Dirty Laundry: Real Life. Real Stories. Real Funny.

By Andersen Gabrych, Maggie Rowe, Jim Vallely and Mitchell Hurwitz

Every other Thursday on Santa Monica Boulevard' s Comedy Central Stage, a motley assortment of Hollywood writers, actors, and comics convened to reveal the most personal— and colorful— parts of their lives. Their soul-baring monologues revealed the sources of their creative genius, from wacky families and psycho exes to random ramblings and unbelievable Hollywood insights. This hilarious collection features confessions from such performers as Richard Belzer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), Jennifer Elise Cox (The Brady Bunch Movie), Marc Evan Jackson (The Good Place), and Kevin Nealon (Saturday Night Live), among others. In more than three dozen anecdotes, they provide the inside scoop on Hollywood, including stories about mishaps at the Emmys, writing for popular shows, being put in a sleeper hold by Hulk Hogan, growing up in famous families, and what it' s like to play Jan Brady. Funny, embarrassing, or sordid— or a combination thereof— but always brutally honest, Dirty Laundry shines a voyeuristic light on the underbellies of the people who have sold their souls to the entertainment biz.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoenix Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781614670025

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Copyright © 2010 How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Kelly Carlin; © 2010 How Rude! by Maggie Rowe; © 2010 My Own Private Applebee’s by Randy Sklar; © 2010 Day Jobs by Amy Stiller; © 2010 Method Man and Saunders by Tom Saunders; © 2010 Jan Brady by Jennifer Elise Cox; © 1988 as Me and Hulk Hogan in How to be a Standup Comic/Villard Books by Richard Belzer; © 2010 At the Emmys by Eileen Conn aka Eileen Miller; © 2009 You’re a Good Boy, Smitty by C. Brian Smith; © 2010 We All Have Our Things by Carlos Kotkin; © 2010 I’m Worth It by Maggie Rowe; © 2010 My Inner Life by Eddie Pepitone; © 2010 Master of None. Know Nothing. Do Nothing. by Marc Evan Jackson; © 2010 Neighbor Boy by Mars Bannon; © 2010 Of Ships and Hair by Tom Saunders; © 2010 Feel the Force, Jesus! by Maggie Rowe; © 2010 My Third Husband by Andrea Abbate; © 2010 Love in the Age of the Internet by Marc Evan Jackson; © 2010 My Date with a Hollywood Three-Slasher by Laura Silverman; © 2010 Dear Connie by Jonathan Schmock; © 2010 My Homeless Boyfriend by Jen Sincero; © 2010 I Attempt to Get Ready for My Date by Claudia Lonow; © 2010 The Dancing Noodle by Matt Price; © 2009 Fake Farm by Laura Silverman in Sex, Drugs, and Gefilte Fish/Heeb Media; © 2010 Boys by Eileen Conn aka Eileen Miller; © 2010 My Mother by Taylor Negron; © 2010 Color Me Narcissist by Andersen Gabrych; © 2009 The Low Voice of Dissent by Matt Price; © 2010 Heartbroken by David Landsberg; © 2010 Happy Mother’s Day! by Mary Birdsong; © 2010 Swaddling Clothes by David Chrisman; © 2010 Crayons by Keith Blaney; © 2010 Super High Me by Doug Benson; © 2010 Mormons vs. Catholics by Shaz Bennett; © 2010 If I Weren’t Gay, I’d Probably Be an Asshole by C. Brian Smith; © 2010 My Penguin by Stirling Gardner; © 2010 I Told Susan Dey to Blow Me by B. Mark Seabrooks; © 2010 Trust by Jackie Kashian; © 2010 Postcards, Boobs, and Heat by Andrea Abbate; © 2010 Coming UnDunning by Drew Droege; © 2010 Eulogy for the American Man by Andersen Gabrych

120/80 from Yes, You're Pregnant, But What About Me? by Kevin Nealon. Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Nealon. Reprinted with permission by Harper Entertainment, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Bring the Pain by Robert F. Diggs and Clifford Smith © Wu Tang Publishing; CareersBMB Music Publishing Inc. Lyric excerpt reprinted by permission from Hal Leonard.

