Tiny Yellow Hat: Autobiographical Anecdotes Packaged in a Memoir

By J. Michael Chamberlain

This wildly entertaining book is laced with wicked concepts, cheap shots, and a few bright ideas; a feast of funny words and clever notions without once mentioning vampires, aliens, or zombies. J. M. Chamberlain created the perfect blend of madcap rants and true-life experiences regarding his years on the road as a stand-up comedian, act

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quinn-Hill Publishing
• Release date: Oct 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9780989573481

Book preview

Contents

For Millisa

Foreword

Tiny Yellow Hat

Murder at Moose Lodge

Mary Jane Saved My Life

Mr. Rucky

Holy Crap

Nightmare on 34th Street

Holidaze

Artistic Differences

Tease

Matinee Nanny

Dress Appropriately

Peeve

Remote

Doctor Figelbaum

You’re Driving Me Mad

Devil’s Slide and the Deep Blue Sea

Letters

Legacy

Bonus Material

Dedication

About the Author

For Millisa

Foreword

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love

-Christopher Morley

The slice of life you are about to read is hilarious. It is also provocative and insightful, but mostly hilarious. When I finished reading this collection of essays laced with wicked concepts, cheap shots, and a few bright ideas, I immediately called my friend, Sebastian. Sebastian is one of the funniest men on the planet. Sebastian, I said, in a soft voice considering the hour. Did I wake you?

No, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway, he replied, yawning.

Laughing at Sebastian’s rejoinder, I added, I just took a wild ride inside the mind of a gifted satirist. You have to read his book.

Right now? Can’t I read it in the morning?

I ordered it for you, I said. It’s winging its way to you as we speak.

If you’re anything like me―and God help you if you are―when I enjoy reading, viewing, or listening to something from top to bottom, I want to share it with everyone. This delightful piece of literature comes under that heading.

Shortly after Tiny Yellow Hat was released, it became America’s most talked about bestseller. Now it has gone viral and readers are laughing amidst strangers on subways, seaplanes, and bullet trains. Prior to its success, the author pledged to reimburse readers if uncontrollable laughter did not occur. "I was relieved when Tiny Yellow Hat was a hit, J.M. Chamberlain said, in a recent interview. Because the proceeds are earmarked for charitable organizations, my palazzo in Milan, and the fuel it takes to power a Lamborghini."

While fashioning the essays bound between the covers, the author chose to pen a book that made people laugh, dance, dream, and have enough cash at the end of the day to drive a Bentley. But since that book was too hard to write, he composed a collection of compositions for those among us who love to chortle, giggle, and guffaw. Missing out on owning a book so perfectly suited for toilet reading, or any other reading for that matter, would be a travesty. Be good to yourself. Take a few minutes to read or listen to Tiny Yellow Hat. Heaven knows, people need to laugh.

Vito Andolini

The candy shop 

is open, pick yourself a lolly

Tiny Yellow Hat

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.

―M.C. Escher

I took stock of my life on a blazing hot day in a crowded bus station in Brownsville, Texas. A week earlier the landing gear on my flight from San Francisco to Dallas was hitting the runway w hen my agent called with less than po sitive news.

Michael, it’s Larry Larabee, he said, sounding a tad anxious. Look, funny man, several clubs I booked six months ago are um, well, you see, they’re …

Just say it, Larry, I replied, reaching into the storage bin above my head. The suspense is killing me.

Half the clubs I booked are out of business or circling the drain.

Scrunching my phone between my chin and neck, I pulled my luggage down from the bin and yanked out the plastic handle. Hang on Larry, I said, shuffling down the aisle. We must have a bad connection. It sounded like you said half the clubs are out of business or circling the drain.

Well, yes, that is what I, I, I ...

Quick question, I said, interrupting Larry’s stammer. Why am I hearing this news on a 707 sitting on a tarmac in Texas? If we had this conversation yesterday, I’d be home eating nachos, blazing up, and watching Jeopardy.

No worries, mate, Larry tendered. There’s still a few clubs that haven’t gone belly-up.

That’s reassuring, I replied with a measured amount of sarcasm. Where do we go from here?

When you reach the hotel, Larry replied. Pick up the new itinerary at the front desk.

My agent’s breaking news was only the tip of the standup comedy iceberg. Clubs with names like Ha Ha’s, Giggles, and The Chuckle Hut were closing their doors faster than I could say, I’ll be here all week, try the Shrimp Scampi.

Normally when I booked a tour away from home, I rented a car at the airport and drove from one gig to the next. However, in view of my booking agent’s inconvenient truth, I changed my mode of transportation from Avis to Greyhound; henceforth, the blazing-hot bus depot on the Mexican border.

The decade leading up to Larry Larabee’s untimely call was rock solid. I was booked forty-nine weeks a year with three weeks off for good behavior. Every time I hit the road, I became the Willy Loman of standup comedy; lugging one-liners and curious observations across the Continental Divide. Along the way, I tossed open my satchel brimming with puns, witticisms, and wisecracks. I was in fact the living embodiment of the timeworn traveling salesman joke; nailing punchlines and the occasional farmer’s daughter. To be honest, diddling Becky Sue from Biloxi was a rare commodity. By and large, Becky Sue hooked-up with the lead singer in the band who took the stage after I exited the building. Still, despite my agent’s harsh news and lack-o-nookie, I considered standup comedy an adventure―a wild carnival ride from one stage to the next.

My booking agent billed me as a New Wave Vaudevillian. Part of a select group of entertainers sliding around North America with my pockets filled with ideas scribbled on napkins, newspapers, and blotted menus. I called the snippets of paper, Jetlag Jokes, because they were written in airports, diners, and train stations.

