Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [57]
When I retold these stories, people looked at me with big grins on their faces. They were smiling because it all sounded like so much fun. It all should have been fun, but it wasn’t. With the telling of each story, I realized how many wonderful things I had experienced. But that didn’t make them any more enjoyable. At least not yet. All they did was make me dread going back.
I went to New York twice that summer, both times to visit my parents. I still couldn’t rent a car, so I borrowed a friend’s. My friend was in the FBI, and he told me that if I was ever pulled over, I should say he was my brother. I asked him, “What if they ask why we don’t have the same last name?” And he repeated, “Just tell them you’re my brother.” I was pulled over twice in two days speeding down Route 80. Both times the cop handed me back my driver’s license and told me to tell my “brother” hello.
Sometimes I would sleep at my parents’ house, but mostly I made the commute from my apartment in New York to the suburbs of New Jersey. I made sure I never got stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel during rush hour. If there was the slightest congestion on my way to the tunnel, I would turn uptown and drive the half hour out of my way to the George Washington Bridge. At my parents’, I cut the grass and trimmed the hedges. I signed autographs for the neighbors. I played Wiffle ball in the driveway. Everything was fine. People had driveways and mailboxes and screen doors. There were property lines and curbs, and dinner was at six o’clock. I talked a lot with my parents about not wanting to go back, but they never voiced an opinion; they just listened.
I went to a Yankee game with a close friend of mine who had season tickets. When we sat down at the stadium, he introduced me to most of the people in his section. During the game one of the people sitting behind us asked him if I was on television. He told them, “Yes. He’s a bit player on Saturday Night Live.” The words stung. I know he wasn’t belittling me, but his statement hurt—probably because he was right. I knew right then and there that I had to go back. I had to make a difference. I never wanted to be called a bit player again. At home that night I read a quotation in the New York Post sports section from Penn State football coach Joe Paterno that hit home: “The will to win is important. But the will to prepare to win is vital.”
I started preparing to win. I kept a notebook with sketch ideas and carried it everywhere I went. I even had pages full of fake pitches. Whether I was on a plane, at the beach, or at home, I scribbled in the notebook. The slightest kernels of ideas were written down. I had to go back.
There would be things working in my favor. I wasn’t going to be the new guy anymore. I knew where the pencils were. I knew that Al Franken put them in his mouth. I had learned how to set my alarm to “you’re paid to be here.” I knew rewrites took all night for no reason. I knew not to give away any jokes until Wednesday. I knew that if you wanted to talk to Jim Downey, you were going to wait a long time. None of the new people knew anything about me. With ten new people, I could start a clean slate. They would all be asking me for help, and I would befriend them and get them to write with me.
But first the show needed to officially pick up the option on my contract.
When you’re hired on Saturday Night Live, the contract is for five years with a network option at the end of each year. This meant they could bail out whenever they pleased. The salaries were pretty much favored nations, with all the first-year people making $5,500 per week. The second year, the salary increased to $6,000 and then continued to escalate each year, to $12,500 per week in the fifth year. In a stroke of good fortune, I had been hired as writer my first year, so I was earning