Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [46]
I had the wind knocked out of me and it felt like my shoulder was shattered, but there was no time for pain. Chris was hovering over me, waving his dark-stained hand dangerously close to my face. Now he was laughing hysterically. I had to think fast. There was no escape. He had me. I lay there helpless between Chris’s legs, under his belly, about to eat shit.
“Farley, you fucking asshole! My arm is broken!” I screamed.
I really sold it. Chris immediately stopped laughing and a concerned look came across his face, like a child who didn’t know how to help an adult. With pure innocence, he stepped back, looked down at his wounded colleague, and asked if I was okay. I rolled over onto my good shoulder, pushed myself up, and began running before my feet hit the carpet. I ran all the way to the elevators and hit the down button; I was going to go outside and throw myself in front of a cab.
As I ducked into the elevator, I looked back down the hallway and saw Chris standing motionless, a confused look on his face. To this day, thinking about that look makes me sad.
Nine
Music for the Soul
HOW MANY people get to go to work and meet Kurt Cobain? I did, and for me, it was a true highlight at Saturday Night Live.
Nirvana was the musical guest for the first show of the year. To put it mildly, everyone was pretty excited. The album In Utero had just been released and the band was going to play two songs from it, “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Rape Me.” “Heart-Shaped Box” was an obvious choice because it was Nirvana’s first single to break from the album, but the selection of “Rape Me” had a few of us scratching our heads. I personally wondered how a show with a full-time censor would allow a song with “Rape Me” as the chorus to see the airwaves. “Rape Me” is about Kurt Cobain’s feelings of being double-crossed by the media. Try explaining that to the Smith family watching the show in Utah.
We were in the middle of a writers’ meeting when I heard that Nirvana was going to rehearse. I walked out of the writers’ room and headed to the elevators. I didn’t care if they fired me on the spot; I was watching Nirvana. This proved to be more difficult than it should have been, though I was used to walking through mazes.
In the evening only one of the main elevators was active. If you wanted to go to a different floor at night in the main elevators, you were forced to call security and secure approval from either someone on that floor or the security guard. There were a pair of night elevators toward the rear of the building. When you showed up for the job, they gave you a card for the night elevators. If you lost the card, a guard was required to walk you to and from the elevators every night.
The night elevators were primarily express elevators that shot up to the Rainbow Room. None of the floor buttons worked unless you had a card to activate them. Once you stepped off the elevator, the panel of buttons would die again. If you got on the elevator and weren’t quick enough with your card, you were going to the Rainbow Room, which was not the place you want to be dumped off wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The night elevators were used the most by us and the drunken idiots in the Rainbow Room. There was a mail chute in the wall opposite the night elevators that ran through the entire building; I know this because one night I actually got off on every floor and checked. Somehow the mail chute and the elevators were connected. Whenever a night elevator would pass your floor, a long whoosh would roll out of the mail slot. In the wee hours of the morning, this was quite an eerie sound. When the offices emptied out a little bit and I was tired, miserable, and depressed, the sound of the elevator that came out of the mail slot made the entire building feel haunted.
I inserted my night elevator card in the slot and waited. Three long whooshes later, the elevator arrived. I rode alone, which seemed unfair. If a guy was about