Pen Coffee Mike and Smoke Filled Rooms

By Jeff Chern

This book is not just a book about my before-during-and-after stand up comedy career. Comedy was just the vehicle. It's about career choices. Life choices. About who believes in you and who doesn’t. About how surprised you are at who does and who doesn’t! It’s about decisions. Whose advice do you take? Some tell you if you believe in yourself keep doing what you’re doing and don’t change. Others tell you if you don’t change you’ll fail. In the end can you live with the results? Let’s hope so!
I never threw up before a show. Maybe I should have. Maybe I should have been more nervous. Stand up comedy can be funny on stage. Off stage it’s a serious business. In the beginning every new comedian has to be the performer, writer, manager, and marketing team. Every joke has to get scrutinized. Is it funny? Is it in the right sequence in the act? Does the verbiage give it the proper rhythm? And of course, is it right for the audience?
It’s one thing to get laughs in your living room or at the lunch table in school. But how about on stage, in the lights, looking through the smoke at 100 strangers who don’t know you and quite possibly are waiting for the next act? Is comedy fun? Yeah. When it works.
When it doesn’t work? If you’re lucky you’ll get heckled and you have a chance for some snappy come-backs.
That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you’re bombing and no one heckles you and all you can hear are crickets. And you can’t talk to them!
Why did I write this book? I’ll be honest. My ex pushed me into writing this. We needed the money.
“Who wants to hear about me? And what do I write about?”
“You’re a good writer. Write about you and your career.”
At first it was work. Like an English theme in school. Then I got into it. I didn’t have to go to a boring library and look things up. It was about me. I already knew this! I was just telling a story. And in the story I actually did and said some pretty funny things. And I wrote sentence fragments because I make the rules. And in the end? In the end I wrote a funny, insightful, entertainingly (my own word) interesting book that should make you laugh and cry. At least I did.
And my current wife?
“Why did you write a book about you? Nobody cares about you. Write a mystery!”
I can’t win.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Chern
• Release date: May 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301981823

Jeff Chern

Before he entered the world of show business Jeff flunked out of Ohio State twice. Why twice? Never one to hold a grudge, Jeff wanted to give the university a second chance. A high school experience with an audience motivated him to embark on a career in show business as a stand-up comedian. After a decade long quest for success Jeff finally retired from the “biz” and decided to return to civilian life. He parlayed his successes from careers such as office clerk, car salesman, call center rep., customer service clerk, copy machine salesman, credit supervisor, and shoe salesman into a sizable savings account. One day Jeff cashed in the savings account and spent all of it on a computer; complete with a keyboard, mouse, and speakers. Now married and with two children, Jeff found that his expenses were taking a toll on his ability to pay bills. When his son’s cell phone bill became larger than the mortgage payment, Jeff was strongly encouraged to get a second job by his wife of 20 years. Or was it 60? Since Jeff was now computer literate he decided to write about his journey from oblivion to the bright lights of show business and back into oblivion. The success of this book, plus a small loan, should be enough to pay the phone bill, and buy his daughter the $800 hair straightener she’s been looking at. Today Jeff works for the Texas Employment Commission in McKinney, Texas helping the unemployed find jobs. Jeff needs a new job himself. A job that might involve a keyboard and writing stories utilizing state of the art techniques like cut and paste. If successful, hopefully he'll be able to replace his printer that keeps wrinkling up the paper.

Book preview

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PEN, COFFEE, MIKE AND SMOKE FILLED ROOMS

A Stand Up Comedy

By

Jeff Chern

Smashwords Edition

Pen, Coffee, Mike and Smoke Filled Rooms

Copyright ©2013 – Jeff Chern

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIFE’S AN IMPROV – AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE SPARK

COLLEGE: PASS GO, PAY $5,000, DO NOT COLLECT DIPLOMA

POST COLLEGE RECONSTRUCTION

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

COMEDY UNIVERSITY

TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE

PEN, COFFEE, MIKE AND SMOKE FILLED ROOMS

WHAT NOW?

LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS WHILE YOU ARE BUSY MAKING OTHER PLANS

EPILOGUE IN PICTURES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LIFE’S AN IMPROV – AUTHOR’S NOTE

The 60’s and 70’s were full of promise, hopes, and dreams. People talked about things like stopping wars, civil rights, feeding the world, freeing the people, power to the people, and peace and love for the whole universe. So being a successful stand-up comedian seemed a modest objective. After all, don’t they just jump on stage, tell a few jokes, and disappear behind the curtain? Besides; saving the world is a tough job and it doesn’t even pay medical and dental.

From office cubicle to stand-up comedy and back to the cubicle it’s the story of a clerk with marginal talent who manages to get further than even he imagined, and it’s a story with an unusual mixture of humor and stark realities (Especially when he goes back to the cubicle).

Baby Boomers have now reached the age of reflection. The time to sum up their successes and failures. So what about regrets? Did they leave something undone?  Was there something they wished they had tried, but were afraid? Would they do it all over again the same way? Should success be measured only in tangible results, or do the Boomers get credit for simply trying?

We all have dreams. Most people have dreams just to have dreams; to be a rock star, a famous actor, a sports superstar selling tennis shoes, or even a president.  Nothing wrong with dreams. It’s good for the imagination. But to actually try pursuing and living the dream is an impressive victory over one’s self-doubts. Whether you follow the road a short time, or at least long enough to get a bloody nose, maybe you’ve succeeded where many have failed because you had the courage to step through the mirror.

This is the story of someone who did.

He survives a kidnapping by his father, writes stand-up comedy material in high school, and after joining a college fraternity reminiscent of Animal House, is removed from college for academic reasons.

In Philadelphia he enters talent shows featuring tap dancers and accordion players.  They win.

In New York, Jay Leno tells him he’s passed his audition at the Improv, Gilbert Gottfried gives him advice about getting better time slots, and Yakov Smirnoff gives him a bad recipe for homemade vodka.

Since the show biz lifestyle was a 24/7 pursuit, he takes a break from the comedy wars to tour Russia. He performs a one-niter in Moscow. She doesn’t respect him in the morning.

No one discovers him. He discovers himself getting older. His decision to leave show business results in his finding a wife and two kids. He thinks it’s a good trade off, and looks forward to a new career and the challenges of fatherhood.

And as a father; he’s still the funniest dad in the neighborhood.

Success is a subjective, relative state existing somewhere between society’s needs and expectations and our own personal dreams. Achieving success depends upon the quality of preparation, the ability to make good decisions, consistent high-level performance; plus a little luck.

I wish I had some profound reason for my choosing show business as a career; some sage words of wisdom to guide young people in their career search. But I chose stand-up comedy because I found it fun and satisfying. That’s it.

I. THE SPARK

So this guy goes downstairs into the basement of this drugstore, neatly arranges some newspapers and rags and lights a match. Maybe there was a gas leak in the furnace? Who knows? But the store blows up with the arsonist inside.

I never met Grandpa Joe. Grandpa Joe was still in his 30’s when he blew himself up. It was stupid. He had his own drugstore in Detroit, a new car, and he was doing well despite the bad economic times of 1932. But he wanted more. He wanted fire insurance money. He left behind a wife and three daughters.

Joe’s dad never knew anything about it. He never knew because he was out of town. In fact he was still in the Ukraine somewhere. He was a Ukrainian minstrel traveling from town to town singing, dancing, and any other show bizzy things he could do in 1890’s Ukraine. It must have been a happy lifestyle. In fact he had so much fun that he never got on the boat, never saw the Statue of Liberty, and no one talked about him much.

But the insurance company was very interested in talking about his son Joe. The insurance company claimed Joe blew up his own drugstore to collect the insurance money. During the investigation my uncle and a cousin were arrested for convincing Joe to set the fire, but with little evidence they were all released. Joe’s wife, knew little of financial affairs so Uncle and Cousin took care of everything. She never got a penny.

