Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [12]
The next morning I awoke hungover and started packing some essentials. I was scheduled for a gig at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, later that evening. I was looking forward to the show because I was working with Anthony Clark, an outstanding comic. Anthony is an old friend who stars in the sitcom Yes, Dear. We had met on the comedy circuit in Boston and hit it off quickly. Also, I had been to Catawba College once before and the students there were awesome. They were certainly in for quite a show.
Anthony and I flew together from New York to Charlotte, which was about an hour’s drive from the campus. The school put us up in a motel adjacent to the highway. There aren’t too many Four Seasons in Salisbury. We both arrived hungry, so after checking in, we made a plan to meet back in the lobby in about an hour to score some local grub. I was going to my room to take a nap; Anthony was going to go for a swim.
The pool at the motel was by no means filthy, but the cleaning net lying beside it was a welcome sight. Anthony grabbed the net and began the process of ridding the pool of every leaf and insect that had fallen into it.
Once in my room, I undressed and crawled under the blankets for my nap. I found a Cubs baseball game on the television and turned the sound low so I could be lulled to sleep by the voice of Harry Caray. As I was drifting off, the telephone rang. My first thought was that someone in my family must have died. What else could have such importance that I had to be told immediately while lying in bed in a roadside motel in the woods of rural North Carolina?
I answered the phone warily and was relieved that it was my manager, Barry. On the phone with Barry was my agent at the time, Ruthanne Secunda. Barry asked me if they had caught me at a bad time. I told him no and asked him what was up.
Ruthanne spoke next. “You got it,” she said, plain and simple as that. I froze. Got what? I knew what she meant, but I needed more description. Barry clarified the situation. “You, my friend,” he said, drawing out each word, “are a new cast member of Saturday Night Live.”
Strangely, I was not immediately elated. Instead, I felt like a school bus had rolled on top of me. I was dazed. I felt as if something very serious had happened, but I couldn’t quite quantify it. I asked them if I could call them back so I could phone my parents. When I told my mother and father the news, I cried. But oddly, no real joy. I was absolutely dumbstruck.
I pulled on my jeans and went down to the pool to tell Anthony. I had to tell somebody in person. Anybody. Everybody. When I reached the pool’s concrete deck, I saw Anthony, now shirtless, still skimming the pool with the long net. I stood next to him and watched for a while. He didn’t say anything, he just kept waving that stupid pole around. At this point, it looked like he was removing molecules because the pool was spotless. But he just kept going. Finally I blurted out, “I just got Saturday Night Live.” Anthony stopped with the pole and looked up at me for the first time. He was stunned. A minute passed, and he smiled. “Well, there goes that nap,” he deadpanned.
Anthony was genuinely happy for me. I was lucky that I wasn’t doing the gig with some dickhead who would be jealous. That night, in the most beautiful theater I had ever seen, in front of 2,000 students, I was introduced as the newest cast member of Saturday Night Live. Since I had done a show there the prior year, they were juiced. I could feel how happy they were for me. What a show.
Three
A Knee in the Groin
I DIDN’T have a single idea in my head. It was my first week on Saturday Night Live and Charles Barkley was the host. This wasn’t bad; it was terrible. The seemingly impossible had happened: I was actually working