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author of this book and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or its affiliates.

eBook International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 978-1-61467-002-5

Original Source: Print Edition 2010 (ISBN: 978-1-60747-727-3)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword  by Mitch Hurwitz and Jim Vallely

Hollywood Hamper

How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Kelly Carlin

How Rude! by Maggie Rowe

My Own Private Applebee’s by Randy Sklar

Day Jobs by Amy Stiller

Method Man and Saunders by Tom Saunders

Jan Brady by Jennifer Elise Cox

Me and the Hulk by Richard Belzer

At the Emmys by Eileen Conn aka Eileen Miller

The Spin Cycle

120/80 by Kevin Nealon

You’re a Good Boy, Smitty by C. Brian Smith

We All Have Our Things by Carlos Kotkin

I’m Worth It by Maggie Rowe

My Inner Life by Eddie Pepitone

Master of None. Know Nothing. Do Nothing. by Marc Evan Jackson

Neighbor Boy by Mars Bannon

Of Ships and Hair by Tom Saunders

Feel the Force, Jesus! by Maggie Rowe

The Dirt on Dating

My Third Husband by Andrea Abbate

Love in the Age of the Internet by Marc Evan Jackson

My Date with a Hollywood Three-Slasher by Laura Silverman

Dear Connie by Jonathan Schmock

My Homeless Boyfriend by Jen Sincero

I Attempt to Get Ready for My Date by Claudia Lonow

The Dancing Noodle by Matt Price

Family Load

Fake Farm by Laura Silverman

Boys by Eileen Conn aka Eileen Miller

My Mother by Taylor Negron

Color Me Narcissist by Andersen Gabrych

The Low Voice of Dissent by Matt Price

Heartbroken by David Landsberg

Happy Mother’s Day! by Mary Birdsong

Swaddling Clothes by David Chrisman

Crayons by Keith Blaney

Unmentionables

Super High Me by Doug Benson

Mormons vs. Catholics by Shaz Bennett

If I Weren’t Gay, I’d Probably Be an Asshole by C. Brian Smith

My Penguin by Stirling Gardner

I Told Susan Dey to Blow Me by B. Mark Seabrooks

Trust by Jackie Kashian

Postcards, Boobs, and Heat by Andrea Abbate

Coming UnDunning by Drew Droege

Eulogy for the American Man by Andersen Gabrych

Acknowledgments

Foreword

by Mitchell Hurwitz and Jim Vallely

I just read Dirty Laundry, and I was blown away and inspired by the honesty of the writers. It's the kind of honesty I someday aspire to with my own writing. Oh, hell, I might as well start being honest right now. I didn't read Dirty Laundry. I had no idea that was expected of me. I really feel awful. Learn from my mistake. Buy this book.

—Mitchell Hurwitz

Creator, Producer, and Writer

Arrested Development

Okay, this time I really did just read Dirty Laundry, and it was even funnier than when I didn't read it. These unbelievably gifted, hilarious writer-performers (many of whom have appeared on Arrested Development) give those of us who still drink an insight into what a great AA meeting must be like. If you love other people's humiliation half as much as I do, sit down and do a load of Dirty Laundry.

—Mitchell Hurwitz

Creator, Producer, and Writer

Arrested Development

I see London. I see France. I can see your underpants.

—Countless schoolyard bullies

Hey, Vallely, you suck.

—My schoolyard bully

Schoolyard bullies know a thing or two about what’s funny. Seeing someone’s underwear is funny. That, and Vallely sucks, are the two lessons they literally drummed into my head. It’s fun to hear shitty things that happened to people you really care about. It’s fun to see their dirty laundry.

