Most of the voices I’d learned over the years had been in the context of obvious jokes, but I was intimidated by the seeming seriousness of the Nightline sketch. Lorne used to say, “Start accurate, and then exaggerate the impression to make it funny.”
By the time we reached the good nights, it felt like I’d been through a year of my life in the last twelve hours. There were hundreds of hurdles and little pitfalls and artistic souls littering the halls like umbrella carcasses along a New York street after a hard rain.
But it didn’t matter. This was nirvana. Standing on the stage next to Mariel Hemingway at the end of the show, waving to the studio audience, I thought, This is just as good as playing for the Yankees.
I was so revved up that I went right back in to work Sunday morning, when the offices were empty, and worked on my Koppel. I didn’t know if I’d do him again, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
The following Saturday, I was in my first cold open. I played sportscaster Bob Costas, although I didn’t say “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night !” I had the flu and it didn’t go as well as I wanted, which he needled me about good-naturedly the first time I met him. Mariel Hemingway must have had a great time when she hosted, because she came back for a cameo that week (she served Lorne coffee). When I took the stage with my fellow cast members and original cast member Chevy Chase, who was hosting, for the good-nights at 1:00 a.m., it was my birthday. I was forty years old, older than most people when they left the show; this was just the beginning for me.
A couple of weeks later, I did my first Bill Clinton on air. It was during a sketch about Halloween in New Hampshire during primary season, and all the candidates showed up at someone’s door during trick-or-treating hours to pitch themselves. Norm Macdonald did his killer Bob Dole. David Koechner did Phil Graham, and diminutive Cheri Oteri did her hyper Ross Perot. When it was Clinton’s turn to ring the bell, I grabbed handfuls of candy and shoved them in my pockets. I had no idea at the time that this was the character that would largely define my time on SNL . All I could think was how I was bloated from the lithium, but I guess that made for a convincing pre–South Beach Diet president.
It’s hard to say why that character hit so well. I think part of it is that the guy himself is so endearing in his charm and obvious human frailty—thank you, Paula Jones. Clinton was brought back the next week in the cold open. The sketch, written by the current junior senator from Minnesota, Al Franken—I didn’t see that coming either—had me sitting in the White House kitchen in the middle of the night, stuffing my face with whipped cream from a can and hot-fudge-covered hot dogs while calling people to apologize for being a failure. I could relate, and I guess I got a little carried away during dress. Afterward, Lorne said I was taking too much time with the eating. “This needs to pick up. It’s not a one-act play.”
Clinton’s self-esteem was so low, he asked the pizza delivery guy, played by Tim Meadows, to yell “Live from New York” for him.
I finally got to yell that famous line in the seventh episode, in character as Jesse Helms. I would go on to do it more than sixty times over the years, more than any other cast member in the show’s history. (Dana Carvey held that title before me.)
But the first season was pretty tough for me. I had to learn how to be on the show. (I wasn’t there long before I was given my own office because I had to practice, and Colin had to write.) What I found really unnerving was that sketches could play well at read-through, get a lot of laughs, and still not make the cut. Since I was new to live television, I had no idea there are a million reasons, technical reasons, why something might not be chosen for air. But time went by, I kept showing up, and I watched other cast members to see if I could pick up any pointers for SNL survival.
I was also going to the Comedy Cellar pretty regularly to try out new impressions. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I’d go downtown to work on Donahue or Clinton or whomever I was expecting to play in upcoming shows. It was at the Cellar that I first tested out Clinton biting his bottom lip and giving the thumbs-up, and it was a hit. The first time I did it on air, the audience loved it. After that, any time I got a Clinton script, it would include a note, “Does the thumb and lip thing.” For the record, I never actually saw Clinton do those at the same time. I made it up.
