Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [89]
It was a hilarious sketch about commandos going into a spaceship that had landed. Each time some of the commandos would charge into the spaceship, they would reemerge with their clothes ripped off and tell the commander they had been raped. Deion was the commander, and he told us to keep charging in. When Spade came out of the UFO, he had the word bitch written across his chest in lipstick. It was great.
Eventually it was Farley’s turn to storm the spaceship. Chris looked at Deion, cocked his assault rifle, and said he was going to go in there to kick ass and take names. Chris barreled up the stairs into the spaceship. As he bent his head down to enter, his pants fell down, leaving his entire ass bare on live television. When Chris reached around to pull up his pants he was laughing and bumped his head on the doorway of the spaceship. He screamed out, “Son of A!” and wrestled with his pants.
It didn’t matter what happened next—the show was over. Even during the last sketch of the night, the audience was still giggling and murmuring about the commando sketch. Farley had done it again. He had taken an ordinary show and turned it into watercooler conversation. I still wonder if his pants fell off by accident.
Moments like Chris’s pants falling down made the show the greatest job that ever existed. As down as I got, I was sometimes picked up by the sheer magic of what happened around me. When Tom Petty performed, he brought Dave Grohl to be his drummer. Grohl recognized me from when Nirvana was on and said hello to me. When I asked him how it felt playing drums “for one of the old-timers,” Grohl’s eyes grew big as saucers, and he replied, “Dude, it is an honor.” Petty rocked the place, singing “You Don’t Know How It Feels to Be Me,” and the musical message addressed my mood.
I was sure I wasn’t imagining things when the band Live came through and performed a fantastic version of “I Alone.” David Hyde Pierce hosted that show and it was one of the funnier ones of the season. At the after-party, everyone was feeling really good about everything and was chatting and drinking when something amazing happened. Live walked into the restaurant and everyone stopped what they were doing and greeted the group with a standing ovation. It was the only time during my two years that this ever happened. They deserved it. I, on the other hand, was feeling fortunate even to be invited to the after-parties. I was doing nothing again, and the thought of having another drought scared the shit out of me.
After “Ricki Lake” aired, I sat out the next two shows. I forced myself to write. I became a terrible human being. The more I tried to write, the more of an asshole I became. I argued with everybody. I asked people flat out if they would add me to their sketch. I begged. I also did something that I never thought I would ever do. I did something I still feel sick about.
I stole.
Paul Reiser hosted the fifteenth show of the season. He gave me a Cuban cigar and I chomped on it during our Greek restaurant sketch. I had only a few lines, but I figured that I should look the part. I sat on a stool behind the register looking rather belligerent and chomped and swallowed and chomped and swallowed, intermittently looking up at Paul and saying no. In the next sketch, a commercial for mouthwash, I was an extra in the boardroom and I felt like I was peaking on acid from the cigar.
The executives at the mouthwash company were trying to show the clients how clean and fresh it was. In the middle of the sketch, Tim Meadows knocks on the door and begins making out with Molly Shannon. The sight of a black guy and a white woman going at it is supposed to shock everyone. I sat there the entire time in a near state of panic, scanning