Who doesn’t want to hear about a man spilling ketchup on his shirt? About grass stains on the perfect soccer mom’s knees? Or a man getting arrested in LA’s only heterosexual glory-hole club that he went into totally as a goof two days before my wedding to the best, sweetest, most understanding woman in the whole wide world?

Some stains are only fluff-n-fold, others require bleach, some you have to spit on to break up the enzymes, you know, if it’s like a blood stain. (Tip: don't think you're removing DNA by spitting on a blood stain. You're just leaving more!). The point is, we all leave stains, and as any good Native-American or Gypsy-European will tell you, every stain tells a story. Horrible, disgusting stories that, when they’re happening to somebody else, are also deliciously hysterical. If schadenfreude had a soundtrack, this would be it.

I’ve seen many of these pieces performed and have heard the audience, usually filled with jaded, angry writers, actors, directors, and lower-level television executives, laugh at the misfortune of their dearest friends and peers. Most notably, many of these pieces have been performed at the acclaimed reading series Sit ‘n’ Spin at the Comedy Central space at the Hudson Theater for the past ten years. It is still one of the best forums for a type of comedy that television and the Internet rarely explores. The awful truth.

And there are some very hard, and hysterical, truths in this book. I’ve heard gasps from the audience and have witnessed more than a few walkouts over the years. But the intent of writing and sharing these very intimate pieces is a cathartic one. Life is hard, and we should grab any sunshine wherever we can. Especially if it’s where the sun never shines.

—Jim Vallely

Co-executive Producer and Writer

Arrested Development

Hollywood Hamper

living the dirty dream

I am a stand-up comic. I scream about my family and career in coffee shops and restaurants. The only thing that separates me from the homeless is a microphone.

—Eddie Pepitone

When I envisioned my life in Hollywood, I thought things would look a lot more like me being famous and at home and a lot less like the back of a fat Mexican guy’s head in front of me at Home Depot.

—Jonathan Schmock

Hollywood’s favorite Skittle flavor is Valtrex.

—B. Mark Seabrooks

It seems that a great deal of sexy, young, and even known actresses are heavily turned on by guys that make things happen in Hollywood. I know I am.

—Laura Silverman

When I was young, I daydreamed about going to Hollywood and becoming the next Valerie Bertinelli or Lynda Carter or Cher. My last audition? It was for a role described as Nondescript Woman with Parkinson’s Disease. (Must do Stand-up Comedy).

—Mary Birdsong

How I Spent

My Summer Vacation

by Kelly Carlin

It’s 1972. Carnegie Hall, New York City. Outside on the marquee my dad’s name shines for all of Midtown Manhattan to see: Carnegie Hall Presents George Carlin—a huge coup for my dad, who grew up a latchkey kid not sixty blocks away in an area just west of Harlem called Morningside Heights. He and his kind call it Irish Harlem. Inside the theater, I sit in the corner of the dressing room, munching on some potato chips. Dad anxiously paces the floor going over material in his head, while mom sits on the couch somehow managing to have a deep and intense conversation with someone she has met only ten minutes ago. Suddenly, we get the knock, Two minutes, George.

Mom, Dad, and I leave the quiet of the room to make our way through the bowels of the building. As we walk past people they say things to us like, Go get ’em, George, Knock ’em dead. I do not know these people, and they do not know me. But they know my dad. Everybody knows my dad. As we come up from the basement we start to hear feet stamping and the chant, George, George, George. There are over a thousand voices saying my father’s name over and over again. And when he steps out onto the stage, and they erupt into a roar, every hair on my body stands. I feel energy all around me. I feel extremely alive. And although I understand that they aren’t cheering for me, at nine years old, I still feel like I’m a part of it all.