I didn’t really start making it on the show until writer Adam McKay, now one of Will Ferrell’s partners along with Chris Henchy and Judd Apatow in Funny or Die, the brilliant comedy video website, took an interest in me. When failed presidential candidate Steve Forbes hosted in April 1996, Adam wrote a sketch in which I played Koppel interviewing Forbes, playing himself, about whether he was the author of an anonymous political novel in which the lead character is a handsome ladies’ man named Teve Torbes. At one point, after Forbes, in a fit of giggles, denies yet again that he is the author, I ad-libbed, “C’mon!” Ad-libbing was verboten as a rule—as Lorne has said, it’s hard enough putting a show together in six days without introducing surprises—but the audience applauded loud enough that I had to pause for a moment before saying my next line. Suddenly I had this half-assed sense: I think I have a hit character .
In total that season, I managed to establish a number of impressions good enough to recur: Phil Donahue, Koppel, Clinton, Richard Dreyfuss. When I did Jesse Jackson on “Weekend Update” the first time, Norm Macdonald, who was anchor then, broke up when I yelled at the end of a largely nonsensical rant, “Say it with me: Yabba Dabba Do!” It was one of the few times something I wrote made it into the script and on air.
I even got a little make-out action that first season. I did one cold open as Jay Leno performing for the troops in a USO show. During the bit, I brought out Tim Meadows dressed in drag as RuPaul. Leno starts to say how beautiful RuPaul is, then goes in for a big lip lock. Tim runs offstage in mock horror (at least I think it was mock), and I turn back to the audience, my face covered in his smeared lipstick. In another episode, I played veteran 20/20 anchor Hugh Downs, who ends up pulling coanchor Barbara Walters, played by Cheri Oteri, behind the desk in a hot clinch.
Veterans and newcomers spent all season trying to figure out how to work together as an ensemble. Toward the end of the year, we started having great shows. It took time to turn it around, but suddenly SNL was happening again.
I got a call from someone at NBC saying, “Great year. We look forward to having you back.”
I thought, Impossible. I could not have gotten here from where I started.
God, if You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem
CHAPTER TWO
The Golden Years
Melbourne, Florida
The 1960s
W hen I was very little, maybe four or five years old, I used to sit in our little one-story house on Wisteria Drive, overwhelmed with the sense that I was surrounded by evil. When the sun started to go down in the late afternoon, I was filled with foreboding, and everything was scary—the walls, the furniture, the rug, the very air was scary. I’d hear the branches of the hibiscus bush outside the kitchen window thump thump against the glass and feel something was coming to get me. Outside, the trees, the grass, the asphalt in the driveway, seemed alive and threatening. I had to make it through the night until our maid Myrtise arrived in the morning.
My mother described Myrtise as looking like a young Cicely Tyson. I only knew her from a small child’s perspective: she smelled like the wind and wore sleeveless dresses that showed her arms, which were pretty, surprisingly strong, and—significantly, in the largely racist neighborhood where we lived—brown. I was entranced by the sight of my little white hands in her warm, encompassing brown ones. I knew that we lived among people who used the N-word, but I didn’t know that my father’s grandfather had belonged to the KKK and ran moonshine back in Georgia during Reconstruction. It was very confusing for me because I adored Myrtise. The only real affection I got during the first few years of my life was from her. How was I was supposed to disparage her at the same time? I only knew that when Myrtise held me, I was safe.
Melbourne in the late 1950s and early ’60s was a long way from the colorful playground of Disney World or swank Miami Beach. But Melbourne is one of those places—Florida is filled with them—that’s not really anywhere. Squeezed up against the Atlantic Coast, with big brother Orlando to the northwest and the “real” city of Palm Bay just to the south, in those days Melbourne only impersonated a real city. Nevertheless, it somehow manages to pack in a cool 75,000 people, most of whom have jobs and spend their weekends heading out to the beach, or the barrier island that manages to keep the worst of the ocean weather at bay, literally. If you wanted to, you could drive the whole barrier island all the way down Route 1A—it’s nearly 100 miles of beach road, dotted here and there with fun things like cuddly Patrick AFB and my personal favorite, Big Starvation Cove.
