yes please(24)

Soon after, Tina and I both auditioned for Second City’s touring company. You had to do a bunch of characters and I have completely forgotten what I did. I’m sure Besser helped me. Here is a sheet someone recently found in an old drawer at Second City, from the day I auditioned.



Remember, kids, they can spell your name wrong and you can still get the job!

Tina and I were placed in a touring company called BlueCo, and I took the spot left behind by Rachel Dratch who had been hired for the Mainstage company. We traveled all over Chicago and the United States in a van with hilarious men and women. I think we were paid $65 a show. We would drive across Texas and perform three or four times and come back to Chicago deep in debt. Those van rides were tiny comedy labs. I remember a lot of beef jerky and bits. Tina taught me how to pluck my eyebrows. During our Texas tour we stopped at a Dallas S&M club and drank warm Diet Cokes as we watched a woman lazily whip a guy. Nothing is more depressing than a tired dominatrix. We did a show just outside of Waco and wondered if it was gauche to drive to the Branch Davidian compound. I complained to the manager at the Red Roof Inn about blood in my sink and then sheepishly asked him where the “bad stuff went down.” He handed me typed-out directions. He had clearly been asked before. We arrived to find charred children’s toys still littering the place. We noticed Jews for Jesus graffiti and many people still wandering around. An Australian woman with her arm in a sling was preaching on a burned-out school bus. She spoke of how handsome David Koresh was and how he was getting ready to return, while I stood fascinated by her wristwatch, which she had safety-pinned to her sling. It was weird, man. Especially since one of us was very stoned.

While I was touring with Second City, I continued to perform at ImprovOlympic and with the Upright Citizens Brigade. The group had morphed and now it was the fab four it remains today: Besser, Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh, and me. Ian was an intense and cerebral guy from New Jersey who was the best improviser I had ever seen. He was a great actor who looked like he wanted to wrestle you. I saw Matt Walsh for the first time when he played Captain Lunatic (Lou Natic), an over-the-top cop who chugged Pepto-Bismol and cursed God. I was in awe of his characters and his distinct voice. Adam McKay and Horatio Sanz were still performing with us on occasion, although both were being groomed to join SNL. Adam was good at everything. He was an unbelievable writer and bulletproof onstage. Horatio was sweet but fearless. He once walked through a sliding glass door on a dare.

The UCB4 started to write and perform our own shows, most of which included audience plants and fake gunplay. This included Thunderball, a sketch show conceived during the baseball strike. We dragged our audience to the entrance of Wrigley Field and declared baseball officially dead. We had the crowd light candles and chant “Baseball is dead, long live Thunderball.” James Grace played a plant in the audience who supported baseball and we shot him. Horatio played the ghost of Babe Ruth, and he wept over James and shouted “No!!” up to the heavens. It started to rain and then cops made us disperse. James committed to lying in the rain for hours. We got big crowds and mixed reviews. Del liked to remind us that “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” He also liked to tell us to “fall, and then figure out what to do on your way down” and that “professionals work on New Year’s Eve.” People around us started becoming actual professionals. Adam and Horatio and Tim Meadows got hired at SNL. Andy Richter was on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Big stars, like Mike Myers, Andy Dick, and Chris Farley, would come back and perform with us. I had coincidentally rented Farley’s old Chicago apartment years after he had left. He was incredibly nice and painfully sensitive. He would stand backstage and berate himself if he felt he didn’t do a good job. It was almost like he couldn’t hear how loud everyone was laughing.

We were rehearsing for a UCB show when the O.J. Simpson verdict came down and we watched it live. When O.J. was acquitted, Besser predicted O.J. would find himself back in jail not long after. Besser knew something about the future, it seemed. He was a time traveler and understood the long game. In addition to doing UCB, Matt performed as a stand-up comedian and had a manager. His name was Dave Becky, and Matt told Dave about this group with the funny name. Dave traveled to Chicago and saw something in the Upright Citizens Brigade, and seventeen years later Dave still represents me. The UCB had done a few showcases in New York and Los Angeles, and soon Besser decided it was time for us to leave Chicago. We sat in a booth at the Salt & Pepper Diner and charted our course.

No one thought this was a good idea. A casting director told me we would never make it as a group. Second City reminded me I was in line to get a spot in a Mainstage company—the big-time there. ImprovOlympic was a warm blanket we didn’t want to crawl out from under. My choice was easy to make, though, because I was moving back east near my family and had wisely learned to do whatever Besser told me to do. Also, Ian and Walsh and Matt were the funniest people I knew and Ian had once punched a drunk guy wearing a sombrero who yelled gross stuff to me from across the street. I felt protected.

It’s easier to be brave when you’re not alone.

We were young and foolish and didn’t know what we were up against. Thank god. We said good-bye to our friends and our cheap and beautiful apartment in the scary neighborhood. We packed all of our things and my yellow Lab, Suki, and pulled away in a U-Haul truck. We had no apartment or job or place to perform in New York City. I didn’t really know who I was, but improv had taught me that I could be anyone. I didn’t have to wait to be cast—I could give myself the part. I could be an old man or a teenage babysitter or a rodeo clown. In three short years Chicago had taught me that I could decide who I was. My only job was to surround myself with people who respected and supported that choice. Being foolish was the smartest thing to do.