Understandably, Joe’s wife, Frances became a rather bitter woman. She never expected to work for a living and resented even thinking about it. She had no profession and was terrified at the thought of having to work. She preferred playing cards, smoking, and dancing the Charleston. She was a 20’s flapper. But after her husband foolishly made her a widow, rather than teach her children the value of financial independence, she curiously groomed them to look pretty and marry well. So my mother was trained for a life of kitchen sinks, vacuums, babies, and aprons; a perfect wife for the 1950’s.

Great-Grandpa Adolph, from my father’s Romanian side of the family owned a magic shop in Philadelphia. He sold playing cards, costumes, and various magic tricks. Like Grandpa Joe, he proved that ownership was not synonymous with wisdom. His contribution to family honor was an idea to expand his business to include sending pornography through the mail. His porno business was just getting off the ground when the federal authorities caught up with him. Little did he know that he was way ahead of his time. But in his time, he did time. In prison. Unlike her counterpart Frances, his wife, Elizabeth had a difficult time explaining to friends where her husband was. In the 1930’s divorce was a scandal, so you can imagine what people thought about porn.

When Adolph got out of prison he was hounded and harassed by his wife Elizabeth, until he died. In fact Adolph’s daughter, Jean, thought her mother sent her beloved father to an early grave. When Elizabeth was in a nursing home, Jean rarely visited her mother.

Grandma Jean was tough as nails with a temper to match. She talked like a sailor and told you exactly what she thought and she wasn’t subtle about it. Despite Adolph’s store in their early years, Jean, along with her sister and brothers, grew up the poorest of all my grandparents.

Like Grandpa Joe, Jean’s husband-to-be was also building a nest egg during the Great Depression.

Grandpa Harry, my dad's father, made a lot of money during and after the Depression as an auctioneer on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Auctioneers lured people off the boardwalk to bid for things like paintings, watches, jewelry, and vases. The auctioneers worked in teams of two or three. While one auctioned off several quality items which offered legitimate savings, the others searched the audience looking for the tourists with the most money. Maybe by their clothes, jewelry, buffed nails, or even by the way they carried themselves, the moneyed people always tipped off the scammers. Here we are! The auctioneer's partners would signal him that they found one or two victims. The auctioneer ensured that one or both targets made the right bid that bought an object. Soon the show was over and the winners went backstage to claim their prizes. As the auctioneer gave the vase to the selected customer, he said something like,

Ah, Mr. Brown. I see you really know your vases! We don’t see many people like you in our humble gallery. Let me show you something we don’t dare auction, out of fear that we’ll never get the full value for it!

The auctioneer then opens a jewelry box revealing a diamond ring as beautiful as it was fake. The sucker buys it and goes back to Oklahoma with a great-looking fake ring. That’s how my grandfather made his nest egg.

Thus far my sister and I haven’t committed any major crimes, but we understand family history and are determined to reverse the trend.

Meanwhile, Grandma Jean and Grandpa Harry were a good match for each other. Both grew up poor in Philadelphia. Now Harry had money and Jean very much wanted to be affluent. Both had tempers and were not shy at raising their voices, though Jean was still the winner in both categories. Harry was strict with their two sons, Lewis and Stanley, and was for the most part able to keep them in line with an angry glance or a raised voice. Jean however, was more physical and less in control. When angered she could strike the kids with a broom or anything handy. My dad, Lewis, was usually the target since he was the more rebellious of the two and his personality more resembled Jean’s.

For years my dad’s family lived in Philadelphia but also had an apartment in Atlantic City. My sister and I would visit there and go onto the boardwalk which was like a combination amusement park, shopping mall and souvenir shop stretched out on a two or three mile wooden walkway. The boardwalk was so close to the beach that it was built over the sand. In some sections the tide actually flowed in and out right under the boards, which were at least ten feet above the beach. You could even look down between the boards in some places and see the water. We sometimes rented bicycles in the morning before most of the booths opened and rode back and forth to see both ends of the boardwalk. The sea air on the New Jersey coast has a freshness and salt-like scent that no bar of soap or cologne can duplicate. The Gulf of Mexico doesn’t have it; nor does the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. Driving to Atlantic City from Philadelphia, we would get excited when we started to smell that salty air even from several miles away.