I guess the highlight is that Melbourne is smack in the middle of the Space Coast, less than an hour south of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, which was established the year I turned seven. That’s where the Apollo moon missions, the Hubble Telescope, the space shuttles, and the International Space Station were all launched. Nearby Cocoa Beach is where Major Tony Nelson lived with Jeannie Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. (If you’re under age ninety, you probably didn’t get that, but bear with me.)
I think it was thanks to my love for Myrtise that I was always oddly proud of the fact that Melbourne was founded by slaves after the Civil War. And the fact that freed men established my town seemed to offset the fact that it was boringly named after the first postmaster, an avowedly white Brit who actually spent most of his life in Melbourne, Australia. His actual name was Archibald Corncraker McTavish; or maybe it was Tarquin Bartholomew Bungle. No, no: Kevin. That was it. Kevin. Okay, no, it was really Cornthwaite John Hector, and I’m sad that more people aren’t named Cornthwaite.
But living in Melbourne was more like living in the Deep South of my ancestors than in the Florida of picture postcards. The people lived lives that were all but prearranged—marriage, mortgage, kids, church—and they all seemed to suffer a kind of lower-middle-class desperation. My parents were no exception.
In those days, especially in the South, if you were a woman with aspirations, you might as well be a whore. My mother, Margaret, who looked a bit like Annette Bening with luxurious auburn hair, was trapped in that world, which dictated that she become a wife and mother. She told me on my wedding day years later that she only married my father, Max, because her own father had threatened “to beat the living daylights” out of her if she didn’t.
Wisteria Drive sounds a lot more picturesque than it was. Our house was one of many one-story tract houses on small plots lined up one after the other. Most people tried to keep a lawn, but in the Florida climate most of the lawns were sad, sandy affairs sporting more brown than green. A few people put up white picket fences, but mostly the yards were left to the elements. The Florida East Coast Railway, a 350-mile stretch of freight line between Miami and Jacksonville, ran right behind our house.
My parents kept up appearances and did what they were supposed to do. They had children: first, a little girl, and then, a couple of years later, a son. My dad ran a Western Auto store with his father. My mother belonged to the First United Methodist Church a couple of miles down the road in downtown Melbourne. She made us breakfast in the morning before my sister and I went to school. We ate dinner together as a family every night. My mother talked about Jesus and participated in church functions along with people who made cookies for bake sales, donated clothes for charity drives, helped a neighbor in need. On the surface, everything looked just as it should, very Ozzie and Harriet. (Again, under ninety, sorry.) But that was just for the neighbors.
Before I was old enough for school, each morning my mother and I drove to pick up Myrtise. We had to cross a bridge to get there, and every time we did, my mother would swerve as though she were going to drive the car right off. I was never convinced that she wouldn’t do it some day.
On Sundays throughout my childhood, I went to church with my mother, but when I was little I asked questions that got me in trouble. If it was seven days to make the world, how long was a day? Was a day an hour? Was there a sun yet? If there wasn’t a sun, how long was a day? One time I made the mistake of referring to the “ghost of Jesus,” which was blasphemy. “He’s a spirit , not a ghost,” somebody said angrily to me. What’s the difference, they’re both gaseous? At four or five years old, what the hell did I know about the Holy Trinity?
M y father didn’t go to church much; his religion was the United States of America. Tall and blond, he had a Cary Grant–esque dimple in his chin and shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway. He’d gone to military prep school just as the United States was joining the Allied effort in World War II. Under his junior year photo in his yearbook, Max Hammond had written that it was his dream to go to Duke, play baseball, then go on to law school. This was in the days when baseball was king; aside from boxing, there wasn’t much else in professional sports—no football, no basketball, no hockey—so every kid played baseball. My father’s high school team was top-notch; one of his teammates was Al “Flip” Rosen, who would become a four-time All-Star for the Cleveland Indians in the 1940s and ’50s.
But by the time my father was a senior, the caption under his yearbook photo said his dream was “To serve my country the best way I can.” He was sent to Germany an eighteen-year-old second lieutenant, the youngest commissioned officer in the history of the U.S. military at the time, or so he was told. I never learned all the details of his service, but he came home with a lot of medals and a tortured soul. Armed conflict ruined him.
