We Just Disagree 3832
Saturday, March 11, 2006-10:38 A.M.
I’m writing this journal entry this morning to allow myself to cool down from the night before. I didn’t want to compose it in the heat of the moment and say something I might regret later.
I’m working at Chaplin’s Comedy Club in Detroit, Michigan, actually, Clinton Township, one of the Northwest suburbs. It’s a nice club, runs six shows Wednesday through Saturday, and happens to have a bowling alley wrapped around it. The bowling alley doesn’t interfere with the shows, it’s not as though you can hear the noise from the lanes while you’re in the showroom or anything, but I’m just throwing it in there in case you’ve never been to the actual club, you can get a bead on the lay of the land, and maybe picture it better in your mind.
The club is owned by two brothers, Bob and Bill Hargis. I’ve never met Bob, I’ve only dealt with Billy. Billy is an older gent who has run the club since the 70’s. It used to be a dance club, and there’s still tons of stage lighting in the back of the room, anchored to the ceiling and recessed out of view, unless you were to go back there and sit and then idly look up. It speaks of the ghosts of the fad entertainment of the day, with bell-bottomed dancers and their polyester minidressed partners lining up to do the hustle, shaking and sweating to the pumping rhythms of artists like K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Gloria Gaynor and Rose Royce, and dartingaway to share a bump in the bathroom.
The pictures on the wall, as I’ve described before, are old and yellowed, and show comics we know today as fat and bald as young, apple-cheeked visionaries with stars in their eyes, before a heartless business sucked them dry and left them sitting on the edge of their beds in hotel rooms, wondering where their youth went or where they even are or when they get to go home. Some of the comics, like Dennis Wolfberg, are dead, but live on here at Chaplin’s, bracketed to the wall, wishing Billy and Bobby good luck like some timeless comedy zombie, his curly red hair covering his head like a field of English heather, and nothing at all like the modest scraps that hung about his ears like a monk once we finally got to know him through his television appearances. Others, like Jay Leno, smile back with a finger touched to his forehead, just below hair that hasn’t begun to turn grey, a hastily scribbled signature across his ample chin, checking out of a club that he will likely never, ever walk into again.
I’ve performed at Chaplin’s before, this being my third week in five years. I had to go back to my old records, which I carry with me to refer to in these cases, to find out exactly when. I seem to get scheduled to come here every 18 months or so, just enough time to be forgotten by any fan base that may care to see me again, just soon enough to remember the zig-zag route from the hotel to the club without asking for directions.
The first time I was at the club was March of 2002, and the horror of 9/11 was still fresh in everyone’s mind. I was peddling a souvenir T-shirt, featuring Osama Bin Laden in a cross-hairs, and had a snappy little sales pitch that had some good laughs in it, and it went along with a nice Mafia bit that I had written. I sold a good number of those shirts, and it helped me make some money at this comedy game, even though gasoline hadn’t risen to the rapacious $2.50 a gallon that it has arrived at this week. Traveling expenses still ate up much of my modest feature pay, and merchandise sales were helping to tilt the scale towards solvency.
When I arrived at Chaplin’s the first time as a paid feature act, I approached Billy, who displayed the warmth and patience of a strip-club owner going through a New York State tax audit, and tried to be friendly, thanking him for having me, and asking how much time to do, and where I could set up my T-shirts for sale after the show.
“Leave ‘em in the trunk” he said.
I was a little startled, and taken aback, frankly, because as a club manager I would never have been so terse and unfair to a comic, especially a feature act, who was just trying to make a survival wage, and unfriendliness aside, I wasn’t ready for his response at all. I plodded through the week, and tried to get paid as soon as possible after the second show on Saturday so that I could leave quickly and make my five-hour drive home, and Billy dragged his feet and paid me when he damn well pleased, and when he asked me what I was in such a hurry for, I explained that I did promotions work for the club back home (true) and had in-house calendars to complete for printing on Tuesday (true) and wanted to get back to start working on them right away (half-true…I just wanted to get the hell out of there). He made some ice-water comment about planning ahead, and I parted ways with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Cut to my next appearance at the club, October of 2004, 15 months later. My daughter Harmony was six months old, I was working for the same money, and with an extra mouth to feed, clothe and diaper. I was peddling a CD after my shows now, and contacted the club a few weeks early, begging for permission to sell them after my shows and explaining the new addition to the family, and the budget crunch it was causing me. I complained to the booking agent, even. I called Mark Kolo at Funny Business Agency.
“Does he know he doesn’t pay the money, to put the breaks on a guy trying to eke out a living wage?”
“I don’t think he even cares. Billy’s funny that way.”
I tried side-stepping Billy to see if I could get any justice from his brother Bob, who I still haven’t met, and received no call or contact in the yea or nay. Upon arriving at the club, I talked to Billy, who still was arm’s length.
“Yeah, go ahead and sell ‘em. You’ll probably make another 50 bucks.” What a sweetheart.
I wound up selling out, and the headliner did well with his CD’s, too. In your face, Billy.
This week, I mistakenly assumed that I was still able to sell my stuff. I’m still carrying the CD, and I have a DVD as well. Sales were sparse on Wednesday and Thursday, but enough to put some gas in the car and eat some low-budget grub. After the first show, Billy approaches me where I’m standing next to Kevin Naughton at the merchandise table.