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Dad and friends; lots in common.

After the war and his auctioneering days were over, Grandpa Harry started a jewelry business. Since he was looking at fake rings for years, he probably got pretty good at recognizing the real thing. Grandpa leased counter space for his jewelry department in various stores. He started with two stores in Philadelphia (Lit Bros. & John Wannamaker’s), then in New York (Saks Fifth Avenue), then in Cleveland (Taylor’s and Southgate). They sold both fine and costume jewelry: rings, bracelets, earrings, chains, and other accessories. My dad and his brother worked in the family business. When I was born my grandfather started a mail-order business ( Jewelry and other accessories, not porn ) and named it Jeffrey’s Jewelers, after me; thinking that I too would work in the business. And speaking of accessories, considering how Grandpa Harry got the money for that business, that might have made me an accessory after the fact!

So my parents were a good match. Mom growing up without her arsonist dad wanted a strong man in her life who was going to be financially successful; just like her mom taught her. Dad wanted an attractive wife to keep at home and provide for. Today she would be called, a trophy wife and she even took second place in a Miss Cleveland pageant!. He was a young aspiring businessman with a successful father, and she was ready to be swept off her feet. She was, and that broom was now hers to use in the kitchen for almost 40 years.

Dad promised Mom a life of wealth and luxury; everything from diamonds to ponies. Yes, ponies! Mom was pretty and blonde; Dad was just average looking and married over his head. Mom was his prize, to be kept in a gilded cage at home. He was insanely jealous, and the cage proved to be less than gilded.

Mom’s mother approved the marriage because she saw dollar signs in my dad’s family business---and it was jewelry no less. Diamonds! After all, she hated the thought of mom having to work. Mom’s grandmother however, saw my father as a liar and a fake, and said so to the father of the groom. The wedding pictures show enough frozen smiles to make an ice-cream wedding cake.

Though the wedding was in Cleveland, the happy couple first lived in New York, where one of the jewelry departments was located in Saks Fifth Avenue. We lived in the sleepy little postwar town of Valley Stream in Nassau County. At the end of our street, Essex Place, was an old man’s little goat farm. I bet it’s gone today. I remember ice-cream trucks, milk trucks that actually left dairy products at your door, and even a merry-go-round truck. The back of the truck folded down into a little amusement park. I also remember mail boxes mounted right next to your front doorbell!

In New York I learned the importance of long pants. In nursery school, if you wore shorts the other kids would kick you in the knees. I limped into Cleveland when I was about six or seven.

We moved to Cleveland because the business was expanding and a new jewelry department was to be opened at a downtown department store called Taylor’s.

Dad had several vinyl record albums of performers like Shelly Berman, Lenny Bruce, Nichols & May, Rusty Warren, and Belle Barth. Some were party records sold only under the counter. I didn’t understand them much, except people laughed when the entertainers said something dirty. I liked the sounds of clinking glasses and laughter.

While living in Cleveland my parents divorced, and mom, my sister Patti and I lived with Grandma in the house that served as the wedding chapel for my parents.

The house was built strong enough to withstand a Russian winter. If we had an electrical problem, the electrician had to go in with a hammer and chisel to break through the plastered walls just to get to the wires. We had a huge furnace in the basement. Next to the washing machine was a laundry chute. From the second or third floor you could open a little door on the wall and throw your dirty clothes down this metallic-lined vertical shaft. Within seconds you heard the clothes as they flopped into the laundry basket on the floor next to the washing machine. Sometimes we put too many clothes in there and we had to use a broomstick to clear the chute.

The basement and the attic were pretty creepy and not well lit. And we had rats. This was not a poor neighborhood but the metal garbage can lids never quite fit the cans. Since there were no garbage disposals all the garbage went into the cans. This was not conducive to a rat-free environment. Once I saw Dad kill a rat in the basement with a piece of wood that had a nail driven into the end of it. Not a pretty sight since it took several stabs to do the job and the rat didn’t hold still for that second stab. There was a lot of running around and screaming on the part of the rat and my dad.