My father used to tell me about one battle when almost everyone in his company had been killed, and the Germans were looking to shoot survivors. There was a guy lying next to him, the top of his skull blown off. My father reached over and scooped out a handful of brains and smeared it over his own face, and lay there pretending to be dead so the Germans would pass him by.
“You do what you have to do to survive,” he’d say.
Once in a while, my father would sit at the dining room table, getting drunk on gin. Staring off into space, he would sometimes begin speaking to his men as if they were going into battle:
Some of you won’t be coming home tonight. I might not be coming home tonight. You have to remember that you’re part of something that’s bigger than you. This is about fighting evil, not someone who’s angry or going through a phase or disgruntled, but someone who’s crossed the line between sick and bad. They want to stop the country we live in, to stop us from being able to choose the color of the paint on the wall or a career or what clothes you wear. You can be sure that God will be coming into battle with us. God has an interest in what happens here today, and some of us may go with Him. But when these cocksuckers are fucking with us, they’re fucking with God.
Over the years, I heard that a lot. He still harbored plans to play professional baseball and go to law school after the war, but then he and my mother got married in Sylvester, Georgia, in 1947, so he had to work to support his wife. Three years later, he was called back for duty in Korea. A week after he shipped out, he was in another war zone, this time in the Far East.
How do you go back to civilian life after that? One minute he was a trained killer, and, as his medals reflect, a damn good one. The next he was supposed to be a hardworking family man, then they sent him back to kill again. He’d lived in a world with bombs and guns and shattered corpses everywhere, and then next thing he knows he’s sitting in a lawn chair drinking a martini with our Siberian husky at his side. Sometimes when he sat at the table with that glass of gin in front of him, he would cry, muttering that after what he’d done, he couldn’t be loved.
Perhaps that was why whenever I caught his eye, he always looked away quickly.
I don’t know if it was his military experience or simply how he was raised back in Georgia, but my dad took shit from no one, and he wasn’t shy about telling people what he thought of them.
One day a Jehovah’s Witness came to our door. Unfortunately for the poor bastard, my father was the one who answered it. When the guy was done with his glory-of-God spiel, my father looked at him for a long minute before he said, “You’re not worth shit, are you, son?” And he slammed the door in the man’s face.
On a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon, my father was in the yard when a car came speeding down the road. He stepped out to the curb and waved it down. “You’re driving too fast, son. Do it again, I’m gonna bounce ya, and I’m gonna bounce ya good.”
More than once I saw him walk up to boys he didn’t know and say, “Cut your hair, son.” And to one kid who had a ring through his lip, he said, “You didn’t turn out too good, did you, boy?”
One night during dinner, my sister told us the veterinarian was threatening to put down her dog because of an unpaid bill. My father got up and went straight to the phone to call him.
“My daughter said you’re talking about destroying her dog.”
I could hear “blah blah blah” on the other end of phone.
“Well, if you touch the dog, you’re gonna get killed, son. Do you understand me?”
More “blah blah blah.”
“No, no, this is not about what’s right or wrong, what the police will do, or what they can do, or what God would want. This is about what’s gonna happen. And what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna get killed, son.”
He scared the fuck outta the guy, and then we ate.
S ometimes he turned his rage on us. We’d be at the dinner table, and my sister or I would inadvertently say something that upset him.
“What in the goddamn hell!” he’d say, then he would get up and walk over to either my bedroom door or my sister’s bedroom door and kick in a hole, then walk back to the table and sit down. We lived for years with those holes in our doors. My father bought crude squares of aluminum that he pasted over some of them.
I’d be in my bedroom and hear this crash at the door and my father yelling, “I’m going to bash you halfway through that wall.” I believed him.
My father kicked or punched my bedroom door so often, it eventually gave way.