“Did you get an itinerary?” he says to me. Yeah, I got an itinerary, but I don’t know where he’s going with this. I thought I was going to get chewed out about my time. He made a nasty remark about it before I went on.
“What did it say?” I parroted the contents of the itinerary, “Dress nice, be at the club early, no swearing….” all of the restrictions that a control-freak club puts on their comics. If you want a clean comic who wears a suit, hire one. I dress how I dress and I say what I say to get people to laugh. I don’t tell you what to charge for a beer, or when to start your show, can’t we work together on this?
Regarding merchandise, it says “ask permission from Billy.” I explained that the last time I was at the club, I did ask, and he had said all right. Apparently, someone had pissed him off since I was there last, and I was going to suffer for it. “I’m sorry, I just assumed it was o.k.” I said. “If you want me to pack it up, and not sell the rest o the week, say the word.” I was humble and polite, and I figured there was no way he would be so heavy-handed, but sure as shit, he said, “Yeah, why don’t you do that.” No more sales for me.
Now really, I’m thinking I might make another 100 bucks the rest of the week, if I’m lucky, have three hot shows, and the folks who come out are really into me. And that might not change my life, but 100 bucks can help me pay off two-thirds of my speeding ticket from last week, or buy four boxes of diapers, or maybe it could just sit in the bank and collect a little interest, waiting for the next life catastrophe that could befall a working-class couple with a young child who want to live safe and be healthy. Maybe I could even buy a nice birthday present for Harmony Rose, who turns two years old today and deserves much nicer things than I can afford to buy for her, even though I really don’t know what you get for a two-year old, except more toys that sing and beep when you accidentally kick them in the middle of the night on your way to the bathroom, or maybe some nice girlie toddler clothing, which is about a third as big as adult clothing, but mystically, costs exactly the same. But the 100’s not going to be there, because the owner of the club I’m working thinks it makes his club look cheap.
Now, I’m not going to argue about how it “looks.” Frankly, I don’t know how it looks to Billy, only he knows that and it’s his club, so all arguments end. But I think, and prejudicially, that merchandise is a good thing. I think that people carry home souvenirs from their positive comedy club experience, and it sits in the home as a reminder that the comedy club is a good place to go, that it’s just as fun if not more so than the movies, or bowling, or karaoke, or whatever evening pursuits normal folks go to relieve themselves from the stress of the working week. I do also know that if folks don’t want the t-shirts, CD’s or bumper stickers that comics are selling after the show, that they don’t buy them. They walk by the table, smiling and shaking hands and saying “Good show,” and they keep walking. It’s not a negative experience at all, and for the folks that are embarrassed, they walk by the table with their heads down, and that’s their prerogative. I see no blood being shed in the process.
Kevin, the headliner, was allowed to continue selling. He's the headliner, so I suppose it's not as "cheap-looking" as a feature selling. I begrudge him nothing; he's a good comic and a friend. He apologized after Billy talked to me, he was standing right there for the whole interchange. And, I might add, he apologized for no reason; it wasn't his fault, but obviously that Irish-Catholic guilt was kicking in...I would have done the same, for sure.
Some club owners ask for a percentage of sales; that’s nothing new to me. When I worked on the George Carlin tour, we had to fork over as little as 10% of those merchandise sales and as much as 35% in one instance to the halls we worked, and we paid it, grudgingly, for the use of a rickety table in the drafty foyer. Still, their house, their rules, and there’s just nothing you can do about it.
As a club manager, I always considered the club/comic relationship to be a partnership. I believe that a comfortable comic making decent money is a happy, productive entertainer who puts on a good show, and keeps the folks coming back to pay my ticket price and buy my foods and beverages. Everyone should be having fun and making money. As a comic, I have always tried to maintain that notion, that we’re in this together, and I compliment clubs vocally from the stage that do a great job and make me feel at home. I have two shows tonight, and really, what do I say now? I don’t want to punish the staff by slagging the club or being less than complimentary, but as I discussed with my wife the night before, do I even want to come back to this club? Is the cold treatment and unfair sanction on selling worth working a substandard pay week, even though it’s close to home? It’s ugly, but when comedy work is so hard to find and so competitive, the scarcity mentality in me says shut your mouth and keep the week, even though it only comes up every year-and-a-half. The abundance mentality says that I should dump the club, not even try to work it anymore, that it’s not worth it and I can easily replace it with a better-paying week, at a club that is more comic-friendly and I don’t have to walk on eggs all the time.
I guess the whole issue is my being able to have some courage to walk away, and I’ve never been very courageous. My name, Ralph, actually means “Shield of Courage,” which is a laugh, because I’ve always been cautious at the best, and fraidy-cat at the worst. I have no spine for confrontation, and I’m scared to lose what little I have because I struggle so hard to get it. And when you have a wife and child looking to you to bring the money home every week, the ante gets doubled and beads of sweat start forming. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this club, and that’s sad, because there’s eight other clubs in a one-hour radius, and I’m sure I could get into one (or many) of them if I tried. Then I could still come to Detroit (fun town, nice people) and never darken the doorstep of Billy Hargis again.
He’d never miss me, that’s for sure.
Ralph Tetta
Rochester, NY
