Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [69]
Finally, as nonchalantly as possible, I left Chris Elliott and his toupee behind and went back to my dressing room to change into my wardrobe. I was hoping that if anyone did recognize me, they would think that my dressing room was just a place close to the stage where I stashed some extra clothes. I picked my wrinkled wardrobe up off the floor and turned and walked out like I was on my way to someplace much larger and cooler. Now that I had my clothes and had left my dressing room, I was faced with the dilemma of where I would actually change.
I settled for a stall in the men’s bathroom. There, I stripped out of my street clothes and put my sketch clothes on. Thankfully, the pants had plenty of pockets. I felt like a moron carrying my street clothes through the halls, so I went back up to my office on the seventeenth floor and left them there, a practice I followed for most of the year.
When I got off the elevators back down on the eighth floor, I could hear Joe Dicso was halfway through the casting call for the sketch I was in. Thank God for the intercom boxes, I thought to myself. Thank God for Joe Dicso and his voice.
The small space of my new dressing room had made Joe Dicso’s voice even louder. Joe had been the show’s stage manager since the inaugural show. He wore a headset that was connected with a wire to a sound box he wore on his belt. The box on his belt had a few buttons on it, and depending on which button he pushed, Joe could talk to the control room or the other stage manager, Bob Van Rye, who had also been a stage manager since the first show. During both rehearsals and the live show, Joe could push a button and his voice would be heard through the intercom speakers that were in the dressing rooms, as well as throughout the eighth and ninth floors. Joe was the one who told you what was next, who was in it, and how long before you had to be onstage. In some of the dressing rooms, the intercom boxes were alarmingly loud, and mine was definitely one of those.
One day after my dressing room was wired for sound, Michael McKean and his girlfriend were sitting there when Joe Dicso’s voice exploded into the room: “‘Buh-Bye’ will be next! ‘Buh-Bye’ will be next. David, Chris, Tim, Janeane, Ellen, Adam, Michael, Chris, Rob, and Jay! We are behind schedule, guys! We gotta go, we gotta go!” My dressing room was five feet by nine feet and the door was closed, so with the three of us in it the room seemed much smaller. With Joe’s voice chopping us into pieces, it seemed like a prison cell.
I knew that Joe said everything twice over the intercom. The entire cast was in the “Buh-Bye” sketch, and since I knew Joe was going to say all of our names again, I looked at the door and realized it would look strange to Michael and his girlfriend if I sprinted out of the room without explanation. McKean jumped a little and made a joke about how loud the intercom box was. Joe started to murder me. He pushed the button on his belt again and after a few seconds of feedback he belted out another rendition: “David, Chris, Tim, Janeane, Ellen, Adam, Michael, Chris, Rob, and Jay! We are behind schedule, guys! We gotta go, we gotta go!”
But McKean reached the door before I did. As he opened it and stepped out into the hallway, he looked back at me, laughing. “You know there’s a big volume knob on the back of that thing,” he said. I thought, Are you shitting me? My ears have been bleeding for a year and a half and you mean to tell me there’s a big volume knob on the back of the speaker?
The door swung closed and I was alone in the room with Joe and his voice and the speaker box. I pulled the chair under the speaker and climbed up. I put my face against the wall sideways, so I could look at the back panel of the box. The volume