He once said to either my mom or my sister, “Why don’t you just kill me? Why don’t you just get yourself a gun, put it right up here, temporal lobe, squeeze the trigger, blow my brains out, end my life, get me off of this earth? Because that’s where we’re going.”
M y mother was at once more subtle and more sinister. I remember my hand being slammed in car doors and thinking it was my fault. But she wasn’t trying to break my fingers; she was saying, “See what I can do? See what I think of you?”
She used to recount cheerfully the time she beat me with her high heel and I began to bleed in front of everyone in the park in Jacksonville.
“I beat you bloody!” she’d say, her hand on her stomach to contain her chuckles.
I used to wake up in the morning wanting a mom. Not my mom, but a mom. I wanted mothering, the magic I noticed in the hands and the voices of other mothers. Instead, my mother told me that if I ever saw anyone in my room at night, it was ghosts, and I’m not talking about the friendly Casper variety. She was more interested in her church and her friends and playing piano. Her favorite piece of music was Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, which I picked up by watching her and imitating the movement of her fingers.
When I was about seven years old, I finally discovered a way to connect with my mother. I noticed that if I could get her talking about certain people in the neighborhood, she would become enraptured doing impressions of them. She would tell stories and do the voices of Coach Davis, Betsy Whatshername, Maggie Turnbull, and she did them all expertly. Doing my best to copy what she did, I learned to do voices too. If for nothing else, she seemed to love me for that.
We had a recording of Dickens’s Christmas Carol read by the British actors Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield, and my mother and I learned all the parts. If I wanted to get her attention, I would say, “Let’s do Merry Christmas, Uncle!” We were especially fond of the conversation at the beginning of the story between pre–ghost visitations Ebenezer Scrooge and his rosy-cheeked nephew, which we acted out without the descriptive bits that Dickens had written into the original:
“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” “Bah! Humbug!” “Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don’t mean that, I am sure?” “I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come, then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” “Bah! Humbug!” “Don’t be cross, uncle.” “What else can I be, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”
We used to say that last line all the time, even when we weren’t doing the whole scene, just because it was so fun to say. For my money, if you’re going to tell someone off, do it in a posh British accent. It’s way more effective. I always wanted to use the words “vomitorious” and “oblivion” in the same sentence.
As I got a bit older, I decided to take the entertainment power of impressions farther afield. I started doing Porky Pig saying his trademark line, “That’s all, folks!” and Popeye doing his chuckle, which made me an instant star among my friends at school. A pattern for learning new voices quickly emerged: When I listened to a voice I wanted to imitate, for instance a recording of Popeye scat singing, the voice came to me as a color first. In Popeye’s case: blue. Then I saw all the letters in my head— skee da bee dat doh skidibit day id ibit duh bug da yee da doh . In the same vein, Porky Pig was yellow. Voices still come to me as colors first.
Despite what you’re thinking right now—which I’m guessing is something along the lines of, Aha! That’s where he got it!—I wasn’t destined for, or even interested in, a life doing impressions.
What I was really supposed to do was play baseball.
I think all human beings on this earth deserve three golden years like the ones I had beginning at age twelve when I started playing Little League. For me, a tsunami of joy was unleashed with every stroke of the bat. The thrill of hitting a ball well was mind-bending, watching it rise up, the sun glinting off the horsehide, outfielders running back toward the fence. It made the constant sense of foreboding at home fade into the background.
Even the smell of the cigar smoke coming from the wizened old men from the neighborhood who’d come to watch was delicious. They didn’t know anybody or have any kids in the league, but it was a baseball game, and, for that night at least, we were all playing for keeps.
And the sound track to the late 1960s was glorious—Motown at its best. People brought their transistor radios to the games. Someone put a turntable in the announcer’s booth at Wells Park, and some guy would go up there and call the game. There was a guy named Damon Johnson who brought Motown songs. While we were getting ready for the game, he’d play the Four Tops, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye’s “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” the Zombies’ “Time of the Season,” the Jackson Five’s “Stop! The Love You Save,” the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup,” “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),” the one-hit wonder by E
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