Growing up in the shadow of my father’s fame did something funny to my head. Somehow it made me feel much bigger and yet much smaller at the very same time. It was all very Alice and Wonderland-like. As a young girl, I didn’t know how to metabolize that amazing feeling I would get when I would hear the roar of the crowd in response to my father, and so I didn’t understand that it wasn’t really mine to have and hold. No one told me that if I took in too much of it, my mind would become as confused and distorted as if I had taken in some kind of psychotropic drug. And yet, there it was crackling, luminous, and filling up the air all around me— palpable, immediate, there for the taking. And God knows, it was the ’70s, a time when everyone, including my parents, was jumping down that rabbit hole by ingesting everything they could get their hands on to take them out of their smallness and connect them to something much bigger and brighter. And so while others took in LSD, reds, and bennies, I took in the roar of the crowd, the electricity in the air, and the shine of my father’s fame and let it fill me and make me larger than I actually was. But that feeling never lasted long.

Backstage, when we would walk into a room, all eyes would move to my father, and then people with faces beaming and hands out-stretched would move toward him, telling him something they loved about him (usually a line from his show, which they would try to say just like him and which always made me cringe), or they would hand him a gift—my favorite: a tie-dyed T-shirt with a drawing of what I assumed was his likeness, but because it looked more like a combination of Jesus and Charles Manson, I was never truly sure—God help us all. My mother and I would then be introduced, and people would politely spend a nanosecond of time with us, but then we’d be quickly forgotten. It was as if, poof, we had just disappeared. In order for me to feel seen, I would have to work it. We would be backstage in some college town, and Dad would be surrounded by well-wishers, and I, feeling small and ignored, would come up to them and then just wait. Then some person might glance at me, unsure of who this child was, and I would say to them inside my head, You don’t know who I am, do you?

Then I would touch my father, or ask him a question, saying subtly to the doubter of my status, I’m with him.

They would then smile at me with understanding and connection in their eyes, and I would then feel safe, and seen, and think, Yes, now you understand. Now you know who I am, believing that my status, my connection to the crackling luminosity had been affirmed in their eyes. Not understanding that in reality, I was only trying to affirm my own status in my own eyes. And not that I nor other people thought or did any of these things consciously. No, absolutely not. The effects of fame work in a much more mysterious way inside the dark recesses of our minds.

Here’s how it works: the part of our mind that is hardwired for the worshipping of, let’s say a God, or a higher power, or whatever, is the part that is also utilized in the worship of celebrity. It’s the part of our psyche that connects us to the sacred, and yet, because we have all been miseducated, alienated, and hugely disappointed by this strange thing we call life, we do not recognize that we are worthy of this inner sacredness, and so we fling it out; we project it so we can then have some sort of safe, yet dishonest relationship with it. I mean, Jesus Christ, we don’t want to get too chummy with our inner God, now, do we? Who knows what the fuck might happen then—Christians might actually start acting like Christians. But no, in this country, we take our Godliness, and we throw it out of ourselves and onto every celebrity we can get our hearts and minds around, and all we are left with is an emptiness that sometimes feels like it will never be filled.

And so this is how I spent my summer vacations and most of the next thirty years of my life: unconsciously flinging my inner sacredness out and onto my father so that I might feel like somebody, anybody.

A month before my father died, the last time we saw each other, was for his birthday lunch in May. Dad, his girlfriend Sally, my husband Bob, and I went to Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City. He got a big hamburger. I think I got ribs. It was a great time. As always we laughed a lot, talked about this crazy world, and caught up with all that was going on in our lives— like my and Bob’s future trip to Scotland, and if Dad had seen the most recent episodes of Foyle’s War on PBS (he loved British mysteries). As an adult, being with my dad was always fun because making him laugh or smile or showing him a new angle on the world was deeply satisfying. I mean, who wouldn’t love having the power to do that to someone who does that for the world. And somewhere during that lunch I realized that when I was with my father, I could more easily plug into that inner shininess or sacredness that I spoke of before. It was as if I could consciously use his higher vibration to help jumpstart mine. I knew I was no longer borrowing his, or only seeing him as the source of it, I was now consciously accelerating my own vibration with his—like how a tennis player becomes a better player when she plays someone of a higher caliber. I was like an electron jumping to a higher orbit, and the more I claimed it as my own, the more it felt like we were keeping each other dancing at that higher orbit.