Not unlike Bill Murray’s magnum opus Groundhog Day, every road-warrior-day began the same way; rising at the crack of noon, standing in the lobby of a second-rate motel, feeding coins into a vending machine dispensing tepid coffee and day-old donuts.

While my sugary breakfast rested on a motel nightstand, I telephoned agents, managers, and club owners; negotiating a string of one-niters in Boston or Brooklyn, or two weeks in Boise and Buffalo. At the time, I thought organized chaos and planned pandemonium kept my creative juices flowing. Instead of pasting hotel stickers on my luggage, I stenciled the words Chaotic and Frenzied.

One night, for example, I performed for a packed house at an outdoor venue in Miami Beach. Twelve hours later, I was snow-bound in Pocatello, Idaho. Two days after exiting Pocatello, I rode the red-eye from LAX to LaGuardia. When I landed in the Big Apple, I took a taxi to Penn Station and hopped a train heading for Providence, Rhode Island. That night, I jumped on stage and roared, It’s great to be in Vermont! A man with a deep booming voice shouted back, You’re in Rhode Island, buddy!

Lady please, I bellowed into the microphone. I’ll tell the jokes.

The gig in Rhode Island was light years away from my inception into the world of comedy. When I began my standup comedy career, I was the poster boy for stage fright. Rather than climbing on the boards, I would have gladly donned Lady Ga Ga’s meat dress and climbed into a cage filled with wolverines. Just the same, I had an inkling the comic’s life was my calling around the age of ten. At the time, my buddy, Frankie Farrell, was giving me a lift home from Marine Park on the handlebars of his bicycle. It had been a smooth ride until Frankie hit a steep slope and his quivering legs no longer had the strength to lug my fat behind up the incline. Struggling to stay upright at the top of the hill, Master Farrell and I appeared to be frozen in time.

Yo, Frankie, I shouted, teetering on his handlebars. A snail just passed us on the right.

Dipping down to the blacktop, Frankie and I tumbled head-over-heels, laughing like a couple of loons. Hopping back on my parochial school pal’s handlebars, Frankie gave me a compliment to last a lifetime.

You’re the funniest kid I know, Frankie offered, steadying his Columbia bicycle until I climbed aboard. But if you keep making me laugh, we’ll never get home.

A decade after riding on my schoolmate’s handlebars and cracking jokes about snails in East Flatbush, I was making my home in California and entertaining friends with impressions of Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Lewis, and Fat Jack Leonard. Considering I was pilfering material penned by professionals, I received a glut of guffaws. But I soon learned that getting laughs at parties with someone else’s material was a lot easier than getting laughs on stage with my own jokes.

Exiting an Improv workshop at a Junior college in Oakland, my friend, Chico Purdiman, echoed Frankie Farrell’s compliment, adding a well-placed expletive.

You’re the funniest fucker I know, Chico said. You should try your hand and your mouth at standup comedy.

Thanks, I replied. I’d like to give standup comedy a shot, but it scares the hell out of me.

Raising and lowering his shoulders, Chico added: There’s an open-mic night every Tuesday at the Other Café in San Francisco. You should give it a go.

Later that evening, I decided that Chico’s counsel was right on the money. It was time to step up and face the audience. So, for the next two weeks, I prepared five-minutes of original material for my comedy debut, but as the day grew nearer, my stage fright grew larger. I was convinced that the moment I faced the audience at the Other Café; I would forget my entire five-minute routine, and stand in place like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. In the past, whenever I viewed rookies glancing at index cards or reading words scribbled on the palm of their hands, the beginners looked hokey and unprofessional. I wanted to recall my jokes on stage, not on the drive home.

The night before my first appearance at the comedy club in San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district, I was discussing my serious stage fright with John Baskett. John and I were writing skits and sketches and sending the work to Saturday Night Live. While we were brainstorming gags for SNL, John announced that he might have the answer to my crippling stage fright.

Why not record your routine on a tiny tape-recorder? John suggested. You can hide the tape- recorder down your pants and listen to the cues for your jokes through an earplug.

I thought John’s idea was damned clever; a tiny electronic adviser recalling my routine while I was on stage. Brilliant. So, the following night, I recorded my material on a miniature tape-recorder and placed the electronic adviser down my pants. I snaked the earplug under my t-shirt and concealed the wire―sticking out of my collar―with a shaggy wig and a floppy newsboy hat. If my jokes don’t get any laughs, I thought, my wig/hat combo is bound to get a giggle or two.

Thirty minutes later, I cruised into San Francisco with the tiny tape-recorder nestled in my shorts. When I arrived at the comedy nightspot, I printed my name on the sign-in sheet and retreated to the back of the room. Sweating like a pitcher of sangria on a hot summer night, I watched a number of aspiring comedians work a pretty tough crowd. One greenhorn used the hackneyed line, Is this an audience or an oil painting? Another tenderfoot dealt with the silence by announcing, I know you’re out there; I can hear you breathing.

After viewing several comic meltdowns, I was contemplating a hasty retreat when the Master of Ceremonies, Kevin Pollack, glanced at the sign-in sheet and jumped back on the stage.

Please put your hands together, Kevin said, for the comedy-stylings of J. Michael Chamberlain.

Grinning like a possum eating a sweet potato, I hopped on stage with the tiny tape-recorded switched to the on position. Confident my electronic adviser would furnish the cues for my jokes; I shook hands with Kevin Pollack and stepped up to the microphone. But before I could say, How’s everybody doing? the plug connected to the miniature tape-recorder down my pants popped out of the socket.

In one fell swoop, I went from being a budding standup comedian to a middling ventriloquist with "Mumbles