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Of course that's me. I haven't changed a bit.

Elementary school was a time of innocence. One of my classmates, Elvira D’Florentis, lived across the street. Every Easter her family had a baby lamb come to visit and we all played with her. After Easter dinner the lamb had to go home, but she came back again to play with us the next Easter. Finding out that it wasn’t the same lamb and finding out what they had for dinner was like finding out about Santa Claus. Reality hurts.

We had Campbell soup in our thermoses, a kid named Wayne showed me how to tie my shoes, we wore black rubber galoshes with metal buckles when it rained, and in second grade Linda Marino kissed a boy in the cloakroom. We learned our multiplication tables from flash cards, we used a white paste that was good enough to eat, and I’m told I liked to get up and talk during show-and-tell whether it was my turn or not and I had trouble remembering to say under God in the pledge of allegiance. But they tricked us! They let us say it the old way all through kindergarten and half of the first grade. Then in 1954 they changed the words. They added under God.

Apparently my memory improved a bit. My mom tells me I memorized 'Twas the Night Before Christmas word for word and recited it for guests. It must have been the highlight of the evening for the guests. At least it gave them a rest from my dad’s raunchy jokes. He had an x-rated sense of humor and loved offending people.

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Soon I would need braces. It was either that or make my lips bigger.

In the fourth grade I was in an Arbor Day play about planting trees. I was Mr. Butterfield, a reporter. I guess I was okay, but I didn’t get the movie part. I was also in a play about taking out books from the library. But it didn’t whet my appetite for show business or for libraries.

That same year I committed my first act of larceny. I stole a five-cent Three Musketeers candy bar. Five cents! That tells you how long ago that was. In fact today on my computer keyboard there isn’t even a key for the cents symbol. Anyway, mom made me take the candy back and apologize.

So by the end of the sixth grade I was closer to a life of crime than I was to a career in show business.

Dad played the trumpet in a few bands. He could have inspired me to give show business a try but he didn’t seem interested in it himself. By the time I knew him he only played the trumpet around the house while listening to big band records and occasionally at a local supper club. He had no interest in touring with a band and had trouble with any kind of commitment. And besides, you can’t play the trumpet and smoke at the same time.

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Dad played music but had no rhythm. Don't know if they were dancing or posing.

He loved to smoke. My sister and I got a good dose of second-hand smoke. He drove us to school in the winter with his window cracked just enough to throw out the cigarette butts. After dinner he used his empty plate for an ashtray.

When he died he left me with a new package of underwear that he never had a chance to wear, an electric shaver, and something called, chronic airway disease, courtesy of Benson & Hedges and Salem.

My dad smoked all the time around me and my sister. When I grew up, after sex I would cough.

I took trumpet lessons and was in the school band but my real love was baseball. I much preferred to run outside and play with the guys than sit inside and practice. This upset my dad and once he smacked me in the head, telling me I had no future in baseball, and that I’d I better concentrate on music. I don’t know why he wanted me to play; so we could have duets in the living room?

My dad collected knives and guns. He, my sister, and I all belonged to the National Rifle Association long before joining the NRA was making a political statement. We all knew how to handle weapons and we fired them at paper targets at a local rifle range. Looking back, it was much more dangerous than we knew. My dad made all our bullets. He bought the equipment, read gun magazines, cut the lead, greased the shells, inserted the caps, and mixed his own gunpowder. And, as we later found out, he was an alcoholic.

So my early childhood in Cleveland wasn’t too unusual. During the divorce my dad married someone else before hooking up again with mom. My second mom was a lady named, Dorothy. All I remember is that she had dark hair and a yellow Chevy.

Before the divorce and even after they got back together, my parents often had loud arguments. My earliest memory of one of their fights was when I was about five. Mom was on the floor crying. That’s all I remember. In later years I