After saying our goodbyes, I was walking up the street to the car when a voice came into my head suddenly. It both scared and thrilled me. It said, Kelly, you can no longer depend on him to be the source of your ability to live from a higher orbit. You now have to and can do this for yourself.I did not know that would be the last time I would see my father. I did not know how serious this voice was. And so here I am, putting it down on these pages with the hope that it might inspire you to find that sacredness, that luminous Godliness that lives in you, so that I too can feel safe enough to find the God that lives within me. Because God knows, we are all running out of time.

The moral of this story is:

__ Hanging out backstage will give you low self-esteem.

__ Getting your masters in Jungian psychology fills your head up with a bunch of crazy crap.

__ Don’t worship your father; worship more worthwhile people like other daughters of other celebrities.

__Always listen to the voices in your head–no matter what.

The author of this story wants you to feel:

__ Sorry for her privileged ass

__ Guilty for not feeling sorry for her privileged ass

__ Confused and wretched about America

__ Nothing

Some things the author wants you to realize about life:

__ Take LSD; it’s better than worshipping your famous father.

__ Christians don’t really act like Christians.

__ Nothing is real. No, really. I mean it.  Nothing.

__ Your life is dull and boring.

* * *

Growing up watching her father, George Carlin, become a counter-culture hero, Kelly Carlin was inspired to pursue an unconventional, yet ultimately creative and fulfilling life. She began her professional life working in TV for her mother and father on various shows for HBO and now has a career in writing for film/TV with her partner/husband Robert McCall. In 2004, Kelly received a masters degree in Depth Psychology. Presently, Kelly performs personal essays, interviews legendary comedians for Laugh.com’s On Comedy CD series, teaches individuals and groups how to claim their creative life, and is writing her memoir which will explore the gifts and challenges of being the daughter of one of the 20th century’s most beloved comedians.

How Rude!

by Maggie Rowe

Several years ago I was hired as a teacher at James Baker Powers Acting and Modeling Academy in Beverly Hills. James Baker Powers began in 1927 as a finishing school for rising stars in the studio system. It continues to lure young hopefuls by the thousands with its impressive list of alumni—older movie stars like Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, and more recent ones like Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant.

Every Saturday hundreds of parents would bring their children to James Baker Powers to be evaluated for star potential. My boss, Franklin, promised the hopeful parents that, if selected, James Baker Powers would mold their child’s special precociousness into bankable stardom—for $1,000 a month—not much when you think about how much a star makes. Franklin cautioned the parents not to feel bad if their children weren’t selected; their kids were still special, but only one-in-a-million had star potential. Amazingly, every kid who showed up each Sunday—no matter how unattractive or lacking in basic charm or charisma—had this one-in-a-million star potential.

The year I was hired, James Baker Powers unveiled its new slogan: Acting. Modeling. Life.—the triumvirate representing the well-rounded young person, equally good at acting, modeling, and living. My assignment was to teach an etiquette class for five- to seven-year-olds, as part of the Living division. Now all I needed to do was learn everything I could about etiquette.

I really didn’t want to learn anything about etiquette, so I decided to improvise and share what I already knew, most of which came from the summers I spent with my two elderly aunts at their North Carolina beach house.

One of the aunts, my aunt Ellie, had in her day been quite an attractive woman who had fallen in love with many suitors. She now spent most of her time taking care of her sister Steffie, who not having been blessed with Helen’s charms, had fallen in love with mint juleps and prescription pain pills.

Aunt Ellie said the first rule of etiquette was to never brag because, as she would say, Nobody likes a horn tooter. She told me many things were braggy— talking about your own achievements or skills, talking louder than necessary, wearing loud colors (particularly red), talking about France....

Aunt Ellie said the next most important rule was that conversation should focus on the loveliness of life. Aunt Steffie was forever breaking this rule and displaying her deeply downtrodden perspective. I